Anand Chocolu (2:38)

I think we can say that Netflix has pretty clearly won the streaming wars at this point. It's no longer reporting subscribers each quarter because it's shifting from the massive growth phase to the massive profitability phase. Cracking down on passwords is an example of that. Right. That hurt subscribers, but increase profitability or actually it would help subscribers, but depending on if they cancel or not. In any case, what can we expect out of Netflix the business in the next five years?

Unnamed Speaker (3:08)

Matt well, for starters, I wish they would continue to report subscriber numbers, especially after major price increases like the one we saw subscribe, so we could see if it is or is not having an impact. But I think over the next five years we'll see a focus on two big things in particular advertising and their highest value content. And I'll expand on both of those. So the Netflix ad suite, which is their proprietary ad platform, the rollout was just completed during this past quarter, so it's not a material driver of revenue right now, but it really could be in 2026 and beyond. And in addition to when I say high value content, in addition to the I mean Netflix is well known for its TV series, for its movies it's producing, it's really doubling down on live programming and really just desirable content like The Happy Gilmore 2 movie that's coming out. There's the live shows like that boxing match that's coming up, the Canelo fight that's really people used to pay $70 to watch that on pay per view and now it's on Netflix. So they're going to really double down on this high value content because it makes those increasing subscription prices seem more and more worth it to the to all of its subscribers.

Unnamed Speaker (4:19)

Matt, you and I actually we talked about this on the Motley fool member livestream Thursday night. Netflix is really in the driver's seat in the streaming world. And as you just mentioned with live content, which is extremely valuable for the ads here, but also just as a powerhouse international content producer, I think it may be the best monetizer on a global basis, ahead of even Disney now, if not in scale, but certainly in the content that it can monetize better than anyone else.

Anand Chocolu (4:49)

We also heard management talk about AI in their content. They're testing something out in content in Argentina, their first one, where they're kind of producing some stuff, some scenes with AI. And that's in addition to all the personalization and all the care that they take within the Netflix interface that always gives us great recommendations and keeps us kind of sucked into that ecosystem. So that's definitely will be interesting how that evolves over the next five years. But moving on to the stock, we saw that even a beat and raise Netflix Stock fell about 5% as we're taping due to the high expectations priced in are you buy, sell or index on Netflix the stock over the next five years.

Unnamed Speaker (5:35)

Matt, I'm torn. On one hand, I do think, as you mentioned, this is the clear winner in the streaming business. And the fact that growth is being primarily driven by price this year just shows the pricing power of the business, with revenue up 16% year over year. But on the other hand, the stock's trading at 43 times forward earnings. It's a relatively mature business in terms of subscriber count anyway. It already has a 25% net profit margin, so it's going to have to grow a lot to justify where it's trading right now.

Unnamed Speaker (6:06)

I think it can still outperform the market over the long term, even though, as Matt noted, this is not a cheap stock and it's a mature business. To me, the two biggest reasons that stand out are even though it's mature, it's still relatively early and fully optimizing how it can monetize advertising, especially as we see more and more of that high value live content coming onto the platform. It's a major player outside of the US and it's still really tapping that international market. And if we think about the utility value, even with the price increases, this is still the streaming service that most people would say it's the last one that they're going to cancel if they have to start canceling these services. And that says a tremendous amount about how deep their pricing power is and the ecosystem that they've built, how strong it really is.

Anand Chocolu (6:59)

As a Netflix shareholder myself, every time it's been climbing to new and new heights, the stock, you get nervous. But then I just see how well they're executing and how well they're executing in relation to other streamers and how they can kind of vulture content and kind of make their ecosystem bigger and bigger. And I think, Jason, you were talking about how or one of you was talking about they've got boxing, they've got different kind of events, they've got NFL stuff. I even heard an ad for Happy Gilmore 2 on a podcast. And you think, well, yeah, you know what? They're making it an event. They want people to come in and subscribe because, hey, they want their favorite movie from 30 years ago, they want the sequel. And they can't get that elsewhere. Let's move on to big macro. There is a whole lot of debate about interest rates both within the Fed and outside of the Fed. We've seen President Trump lobby for lower interest rates, seen Chairman Powell kind of be a little secretive on what he's going to do. He and the Fed will do and kind of holding the line. We've seen other Fed governors speak out kind of split on what they want or what they predict. What are your predictions on interest rates a year from now, Matt?

Unnamed Speaker (8:24)

First, it's worth pointing out that Jerome Powell will not be chair of the Fed a year from now. Most likely the market's median expectation right now for July 2026, it's for a full percentage point of rate cuts compared to the current level. So there'll be a federal funds rate range of 3.25 to 3.5%. But I think once the Fed starts cutting, it will happen in a more aggressive manner than the market seems to think. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say a total of 1 1/2% in cuts between now and next July. And that would put mortgage rates, assuming that mortgage rates and other types of risk free interest like the treasury yield and things like that track, I would say mortgage rates are going to be about 5.5% at this point next year. It's a bold prediction, but I think it's completely possible.

Unnamed Speaker (9:09)

Yeah. So just for clarity's sake, Powell's term expires, I believe, in May of next year. So Matt, I think you're, I think you're right, Pat. This is going to be the post Powell period and directionally, if not precisely, I agree with, with Matt. I'll also note that if interest rates are not lower, that's probably a good thing for the economy and for our portfolios with one gigantic caveat and that is that if broad tariffs become a reality, it's a different paradigm because we end up with high inflation because of a combination of both higher prices for goods but also less supply because it's going to be harder for companies to bring goods into the US with those higher costs on the table. I think that's a very low probability event and the most likely thing is that we probably will be in a lower interest rate environment because hopefully inflation will continue on its current trajectory of mostly cooling off and the Fed will start making those moves because it is really holding back major parts of the economy like housing. Matt mentioned interest rates there. But maybe a more, more important thing to mention, Anand, is what I'm doing about it, what investors maybe should be thinking about doing. In my case, mostly nothing different here. I'm not close to retirement. I'm not close to paying for a large expense like sending a kid to college or, you know, some other thing I've been saving and investing for. So time is still my ally. Now I have increased the cash that I carry and my bond exposure over the past couple of years as interest rates have gone up. But that as much as anything is because of where I am in again, that kind of that paradigm of my investing career. But I'm unlikely to reduce those things even if we do see rates come down. So I think the bigger thing is thinking about where you are as an investor and what makes sense based on your goals and less about trying to get ahead of this as an investor or trading on it.

Anand Chocolu (11:09)

Netflix famously disrupted Blockbuster. Pretty impressive. But after the break, we'll talk about the stuff that's trying to disrupt dollars and gold. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money, rated T for Teen.

Unnamed Speaker (11:24)

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Anand Chocolu (12:03)

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Anandrakvalu here with Jason hall and Matt Frankel. Congress declared it crypto week and believe it or not, Congress delivered the first major standalone cryptocurrency bill is now passed by both the House and the Senate and as we're taping, it's ready for the President's signature. It was called the genius bill, Jason. But is it a good idea?

Unnamed Speaker (12:27)

Yeah, I think it's definitely a good idea to get a regulatory framework in place for stablecoins. And that's. That's what this did. The name is an acronym for guiding and establishing national innovation for US stablecoin. What does it do? In short, it requires stablecoin issuers to hold equivalent dollars in reserve. In other words, for every $1 in stablecoin that it issues, it must own $1 in reserve. This doesn't just mean actual dollars in a bank account. It can include things like treasuries, highly liquid short term treasuries. This is a good first step to helping protect both consumers and investors. If we go back to 2022, Terraform Labs TerraUSD was UST is the, is the token. It broke its peg because it wasn't actually backed by the US dollar. That event wiped out, I think around $45 billion in investor value in just a few days. Terraform Labs never recovered. Investors never recovered. Terraform Labs actually ended up filing for bankruptcy in early 2024. Now, there's more to it than just the asset backing requirement. There's rules around preventing illegal activities, including money laundering and other things. Now, its detractors say that this soon to be law, we're waiting for the President to sign, it doesn't go far enough, but it's a step in the right direction to regulate crypto where it probably intersects with the most people. And that's not where it is as an investment, but as a tool for consumers.

Unnamed Speaker (14:03)

Yeah. So, I mean, I don't have that much to add, except that stablecoins do have a lot of utility in terms of seamless money transferring, cutting down on fees and things like that. The reason they haven't gained more traction than they have is really because of what this bill just did. Because there weren't that many regulatory guidelines. It wasn't that perceived as a safe way to move money around by a lot of investors and a lot of. Just a lot of consumers because, like Jason mentioned, the Terraform Labs bankruptcy. So there's a lot to like about this from a consumer protection standpoint. It's not really significant for investors, but just in terms of, of the companies that rely on, on stablecoins to move money around, it's a big deal.

Anand Chocolu (14:41)

Genius bill is farthest along, but it was actually just one of three pieces of crypto legislation kind of making its way through the congressional snake. Tell us about the others, Jason.

Unnamed Speaker (14:53)

Yeah, there's two more that have made it halfway through Congress. The first one I'll talk about is the more straightforward. It's called the Anti CBDC Surveillance State Act. In short, it prohibits the Federal Reserve from creating a digital currency without explicit authorization from Congress. I don't want to get into the politics of this one. You could easily fall into that. But proponents of it say this it's about privacy and protection from government surveillance and control. Detractors say that it limits the tools of the Fed while simultaneously giving too much control of the future of money to a very tightly concentrated group of very private businesses and individuals. I think to some degree, both are probably directionally right. But it's clarity that I think that the market needs. Speaking of clarity, the act that probably matters more is just that it's called the Clarity Act. This is the other one. This is one of the biggest challenges for crypto in the US has been that lack of Clarity over which regulatory agency has oversight. And I think that's played a massive role in why we've seen grift and fraud over the past decade, but also limited institutional investment because of the risk of not knowing what regulators were going to do. So here's what it does. The Clarity act puts the sec, the securities Exchange Commission, in charge of regulatory oversight for things, mostly on the investor side. Regulatory disclosures, capital raises. These are things that the SEC already has expertise in with companies that have to file disclosures and has that existing framework in place to be able to oversee it. Now the CFTC will have oversight of things like intermediaries and exchanges. This matters a lot for all market participants, whether you're a developer, a crypto developer, a broker dealer, maybe an institutional investor managing billions of dollars in assets, or just a retail investor with a few hundred bucks or a few thousand dollars at risk. Getting this framework in place so that there is regulation and regulators that have explicit roles I think is really important.

Unnamed Speaker (17:14)

Yeah. And I would actually add that the biggest regulatory dues might not be any of these three pieces of legislation. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or occ. They clarified in a letter sent back in May that national banks may now act as crypto custodians. That paved the way for, I mean, we've seen it with fintech so far. Like, SoFi announced that crypto is coming back to its platform, but it really paves the way for even bigger institutions to add some form of crypto trading or crypto activities to their existing platforms. Like bank of America could add it to Merrill lynch potentially. There's a lot of implications that that clarification letter could have.

Anand Chocolu (17:51)

Well, let's put the rubber where the road is. What are your personal allocations in cryptocurrency? Starting with you, Jason.

Unnamed Speaker (18:03)

It'S about 2% of my portfolio. And like Matt's going to mention in just a second, I have some indirect exposure through financial companies that are going to profit from crypto if it does become more mainstream.

Unnamed Speaker (18:16)

Yeah, my current allocation is very low, but it's not zero, but it's very low. I do have a lot of crypto adjacent stocks. Like, I think SoFi stands to benefit if crypto does well. PayPal is a big stablecoin issuer and Block is well known for owning a lot of Bitcoin. So I guess I do have a lot of indirect exposure through that as well.

Anand Chocolu (18:37)

I guess I do have indirect exposure. I don't really consider those the crypto, but they are right there. Indirectly, 3% of my portfolio is currently Bitcoin and Ethereum. I put a total of about 1% of my portfolio in them around 2020. Since then they've done really well. I've sold most of it. So the 3% remaining is earned, quote unquote. For what it's worth, I'd be interested in maybe buying again during the next crypto winter. We know that it's a very volatile segment. Up next we'll see if JP Morgan is still king of the banking hill. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Dan Boyd (19:41)

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Anand Chocolu (20:27)

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm on in chocolate. There are six US banks with at least $1 trillion in assets and they all reported earnings this week. So it's a particularly good week to have Matt and Jason on because they followed banks closely for years. Now, Matt, it's time to play best Worst. Which of the six banks had the best quarter? Your choices are JP Morgan, Chase, bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Unnamed Speaker (20:59)

Surprisingly, I'm going to have to go with Citigroup and I think it's the first time I've answered that question in that way when you've asked me what bank had the best quarter.

Anand Chocolu (21:07)

Very surprising.

Unnamed Speaker (21:09)

Yeah, they had strong investment banking results, but that's pretty much industry wide. But they had excellent growth throughout the business, unlike their peers. Just to give you a couple examples, Citigroup's revenue grew by 8% year over year while most peers were about flat year over year. Their efficiency ratio improved by more than 300 basis points year over year. That was kind of rare in the industry. This quarter we're seeing more aggressive buybacks. 8% growth year over year. Intangible book value. So the intrinsic value of the bank is building. Credit card revenue was up 11%. Citi's one of the biggest credit card issuers. Consumer deposits were up by 5% at the end of the quarter. Most we're seeing declining deposit basis. Net interest income grew by 7%. Most did not. So it just really good numbers compared to the peers.

Unnamed Speaker (21:56)

I'll push back a little bit I think objectively speaking, JPMorgan Chase probably had the best quarter, but shouldn't be a surprise. This continues to be the gold standard. Sure, a little bit of a bleed off in deposits, but mid single digit loan growth and the returns that it generates are absolutely exceptional. But I think through the lens, Matt, that you're probably looking through and I agree with against expectations. Yeah, I agree that it's, it's Citi. The expectations have been so low. Even if we look at things that weren't great at Citi, increasing credit loss reserves, it was for a good reason, loan portfolio growth, not concerns about credit quality. So those are real positive things. Now there is still a long way to go if you look at the profitability metrics like return on. Return on equity is still high single digits. You know, you want to see that above 10%. So there's progress there. But Jane Fraser held CEO, she held firm. Look, this is 10% is still our goal. And that's not the end point. That's just the next step on the path a year from now is to get to that double digit level of returns. Jane Fraser has. I really think she has things headed in the right direction for Citi.

Anand Chocolu (23:10)

It sounds like JP Morgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon. Still mvp but most improved player. Citigroup, which been waiting literally more than a decade for that Turnaround. Getting to 2. Let's talk about the worst quarter, Matt, which one had the worst?

Unnamed Speaker (23:30)

I'd have to go with Wells Fargo and not necessarily their fault. Investment banking was really a highlight for all of the banking industry so far this quarter. Wells Fargo is the only one of those six you mentioned that does not have a strong investment banking operation. It's a very small part of their business so it's not that surprising it would underperform. Also, they lowered their full year forecast for net interest income. They had been previously calling for growth in the 1 to 3% range. Now they're saying it's going to be roughly flat versus 2024. So Wells Fargo, I think by default, just because they don't have an investment banking division, gets it.

Unnamed Speaker (24:04)

I agree with Matt and as Matt mentioned, I really want to emphasize this. I don't think it's because Wells had a bad quarter. The quarter was fine, the results were good. Lacking that investment bank uplift that the others did, as he noted. I also want to point out that I think the lower forecast for net interest income probably says more about the state of the borrowing consumer and small business than it does about the quality of Wells Business.

Anand Chocolu (24:35)

Having the banks kick off earnings season is somewhat helpful because they give us a macro feel for how the economy overall is doing as we look into future earnings of other companies. What were your takeaways, Matt?

Unnamed Speaker (24:47)

Yeah, I saw a few somewhat conflicting signals. Generally across the board we saw loan defaults, loan delinquencies trend lower, which is better than expected, especially compared to the expectations of a couple years ago. But savings balances are generally trending lower. I mentioned Citigroup was a big exception, but generally savings account balances are lower, especially when you consider inflation adjusted terms. And credit card spending volume is driving the bulk of loan growth pretty much throughout the industry, which is a little bit of a concern that consumers might be they're spending freely but they might be over leveraging themselves a little bit.

Unnamed Speaker (25:22)

The loan mix shifting towards more credit card debt is notable. It's great for bank profits right now especially. You mentioned the delinquencies, all of those things. People are using their credit cards more but they're still paying them. Right. So that's, that's good. But I think if we look a little bit further out, maybe it's maybe a little bit of a yellow flag if you want to think about it that way. Again, looking back kind of at Wells, we did see that loan mix shift from less asset backed loans to more credit card debt on its book. And that affected its loan loss provisions in a way that points towards maybe higher credit losses later this year just because again, credit card debt is a riskier debt. You see more defaults, late payments, again, definitely the most consumer focused of these. But I think probably the biggest take is I don't think this is necessarily anything that has me any more or less concerned about banks in the near term or the long term. Specifically thinking about a Wells Fargo thinking about its long term prospects, which are way better than they were a year ago. Since the restriction has been lifted on its ability to grow assets. And under the Trump administration, if we continue to see the lighter hand of regulation and if we do see lower corporate taxes, those are all positive things for bank bottom lines. At some point. Less regulation, does that lead to some sort of an asset bubble? Maybe it does, but I think at this point we're not seeing any clear negative signs or things that investors should be super worried about.

Anand Chocolu (26:56)

As you all look through the earnings and the conference call transcripts or listen to the conference calls, was there a best quote that stood out, Matt?

Unnamed Speaker (27:03)

Not one that I could think of off the top of my head. Most bank CEOs with maybe the Exception of Jamie Dimon sound very optimistic about how things are going and the looser regulation, environment, things like that. Jamie Dimon's been really the one sounding the alarm. I don't have a specific quote in front of me, but he's been saying he's been cautioning about the impacts of tariffs on inflation and things like that for months now. And this, this quarter's report was no exception.

Unnamed Speaker (27:32)

I'll paraphrase a little bit with Jamie Dimon. I'm going to stick with him. He is certainly the most quotable of the big bank CEOs. If you get into some of the smaller banks, there's some pretty outspoken people. But Jamie Dimon has been the most notable kind of anti crypto bank CEO over, over the past decade and he's having to begrudgingly accept that JP Morgan Chase needs to participate in crypto and just to paraphrase phrase, a very simple statement that he made about stablecoin. I think they're real, but why use them? We're all trying to figure that out, Jamie.

Anand Chocolu (28:13)

Right. Well, if you all had to buy one of the six, which one are you buying?

Unnamed Speaker (28:18)

Matt, to be clear, I could make a good buy case for any of the six right now. Jason mentioned the potential corporate tax tailwinds. The President campaigned on a 15% corporate tax rate. Banks would be probably the biggest beneficiary of that in terms of the S and P sectors. Most of these banks you're looking at have effective tax rates in the low 20s, so that would be a big boost to their bottom lines. You mentioned Wells Fargo's asset cap being lifted, which although this quarter wasn't the best. That can make things interesting going forward now that they're allowed to grow again in arguably a pretty good growth environment for banks. But if I had to buy one today, I'd say probably Citigroup. It's still very much in turnaround. Their turnaround has been going on, I kind of joked, but literally their turnaround has been going on for about 17 years now. I was not for a few CEOs pretty much ever since the end of the financial crisis. No. Well, it's true. It's still very much a turnaround, but it's an excellent value and the recent numbers make it seem even more so. It trades for about 0.8 times book value, but I give a close second to bank of America, which is a large bank holding in my portfolio. And I think it's closer in quality to JPMorgan Chase than the market seems to think.

Unnamed Speaker (29:39)

Matt, you're a value investor. And if there's any one thing that I've learned about investing in these large banks, first thing you have to focus on is quality. Finding the ones that have good credit quality, great assets that they own with a margin of safety. And, and you know, the banks on the margins, they're growing at really high rates. A lot of time, it's because they've lower credit quality, which means that they've kind of maybe started the timer on the bomb that's going to blow up. So being mindful of the quality and just as important as valuation, these are enormous institutions. Counting on them to be able to grow into valuations is a great way to buy underperformance. And also it's also a great way to set yourself up potentially for losses that it may be hard to hold through when we do go through those inevitable downturns, economic periods of a weakened economy, recession. So to me, that makes it, and maybe this is heresy to say, but JP Morgan Chase almost unbiable because it has earned a very high valuation. It has earned it because it is the gold standard. But it's hard to see a picture where it's an outperforming stock over the long term from this level of valuation because it is so enormous. I think you have to find pockets of opportunity. And to me, the two that stand out the most. Bank of America trades for around 1.3 times book value, about 13 times earnings. That's not cheap, but it's not expensive. And you're buying what I think is also just pretty close to JP Morgan Chase in terms of extremely high quality for these really big businesses. Extraordinarily well run, very well positioned. If we do see things that could boost its profits, like lower interest rates, the lighter regulatory hand, help drive its earnings up. But I also think that Matt's right, that Citi, and again, I want to be careful about using value. It trades for a discount to its book value, but for a reason. The returns that it's earned off of its assets have been substantially lower than all of its peers for a very, very long time. And there's still a lot of work to do to boost those, those returns to a level that's even close to its peers. So it trades for that cheap book value for a good reason. It's not worth what those other ones are because it doesn't get the return from those assets. But, but because the turnaround, we have clear signals that the turnaround is working. Jane Fraser is building a more focused business, moving away from markets that have dragged on returns over the long time and hurt profits. Those are all the right things to do. So I would say from a risk reward perspective, Citi is really, really compelling.

Anand Chocolu (32:21)

As a turnaround, you two are braver than me. I'm still once bitten, twice shy on Citi, but maybe, maybe I'll have to take another look. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about. And the Motley fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley fool editorial standards is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure. Please check out our show notes. Up next, we've got stocks on our radar. Stay right here. You'll listen to Motley fool money.

Matt Frankel (32:59)

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Unnamed Speaker (33:44)

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Jason Hall (33:48)

Line them up, Johnny.

Unnamed Speaker (33:52)

On July 25th, time to save the planet.

Jason Hall (33:54)

What's the plan?

Anand Chocolu (33:55)

Trust me.

Unnamed Speaker (33:56)

I hate that.

Jason Hall (33:57)

Bad plan. Come on.

Unnamed Speaker (33:58)

Terrible.

Jason Hall (33:58)

That's a stupid plan.

Unnamed Speaker (33:59)

Prepare for fantastic.

Jason Hall (34:02)

We will face this together as a family.

Unnamed Speaker (34:06)

Marvel Studios The Fantastic Four First Steps Only in theaters July 25 May PG13 Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. Get tickets now.

Anand Chocolu (34:28)

I'm on in chocolate. Joined again by Jason hall and Matt Frankel. After years of procrastination and hang wringing I was wondering how best to get my kids into investing. And I finally did it. I've got my systems in place. Each month the kids will get a little money from my wife and me. The default is that it'll go into my favorite one stop index fund. It's the Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund. It's VT for short. Right. The ticker. I explained to the kids that it has close to 10,000 holdings. 10,000 different companies. Pretty much has every major company in the world. Including ones they'd know like Roblox, Starbucks, Nintendo, Target. You know all the kid favorites. The younger one took my Default and used that. The older one actually surprised me and lobbied to pick his own stock. He wanted Mercado Libre since he'd heard me talking about it as the Amazon of South America and he noticed that it wasn't one of the top 25 holdings in VT. I was trying to bore them with the top holdings to trying to get them excited but probably boring them by showing them the companies. And he wanted more exposure to Mercado Libre. So far I'm calling the month one success, a experiment, a big success. Do you two have similar setups? I'm curious what you do.

Unnamed Speaker (35:48)

I have an 8 year old who's far more interested in playing baseball and soccer and playing soccer on his Nintendo Switch and reading Harry Potter than talking about stocks with the old man. At this point I think it's just been far more important just to have him invested. College savings. We have a small trust set up as well then for him to know that he's invested. Now he's starting to become more aware of what I do for work. He told me yesterday. It sounds a little narcissistic but I picked him up from camp and I had earlier week episode with Emily and you we were listening to for the Motley Fool Money episode. We were listening to it. He's like kind of listening to me. He says, dad, I want to listen to you every time you're on the podcast now. It's kind of weird.

Anand Chocolu (36:33)

Wow.

Unnamed Speaker (36:33)

But if that's the thing that draws him in, I'm totally fine with that. I do think fundamentally the most important thing is that if I can help him build up the muscles of delayed gratification and paying for your future self first. Whether he gets the stock picking bug or just indexes his way to a solid financial future is far less important to me.

Unnamed Speaker (36:54)

I'm making this a priority over the next year. I have a 7 year old son who I'm not 100% sure knows what I do for a living. My oldest is about to be 10. My daughter, she gets what I do. I bought her some Disney stock in her portfolio generally. So far I just have allocated money every month or so to a UGMA account, a custodial account, and put it in whatever I've been buying. It's kind of built them a nice position in SoFi, but I mean other than that, I'm going to make this a priority to really get them involved probably when they hit that 10 year old mark.

Anand Chocolu (37:25)

Right. Let's get to everyone's favorite stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass. Dan Boyd is going to hit you with a question, or more likely, historically, an amusing comment. Jason, you're up first. What are you looking at this week?

Unnamed Speaker (37:39)

Live Oak bank shares. Ticker Lob reports earnings on July 23rd. So that's one that I'm really laser focused on coming up soon.

Anand Chocolu (37:48)

Dan, a question about Live Oak bank shares.

Jason Hall (37:51)

Jason, I was looking on Wikipedia here. They're in Wilmington, North Carolina, Live Oak bank, and they have got, looks like at their headquarters, a nice central oak tree growing. What happens if that tree dies?

Unnamed Speaker (38:07)

Their CEO is going to take an acorn from that tree and he's going to plant another one because he is thinking about what's going to be happening decades down the road and not what happens next quarter.

Jason Hall (38:19)

Good answer. Good answer.

Anand Chocolu (38:20)

That's a better answer than my Dead Oak bank shares. Matt, what's on your radar?

Unnamed Speaker (38:29)

Let me start off with a question, because I know the three Jason Anand and myself are homeowners, but, Dan, are you a homeowner?

Jason Hall (38:35)

I am, yes.

Unnamed Speaker (38:36)

All right, well, I'm. I'm looking at Rocket company sticker symbol rkt. The reason is because homeowners like us have not been tapping into equity for about four years now. Since mortgage rates are elevated, home prices have been rising. And now American homeowners are sitting on $35 trillion in home equity, the highest level ever. In the 2021 period, Rocket's loan volume was about four times what it is today. And I think if rates start to fall down like I think they will, we could see a refinancing boom that makes the 2021 one actually look small.

Anand Chocolu (39:06)

Dan, a question about Rocket companies.

Jason Hall (39:08)

Two comments here, Matt. One, when you said rkt, I got excited because I thought you were talking about Rice Krispie Treats. It's almost lunchtime here, and I'm starting to feel it a little bit. But, yeah, so I refinanced my home in 2020. So right now we're talking about the old golden handcuffs. They're going to have to drag me out of here, pal.

Unnamed Speaker (39:31)

Yeah, it would take a lot for people to start tapping into their equity. I know Anand actually refinanced twice, if I'm not mistaken, during that period. I think he was the one in my friends list that did. But pretty much everyone I knew refinanced.

Unnamed Speaker (39:42)

I actually had a mortgage broker tell me to stop calling him. I wanted to refinance so many times.

Anand Chocolu (39:49)

Wow.

Unnamed Speaker (39:50)

True story.

Anand Chocolu (39:51)

Wow. All right, Dan, which company are you putting on your watch list?

Jason Hall (39:57)

I think, you know, just because of the vibes. I think I'm gonna go rocket companies this time around. It seems like it might be an interesting time for opportunities.

Anand Chocolu (40:06)

Excellent. Jason Hall, Matt Frankel. Thanks for being here. That's gonna do it for this week's Motley Fool Money radio show. The show is mixed by Dan Boyd. I'm Anandravalu. Thanks for listening. We'll see.

Unnamed Speaker (40:22)

Sam.