The Smattering Podcast 68: The Magnificenter 7

Note: All transcripts are lightly edited for readability. We may earn commissions from products purchased via links. Thanks for the scratch.

[00:00:02] Jason Hall: Hey everybody. It is time for another episode of the smattering where we ask the hard questions about investing. Welcome back. I'm Jason Hall. Joined, as usual, by the voice of the people, Jeff Santoro, Jeff Seppi, how are you, pal?

[00:00:18] Jason Hall: Jeff Santoro: (Laughs) I am still a little under the weather, like I was last week, and that's because we're recording this episode the day after we recorded last week's episode, so I have not been sick for a week. I've been sick since yesterday.

[00:00:30] Jason Hall: That's right. That's right. So we are indeed recording this early, today is August 22nd. We both got some travel that we're still doing some time away that we're taking as we both get ready for the return of the school year. Jeff, I heard a podcast recently that was talking about the magnificent seven.

So for those that don't know the magnificent seven, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, and Meta Platforms, these are the [00:01:00] seven. I believe these are all the seven largest stocks in the U. S. market, and they've all, I think, uniformly done incredibly well over the past year. And this show I was listening to, Jeff, the idea was, it was a couple of pundits who were, each, they were drafting their, their top three, and then they were going to have a contest for some period of time.

And Jeff, I thought, I mean, how many people out there, you, you own S&P 500 funds. You own total mark- market funds. So you already have really gigantic exposure to these companies already. What about finding companies that maybe you could own as alternatives to these, that you're not already going to get a pretty big impact of the returns just based on your index fund.

And we decided to do the magnificent, the magnificenter seven, right?

[00:01:58] Jeff Santoro: Yeah, and I'm mostly [00:02:00] excited about this because of the ridiculous title, the magnificenter seven. Yeah, so we're gonna each come up with seven alternative, well, we're each gonna come up with one alternative to each of the seven stocks.

We have not told each other what they are in advance, so there's a chance we have some of the same, and I think there's one that we might, if I was gonna guess. And I thought it might be fun, Jason. I don't know what you think about this.

Why don't we put these little seven stock portfolios up on our Google sheet with The Smatterfolio and compare it to the magnificent seven and just check up on it every once in a while and see how we're doing against those mega, mega tech stocks.

[00:02:39] Jason Hall: So as we, as we roll through the fourth quarter of the year, approaching the fourth quarter of the year, we'll have our smattering 2023 portfolio contest. And we'll also have the magnificenter seven contest. I love it. I absolutely love it. So yeah, we'll have a tab on the Google sheet. I think it's a great idea, Jeff.

[00:02:56] Jeff Santoro: Yeah, that'll make it more fun. And then we can look back and hopefully I'll do [00:03:00] better than I did with the un portfolio picks that I had in The Smatterfolio.

[00:03:03] Jason Hall: Jeff, before we get into that, just reminder too, folks that have reviewed and rated our podcast and your podcast apps. Thank you for that. We appreciate it. Keep doing it. It certainly helps. The more reviews, the more ratings we get, the more people find the show and the more money we make on ad revenue. So.

[00:03:23] Jeff Santoro: Always pushing for the money. I would just like people to hear the show, Jason.

And here's what I can tell you, that we have 54 reviews on Apple Podcasts and 56 reviews on Spotify. And we get that many listens in about the first half an hour that the podcast drops. So there are literally hundreds more listeners who could be giving us a five star rating and making it more likely that when someone types investing podcast into those apps, ours pops up. So if anyone can help, I would really appreciate it.

And if the money thing that Jason says turns you off, just know that we have a 90/10 revenue split and I get most of it. [00:04:00]

[00:04:02] Jason Hall: I'm not going to correct Jeff on that. So Jeff, let's let's roll let's roll into the contest here. Again, we've both done some prep work independently of one another, which actually is pretty rare for us.

Usually we're, especially for a show, we prep together and we have the idea. But this one we definitely wanted to find out along with you, dear listeners, what each of us picked. So everybody's going to be finding out at the same time, which stocks I picked Jeff.

[00:04:26] Jeff Santoro: And to be clear, we wanted, we want to-

[00:04:29] Jason Hall: Think about that one. Think about that one. Everybody's going to be finding out at the same time, which stocks I picked.

Jeff Santoro: Including you.

Jason Hall: Yeah. Including me. No, I'm kidding.

[00:04:37] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. You should have put prep work in quotes for talking about yourself.

[00:04:41] Jason Hall: This is a pod. It's a podcast.

[00:04:42] Jeff Santoro: Okay. So, but I just want to make one thing clear. We. We told, we decided the rules where you had to pick a stock that was semi related to each of the seven. So it's not like you could pick seven energy stocks, right? We were trying to pick things that had some sort of comparable correlation [00:05:00] with the magnificent seven.

All right, why don't you go first? We'll just go in the order that we have them on our sheet here. So Apple's the first one we wrote down. So what is your magnificenter stock instead of Apple?

[00:05:15] Jason Hall: So Apple, obviously best known for the iPhones, the iOS universe of products, smartwatch now. But, but really, I think the thing with Apple to me that has become so powerful is that it's one of the most powerful, valuable consumer brands on earth, it's built a business to really maximize the profitability of of that area, right?

Because you think about tech and tech means you always have to be innovating. You always have to lead with the fastest, the bestest, best performing, et cetera, et cetera. And that means you're always in this perpetual chase, right? Apple's built a business that's, I don't want to say immune from that, but, but has [00:06:00] proven, I mean, they basically make all of the profits in the, in the entire smartphone industry on the value of that, of that brand.

And a company that comes to mind for me, that's similar, that has immense loyalty and has proven to have really strong pricing power. And I think still has pretty substantial room to run, even though it's grown enormously over the past four decades at this point and been a massive winner for investors is Starbucks. So, ticker SBUX.

And so again, we start with the brand. It's clear that Starbucks brand is recognizable essentially everywhere in the world, has very loyal customers. And has really defied expectations in terms of its ability to continue growing.

I think you could have said the same thing about Apple multiple times over the past decade, [00:07:00] that the smartphone market is mature. It's how, how is Apple going to continue to grow? And then it comes out with, part of it's been expanding into new product lines like with the Apple watch, right? Is an area that it's gone into turning headphones into a many billions of dollars, highly profitable business.

And to a, to a certain extent, Starbucks has done the same thing, right? Geographical expansion continues to be an important part of its business growing in China. China's finally come back. I think we actually did a video on our, our YouTube channel talking about how it's China business it looks like year over year it's exploded, but the real thing story there is that China has returned to more of a normal kind of economic environment, in person environment.

And that means that this market, which Starbucks has been clear about for five plus years as being its most important growth market is kind of returned back to that growth.

Jeff, the thing that I really like about Starbucks maybe I wouldn't say the most, but that I think [00:08:00] so important and underappreciated about its business, we talk about the loyalty, the brand power, the pricing power, the fact that it is a relatively inexpensive product. So it's the sort of thing that people are still going to get that treat, right? People still want to spoil themselves a little bit. It's that, that way to start the day. Maybe it's that break. You know, mid morning.

But the cost advantage, when you are the largest buyer of the product in your category on the entire planet and you move the market, it gives you really strong advantages in terms of costs and that adds to the bottom line. And then from there, you look at their historic ability to take those profits. Reinvest a substantial amount back in the business to grow it, but also pay a dividend, grow the dividend and buy back shares. Again, all things that have been parts of the Apple formula for success. And I'm going to say Starbucks, because I think Starbucks as an alternative to Apple has all of those same things, but I think it has a much more clear line of sight to continue growing the [00:09:00] business and growing per share value for investors.

What about you?

[00:09:05] Jeff Santoro: I like that pick because I never when I was trying to think of what would be a comparable same kind of category to Apple. I did not think brand, but that was a really interesting way to go. I like that.

I went a slightly different direction. I was trying to think about something that stayed in the tech world, and there's really no one that has the suite of products in the tech space or in the smartphone space that I would, like, want to recommend or put my, put my money behind. So I, then I started to think about, well, what about the components that go into making those devices?

And I landed on ASML, which is a Dutch manufacturer. And they basically make the machines that you need to make semiconductor chips. So we're not going to go in a deep dive into the semiconductor industry here, but essentially you need to you need to have machines that [00:10:00] do lithography, which is basically printing the, all of the stuff onto the chips. They do it. They have the high end way of doing it. They're the only company in the world that sells the machines that can do it.

So all of those devices that you mentioned in your description of Apple, the iPhone, Macs, iPads, headphones, the new VR Vision Pro headset, all have semiconductors in them. And whoever manufactured them, whether it was Taiwan Semiconductor or Intel or any of the other companies, they all need to buy these multi million dollar enormous machines from ASML in order to manufacture the chips.

So a lot of people keep looking at Apple and thinking, when will the growth slow down? How much longer can they be considered to be a growth company? And they still put up massive numbers.

But if they ever were to slow down, if they [00:11:00] ever were to lose their edge, if they ever were to become more of a mature slow grower, I think ASML is a really good alternative investment, because as long as there are semiconductors, they're going to be an integral player in that chain. So I went with ASML.

[00:11:17] Jason Hall: Yeah. There's, there's, there's not a single tech product in the world, advanced tech product, that that's where it is in terms of compute power, Jeff, with, without the existence of, of ASML.

You know, David Gardner's snap test, you snap your fingers and ASML disappears. I don't know. I don't know what the tech world looks like. It's, it's very different. I like that one. I like that approach.

[00:11:43] Jeff Santoro: All right. So the next one on our list is Microsoft. And I think everyone's familiar with that. So where did you go as an alternative to Microsoft,

[00:11:55] Jason Hall: Jason? So this is one that I struggled with a pretty [00:12:00] good bit, Jeff. I really did. And first of all, there's been, there's a lot of really successful software companies, right? You could look at Adobe Systems. You could look at Salesforce.com, right? With its suite of, of CRM and other communications tools.

You could cheat and say one alternative would be Alphabet, right? So steal from a stock on this list and say, because think about so many people, productivity tools that people are using now, instead of, instead of Microsoft or are the, you know, the Google suite of, of, of tools.

So, you know, you, but I decided to go in a different direction because one of the things that's growing with Microsoft's business and, and I think it's going to grow for a long time is the cloud, right? So you think about Azure, Amazon's AWS, Google Cloud is huge and going to continue to be important as more and more businesses look to get their infrastructure out of their building or [00:13:00] out of their own ownership, even if it's sitting in a data center and operate it remotely in the cloud. Particularly as businesses come less and less centralized in terms of where they're locating.

And one of the things that we're starting to see is more and more companies change how they're using the data that they, that they have and that they're building and trying to leverage that data in more effective ways. And one of the things that's an offshoot of that is data streaming. Okay, so real time analysis of data, looking to take actions on actionable data as quickly as possible.

And a company that's a leader in that area, an emergent leader, is Confluent, ticker CFLT. Confluent's a small company. Confluent is still burning operating cash. It, it went public, not as a SPAC, but it went public. It IPO'd in the middle of the mania, right? Leveraged the timing pretty well, but [00:14:00] Confluent's plan to go public was one simply to raise as much capital as possible to get its products and to aggressively start taking share in this emergent space while it's early.

So, the founders of, of Confluent Jay Kreps is the CEO and there are several other co- founders that are still there worked at LinkedIn, Jeff, when, when they develop something called Apache Kafka, which is an open source data streaming software, and they made the decision to go open source with it.

I don't know. I'm not an IP lawyer. I'm not an expert in it, but my guess is they said. Well, we work for LinkedIn. So if we make this proprietary, LinkedIn is going to want a share of it, right? So you make it open source, push it out there.

And that immediately got a lot of people developing it too, right? And it's, and again, being open source [00:15:00] versus proprietary because there are proprietary data streaming tools from some of the big cloud providers that are, that compete, but getting open source immediately got hundreds and hundreds of people at some of the biggest companies in the world, utilizing it and using it and working on it.

Jeff, the reality is that most companies don't want to build their own thing. So Confluent basically built the tools for people to be able to use Kafka and just pay Confluent to do it. So they have, the initial Kafka wasn't built for the cloud. It was built to be proximate to run on servers locally.

And they've, they've rolled out Kafka for the cloud again, still open source but they've got, I think the majority of the S&P 500 uses apache Kafka in some, at some level, but if you look at the growth numbers for Kafka cloud, it's growing at triple digit rates consistently, right?

And they have a substantial amount of cash.[00:16:00] One of the things we talk about when looking at companies' operating statements, particularly these growth companies is, well, is it profitable? Are they cashflow positive? And if the answer is no, then you have to ask the question of why.

And Confluent is one of those companies that is choosing to continue to invest back into its business at above it's operating cashflow to continue to take market share to get to a larger scale. They went public to raise the money to do that, right?

So they continue to choose to burn cash to grow. And I think it's the right decision. And I think if you want to own a tech company, that's going to be heavily tied to the future of the enterprise and data, then Confluent is a, is a wonderful company to own.

[00:16:50] Jeff Santoro: All right. So I struggled with Microsoft as well, because when I think Microsoft, obviously there's the cloud component, but we have three [00:17:00] stocks in this group that does cloud infrastructure.

So I wanted to stay away from that. Actually, I did pick one for a different stock I'll talk about later, but what I kept thinking about with Microsoft was software that's been around since the eighties, because when Microsoft was really first on the scene, it was with PCs and the Windows Operating System, and that was sort of their first act. And then there was those dark ages and then they came back to cloud. And that's what revitalized the business under the current CEO.

So thinking in that vein, I went in a different direction and I chose Adobe, which was funny because you mentioned Adobe when you were doing your preamble about Microsoft.

[00:17:42] Jason Hall: Admittedly, I had a thought that that might be the one that you went with.

[00:17:47] Jeff Santoro: Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of the company. I know you and I disagree on it a little bit. You're not as much of a fan of it.

But, Microsoft, one of their competitive advantages is that their [00:18:00] 360 office software is pretty ubiquitous in the business world, I would say, I would say the vast majority of computers in companies are probably PCs. They're all running Windows or whatever the newest Windows is, which means they all also have Microsoft Teams. And there's that sticky software that you're already paying for which keeps people in and as I say, add things to it, they're just going to use them because they're there.

And I think it's the same thing with Adobe and that's a multi platform, whether you're Mac or PC. But if you're doing creative work, if you're in advertising, if you're in creative design, if you're doing creative things there's a good chance you're using Adobe products.

Now they have some competition on the free side. I know we use Canva for some of the stuff we do here, and that's really easy and intuitive. They're trying to acquire Figma, which is another competitor, and that's still

being played out in, with the regulators. But to me, [00:19:00] software that's been around a really long time, recurring revenue, subscription model. It's kind of ubiquitous within its, it's particular space. Adobe to me seems like a pretty good pick to pair up with Microsoft.

And I'm itching to see which one does better over the next several years. So I went with Adobe.

[00:19:21] Jason Hall: Yeah the thing I'm interested with Adobe to see is I think there's a lot of concern and fear that maybe artificial intelligence tools are going to vastly change the creative industry. To me, honestly, I think it's going to be a win for Adobe.

I think they have-

Jeff Santoro: Right. Agreed.

Jason Hall: They spent years working and building these tools and they've already integrated a lot of AI into multiple things that they provide. And at the end of the day. We, we often think of creatives as the people like doing the, the, the technical design and the drawing and all of that's [00:20:00] true, but creatives are paid to do what they do because they come up with things.

Jeff Santoro: Yeah.

Jason Hall: And tools to help them be more creative, right?

[00:20:08] Jeff Santoro: And save, yeah, and save time on the, on the monotonous side of things.

So I was looking on their website recently and granted you have to take with a grain of salt anything the company puts out, they're going to put a positive spin on anything you're trying to do. And right now they're trying to talk about AI because everyone else is.

They basically say they already have a program out and features where you can type into the prompt. Make this a nighttime background and it'll do it, or move the sun to the eastern side of the sky and it will do that.

So it'll, there are things that can do by using text prompts that uses artificial intelligence. And I'm assuming some of the same technology we see, we see with like Dali and those, some of those ones that create artwork that still keeps the creative piece there because it's the creator that's coming up with the concept. But instead of spending hours [00:21:00] shading and changing the color by clicking, AI can do that for you.

So I'll wait and see if if that really pans out to be as big of a feature set as they're pitching it as right now, because everyone's trying to do that. But I do think it could end up being a net benefit rather than a than a challenge for them.

[00:21:20] Jason Hall: So next up is Alphabet, right?

[00:21:22] Jeff Santoro: Yeah. So next one we have is Alphabet and I'll let you go first on this one too.

[00:21:29] Jason Hall: Yeah, I'll be, I'll be honest with you. Like Alphabet, of all of these companies for me is the one that I just want to be like, can we just keep it? Let's just, let's just keep it.

So that's what I'm going to do, Jeff.

Because I know you have another stock. I know you have another stock. I'm kidding. I'm not going to do that because it's a contest. And if it's the same, then it'd be the same result. And that's, that's not good. And I get to go first, which means I get to pick The Trade Desk and you don't.

The Trade Desk. [00:22:00] So here's the thing. Now, there's a lot of different ways you could go with with an, an Alphabet stock, but at the end of the day, Alphabet's business, essentially all of it, besides the, the, the cloud business, you know, that it's, that it's trying to build Google cloud Is, is ad-revenue based.

So you've got YouTube that's become this massive business and it has a subscription service too, but they don't even think, I don't think they disclose yet the, the subscription revenue. They talk about ad revenue for everything, right?

So essentially what that means is that you guys are all the product. Those of you watching this on our YouTube channel, you're the product when it comes to, to Alphabet's business, right? So that's, that's what brings me to The Trade Desk. And it's thinking about it from a little bit different perspective.

So Alphabet is with, with its products, again, you use those products. So you be, you become the product itself to the advertisers that pay, [00:23:00] that pay the revenue in. The way The Trade Desk works is it has built a wonderful platform that uses a lot of technology to provide the marketers who have their big ad campaigns, access to the best markets for their ads. And of course, digital ad content, programmatic ad content are growing parts of, of their business.

But Jeff, the thing that's so impressive to me about The Trade Desk is they actually just make money for the services that they provide. They're not buying up a bunch of ad inventory and then marking it up and trying to make a profit on that. They're so deeply enmeshed in the advertising world that companies that could be their biggest competitors, you think about the, the ad agencies, because again, Trade desk is looking up market. They're looking for big companies with multimillion dollar ad budgets. That's who they, that's who they work with. So they position themselves to, to go after the largest number of [00:24:00] ad ad dollars for their services, which means that it seems like they might be directly competing with the, the ad agencies.

The largest ad agencies are partners with The Trade Desk, right? Because it helps them make, make more money. And I just, I can't think of any other company in the entire ad space globally that I think is better positioned to continue to take share as the ad market evolves away from things like linear TV and print ad to this newer programmatic driven model and even moving into like, like stores. I know they've done some things with like Albertsons and other supermarket chains to help brands like from the point of exposure to the, to the initial marketing in the store, right? Where you see the, see the digital display ad to seeing the product on the shelf. and going through the full cycle of, of the buy.

It's just, nobody has better, more accurate data for marketers and they're willing to pay a premium to, [00:25:00] to get access to The Trade Desk. And that has carried over to shareholders, right? If you look at the per share growth of earnings for this company over time, revenue growth, even through this tough ad cycle, Jeff, that we went through The Trade Desk has just continued to take market share and continue to grow a larger and larger business.

[00:25:19] Jeff Santoro: So I was gonna take the Trade Desk for either Google or Meta, but I didn't. I actually did not. I did not pivot in the moment. I did not have it on my list. I knew you would take it. And it was too-

Jason Hall: Oh, you played me.

Jeff Santoro:It was too on the nose. I wanted to go a little bit different. And I also picked this company to trigger you.

Jason Hall: Oh boy.

Jeff Santoro: So, when I was thinking.

Jason Hall: PubMatic.

Jeff Santoro: When I, no, when I was thinking about Alphabet, I had the same thought you did, which is, this one of all the ones that are in here is the hardest to poke holes in, I think. And ironically, it's one of the ones I don't own. That's why I'm happy I have a lot of index funds, because I know I own it there.

But every [00:26:00] time I look at this business, I'm just like, how does this not... Continue to crush it forever. It's they have so many competitive advantages. They are, they are the leader in multiple places. It's ridiculous. YouTube alone is a multibillion dollar company and it's, my kids watch YouTube constantly, so I'm just like bombarded by their market dominance.

But I went in a little bit of a different direction. I stuck with the advertising theme. I did not want to go with The Trade Desk and I wanted to trigger you. So I chose Roku.

[00:26:31] Jason Hall: Oh, God. Well, you know what? Have fun being poor.

[00:26:36] Jeff Santoro: So, which is what you text me every time I ever like a stock you don't like, which is to me a bullish indicator. Just so everyone listening knows, if I reach out to Jason with an idea and he hates it immediately, it, I have to stop myself from going and buying it right away.

So Roku has been through a rough couple, a year plus, two years now. The stock's down [00:27:00] huge. They definitely are having their struggles. But, the three metrics that they judge their business on, which are users, streaming hours, and ARPU, are all still heading in the right direction.

And I think we are heading to a world where... There is only going to be a few ways people access streaming television, and it's going to be through a device or a TV that has a user interface that's easy to use, like Roku does. Now, I know there's Apple TV, I know there's the Fire products by Amazon, and I know there's some... Smaller ones that might come with a particular brand of television.

But I think in the end, the user interface is going to matter. And I think it's going to come down to probably those big three of Roku Apple and Amazon, and maybe that might be. The three that are out there, you might know when there might not [00:28:00] have to be a winner there, but anyway it shakes out that there are enormous advertising opportunities for Roku in right on that home screen.

When you log on, the buttons on the remote are even an advertising thing. They get money off of those. And I think as the advertising market improves and connected and streaming TV becomes more and more of the way things go, they stand to benefit through selling ads and ultimately even making some money when people subscribe to the services on their device.

So if you're on your Roku and you want to sign up for Amazon that's not Amazon. If you want to sign up for Netflix, you can do it all through the Roku and they, and it goes to your credit card, which is already in. It's very simple and they take a cut. So I don't know, they've had a hard time. I'm not super bullish on the company, but I wanted to go in a little bit of a different direction. So my Google alternative is Roku.

[00:28:52] Jason Hall: Yeah. I mean, I think there's, I think there's a case there. I don't think it's a super strong case, my concern with Roku [00:29:00] again, compared to an Alphabet is it doesn't have, , it's not, it's not a, a leader, large leader, like Alphabet is in multiple categories. And it's questionable whether it can, for one simple reason, it's competing in this category against Apple and against Amazon that we're going to talk about up next here in, in a, in a category where it's trying to be the pure play and that this is just like an, Oh, by the way, let's make our ecosystem bigger thing. Let's we'll, we'll throw money at it, whatever kind of thing. And I just don't know if they're going to continue to be able to hold the line and create margins for that, but. I've, I've, I've been wrong before, Jeff, it could happen again.

[00:29:42] Jeff Santoro: All right, let's move on. Amazon is next. Where did you, which direction did you go in for Amazon?

[00:29:51] Jason Hall: So, again, this, this is one that, you know, I, there's some, there's some obvious ways to go here. You could [00:30:00] go streaming, or or not streaming, you could go with data, , with AWS and look at an alternative there, but well, the two competitors are already there. And, and I've already gone with Confluent instead of Microsoft.

So, all right, well, what about, what about e commerce? So, , there's, you could go with, you know, a number of companies there that build websites that companies can use for commerce.

You could go with Shopify, right? That's maybe that's an obvious one. This is a stock that's still down, but like, here's a cool stat from Shopify. One out of 10 e commerce transactions in the United States happens on a Shopify powered website, right? That's a pretty big competitor, but you know what? Let's go in a completely, completely different direction. What do you say?

[00:30:45] Jeff Santoro: I'm dying to hear this.

[00:30:46] Jason Hall: You ready? You ready? Physical retail is dead. Long live the mall.

I'm going to go with Simon Property Group here.

Jeff Santoro: Of course you are.

[00:31:00] Jason Hall: So full disclosure, full disclosure. I was tempted to go with Tanger Factory Outlets and you could go with, you could go with either, I think in this case. I'm, I'm a little bit kind of leaning into the value pitch here with Simon versus Tanger. I think it's down 8% from its high this year, but it's way up right from the beginning of the year.

But Simon stock is still down from where it was, I don't know, back before the pandemic, I think it's 42% below it's it's pre pandemic price. And Tanger actually broke its pre pandemic price earlier this year.

So Jeff, I think the reality is just as much as with Apple is the idea that Apple's growth is over and it's not going to grow as fast as it was, and as much of the idea that that that Amazon, maybe they're not going to be able to take share in e commerce we [00:32:00] keep seeing that that's wrong and they're showing that they can make money in e commerce too now. They've kind of started squeezing the profit dials a little bit more.

I think, again, the idea that people aren't going to go to physical in person malls it is also a false narrative. So Simon, what do they do? They're the largest owner of class A malls in the U. S. So what is that? That's the malls people actually go to, right? The ones that are in affluent areas, the ones that are continually high traffic. So that's Simon's core business, right?

The other thing that they have is the largest premium outlets business in the entire, in the U S you think about Tanger, that's their entire business. Simon has a division that's bigger than Tanger Factory Outlets, right? So that's really important because what we've seen happen, Jeff, both with the traditional mall and they're still struggles there, right? Because we do see the big retailers continue to kind of muddle along. Macy's continues to struggle, right? And it's [00:33:00] kind of the last of, of the big, of the big chains. And they're starting to lean into some smaller store footprints and that sort of thing.

What we are seeing is that more clothing manufacturers, apparel manufacturers, sports, sporting goods, electronics manufacturers, They have an omni channel focus, which means that they don't want to just have their products in a Macy's or formerly a Sears or a Kmart or a Walmart or whatever.

They want to have their own stores, right? And that really fits into the, the factory outlets model, right? And we're seeing it more starting to creep into, into the malls as well. They want to be online. They don't want to just be on Amazon, right? So that means that a business like Simon, because they are so large, has a little bit of leverage, right? As a trusted partner for these large brands where they, the markets that Simon is in, they're the markets that, that these retailers and that [00:34:00] these brands want to be in too. So it's really, it's really impressive what they've built.

And, and getting back to a value play here. This is a stock that's down substantially. They had to cut their dividend back during the financial or during the, the, the pandemic, but the dividend is slowly, slowly coming back. I think it's like already about within 10% of, of where it was back in 2019. And the last dividend they paid in 2020. So the dividends coming back, the stock still hasn't come back.

So thinking about the yield that you can capture this concern about interest rates, haven't gone up because they use debt, right? They're going to have to refinance that debt. It's going to weigh on their cost of capital, but you look at other metrics, they report like sales for per square foot, sales dollars per square foot, continue to move higher traffic, still really, really good.

That's my, that's my oddball. Oddball instead of Amazon. What's old is new again.

[00:34:57] Jeff Santoro: Yeah, I, I do like that pick. That is [00:35:00] going in a different direction. I, I'm with you in the idea that the malls aren't dead. So I can see where you were coming from with that one.

So I, what was hard about this whole thing, just looking at this whole exercise we're doing here is that so many of these companies do a lot of the same things as each other. There's, there's three of them that do cloud infrastructure. E commerce is a part of, of at least a couple of these. If you could even maybe throw Apple in there, like they sell stuff online.

And then you have semiconductor threads that run through a lot of these, so I struggle with Yeah. They're all, they're all designing their own silicon nowadays. Right, right. For their stuff. Amazon's so I struggle.

[00:35:35] Jason Hall: Amazon's fastest growing businesses is, is advertising, right?

[00:35:38] Jeff Santoro: Yep. It's, it's, yeah. Yeah. So that was my struggle too. Like, do I go e-commerce? Do I go advertising? I did think about that. Do I go cloud?

And I, and this was the one where I used my cloud, my cloud play. I, I skipped it for Microsoft. I skipped it for, for Alphabet. And I'm going with Digital Ocean.

So DigitalOcean is a two, three billion market cap company that [00:36:00] basically does what AWS does, but for small and medium sized businesses. So their value proposition or their pitch to their customers is this. If you're a huge company and you need cloud infrastructure, you're probably fine going to Amazon or Google or Microsoft. But if you are a small business with 1, 2, 5, 10 employees. You don't have an IT department, but you need cloud infrastructure.

They're there for you with low priced options. You can start for like $5 a month or something really crazy, really low like that. And there's a ton of support. There's transparent self serve pricing. So you can go on, watch tutorials. Pay for what you need. When you need more, you can just log on and pay for it and you get it.

And their short time on the market, their growth has been really impressive. So I'm just going to throw a couple of numbers at you. In the, since they've been a public company, the revenue growth has never [00:37:00] once been below 27% year over year. They're large customers, which they call builders and scalers have never grown less than 16% year over year. And in the last quarter, it was 43%. Their net dollar retention rate remains above a hundred percent. So current customers are spending more this year than they were last year. And their average revenue per user has never grown slower than 14% year over year. And it's usually in the twenties or thirties. So just every quarter, everything heads up in the right direction.

The one thing I would say is a lot of those numbers I just throw at you are starting to slow down. Some of them were higher a year ago than they are now. So that's something to keep an eye on if that's going to tail off or reverse or continue to head in the wrong direction.

But I think they have a pretty compelling business model. I worry they might get acquired by one of the big players, or once maybe they become big enough that they're actually a threat.

I [00:38:00] also think they have to learn to grow with their customers, right? Cause every. Every mega cap started as a small business. So if you get to the point where Digital Ocean, Hey, they were great for the first 10 years of our business, but now we need Microsoft. Well, that's not going to be great for them.

So there's some risk here and it's a newer, smaller company, but if they really can capture this, this niche and be the cloud provider for smaller businesses I think that's a pretty compelling, compelling market to play in. And it's a direct competitor in that sense to all of these big companies, cloud businesses.

[00:38:34] Jason Hall: Yeah, I like that. And, and I think looking at it like with, with Amazon is interesting because think about all of the entrepreneurs out there that Amazon, as much as it's been a competitor, it's also been like a means to thrive with fulfilled by Amazon for, you know, small sellers to be able to build a business right in retailing. So that's, that's really good.

And I think there's also a case of another company that kind of [00:39:00] did the same thing. And has learned to evolve with its, it's, it's customers. And that's Shopify that I mentioned earlier. Because, you know, there was a tremendous amount of concern that as like AllBirds, for example, and there are several other companies that started out just as Shopify stores, right? Selling their products. As they grew and they got to a point where they went public on their own, Shopify did continue to move up market and, and develop offerings for the enterprise too.

So yeah, I think, I think that's, what's going to happen. I really do. I think they're smart enough to realize that that that's going to be the right way to go. They've just got to prove that they've just got to prove that there's a good business doing what they're doing now.

[00:39:38] Jeff Santoro: And it, I didn't mention these metrics on my little spiel, but when you read their conference calls and their earnings reports, they point out where they are growing with their customers. So the early returns on that have been pretty good. They have to just be able to keep doing it.

All right. Let's we got, we're already about 40 minutes in, so we'll try to go maybe a little bit quicker on these last couple, so we don't run long. All right, next on our list is, [00:40:00] I will try to go quicker. I know it's impossible for you.

All right, next is NVIDIA. What'd you have?

[00:40:07] Jason Hall: I'm pretty sure you know what I'm going to say here.

[00:40:08] Jeff Santoro: How about this might be the one where we did choose the same, but let's go and see.

[00:40:12] Jason Hall: Let's say it. Say the one you think that I'm going with.

[00:40:15] Jeff Santoro: Texas Instruments. I picked it as well.

[00:40:18] Jason Hall: That's remarkable.

So let's talk about what Texas Instruments is first. I think we've talked about this one on do we talk about this on last? We talked about this yesterday on last week's episode. So Texas Instruments as the, as the alternative to NVIDIA. And again, it's a little bit like, kind of thinking about like, Simon Property Groups versus Amazon.

It's kind of, you know, what is old, what's old is new. You think about NVIDIA, this is a company that designs it's, it's silicon, doesn't manufacture anything, right. Requires, require, relies heavily on contract manufacturers in particular Taiwan Semiconductor to manufacture the actual chips. . So, so that's a big difference.

NVIDIA sells products to, to [00:41:00] retail, right? So you buy one of their video cards. You're going to go into a Best Buy. You're going to order it from Amazon or NewEgg, one of those sorts of retailers, you're, you're going to buy it.

If you're going to buy something from Texas Instruments, you're probably going to buy directly from Texas Instruments. You're probably going to do it on their website, right? So they make everything themselves. They design everything themselves. They sell it directly in most cases, not only, but mostly. That massive vertical integration, fully vertically integrated, is, is something that has become a rarity, particularly in the semiconductor space, right?

Jeff, Taiwan semi exists because companies don't want to vertically integrate for a lot of reasons, right? The cost, cyclicality, all of that kind of stuff. And then the other thing is the fact that Texas Instruments business focuses almost entirely on analog semiconductors.

You've got these, these old dumb chips that are so damn important to everything. If you're managing power, if your semiconductor is, your technology is communicating with the real world, [00:42:00] right? You have to have analog semiconductors to do all of that. Autonomous vehicles, even just your, your Honda Accord or Civic has lots of analog semiconductors to do things like to make the brake lights turn on. Manage power. It's, it's such a remarkably important business.

I don't know the exact number, so this is. I may be wildly off, but I think it's something like for every, every digital semiconductor that goes into a device or something that goes into a device there's something like three analog semiconductors that are required, right? It's this enormous, enormous number.

So economic returns, Jeff, I want to talk about this real quick. This has been a massive winner since its former CEO, who just, just recently retired, tried to retire a number of years ago, had to come back because the guy he tapped to replace him didn't- there was just some bad things happened. He came back, and the person that's replaced him looks like it's going to work out really, really well.

Bought back a massive amount of shares, grown the [00:43:00] dividend, built a stronger business, and continue to demonstrate just, just an amazing, just the amazing economics, but also just a moat that they have built around this business.

[00:43:11] Jeff Santoro: And here's one indicator. I mean, you said everything I would have said, but just better.

But here's one indicator that I think tells you what the market thinks about Texas Instruments. So the one thing I would point to as something to keep an eye on over the past three to five quarters is a lot of things are slowing down. Revenue growth is slowing. Actually, revenue growth has been negative the last three quarters. Operating profit, same thing, but at the same time, the company's valuation has gone up, at least on a earnings multiple. So as revenue growth and operating profit have declined, price to earnings has increased.

So that says to me, the market is being smart and knows that this is just the cyclical aspect of the business and they'll be fine. And it actually makes it [00:44:00] hard to want to buy it. If it's like intuitive, you're like, Oh, it's down, but I love this business. I'm going to buy more. And then you go look at the valuation and it's like, wow, it's not that cheap.

So I think that says something about the, the durability of this company, that it's, it hasn't really cratered even as their results. I mean, if, if you saw three consecutive quarters of dropping revenue growth for a SaaS company, it would drop 30% after earnings, that just hasn't happened in Texas Instruments.

[00:44:26] Jason Hall: Yeah, because again, like you said, I think the market realizes what it has here, but also Texas Instruments has some things in the works that are going to even strengthen its moat, drive down its costs potentially give it better cost advantages by moving to a larger form factor and some of its newer manufacturing facilities.

And it just keeps building on that, on that moat that it has in that edge that it has Jeff. So it's my, it's my favorite stock of all the stocks in here.

[00:44:51] Jeff Santoro: Interesting. Next up is Tesla. And I felt a little bit of PTSD here since I chose it in the un portfolio for our other [00:45:00] contest and it's crushing it. But interesting. I'm curious to see where you went. I hope we didn't pick the same one for this as well. So go ahead.

[00:45:06] Jason Hall: We didn't, we didn't pick the same one. Unless you picked SolarEdge. Did you pick SolarEdge? So-

[00:45:12] Jeff Santoro: No, but I'm not far off from that. So go ahead.

[00:45:15] Jason Hall: Interesting. So of course, Tesla's core business is making cars and that's going to be its core business probably for a lot longer than, than a lot of the most bullish people might expect the ideas of generating the revenue from autonomous vehicle fleets and all of that kind of stuff is like hanging out there, but. And a lot of it's priced into it, but it's, it's far less clear whether those things are really going to pay off. Talks about AI and robotics and all of those things that are out there.

And Tesla has been like the, the, the, the exception that proves the rule in the auto industry and, and, and being a big, big winner there's in most of our lifetimes, unless we've got listeners that are a hundred years old that most of us have never lived through a period where we've seen enormous investing [00:46:00] wins in, in automaker business like this, especially from like a startup growth business. There's been some turnarounds and stuff like Chrysler, for example, back in the, in the eighties was a big turnaround win, but it's just a tough, grindy, low margin competing on price, really, really hard business. When you're mass producing automos automobiles for a large market for the mass market, right?

So the reason I went with, with SolarEdge is because there's an area of the auto industry that has actually been pretty good to invest in. And that's kind of in the suppliers. The most automakers don't make automobiles, they assemble them, right? They have third party contract manufacturers that are their suppliers that supply all of the parts, the hundreds and hundreds of things that they need. And then the automakers assemble those parts in their factories. And of course, Tesla has kind of, you know, they vertically integrated where they make a lot of stuff themselves and they don't outsource it as much.

But most automakers are globally going to continue to [00:47:00] source stuff and SolarEdge, of course, best known for their panel level, solar electronics, Jeff, making the inverters and also the power management that goes on the solar panel. And between SolarEdge and Enphase, they have like a massive share of the market in that for distributed residential and distributed commercial solar in the U. S. and increasingly in Europe.

And kind of using that same supplier model that's been successful in the auto industry. They've done the same thing in the solar industry to get really good margins and generate great cash flows and enormous wins for investors. But SolarEdge is also starting to diversify using their understanding of DC current and AC current right with their inverters to develop products for the automotive industry for power train in the automotive industry.

So they're starting to kind of leverage into that. They've moved into battery technology to o, again, because of where they sit in kind of the, the, the value chain for alternative energy and renewable energy. They're in a really [00:48:00] good place to be a trusted partner for a lot of different providers, whether you're an installer, whether you're a manufacturer of a solar panel, whether you're, you know, an EV manufacturer looking for reliable suppliers, they're really kind of in that sweet spot.

And the, this is a stock that's given, given back some gains, right? It hasn't necessarily been the best performer. It's down, I don't know. What is it down over the past? It's down by half, I think over the past year, right? It's down a pretty, pretty good amount. A ton of these solar stocks and renewable stocks jumped when the, the inflation reduction act was passed because it's got all these things in there for renewables, but it just takes time for those things actually to turn into a pipeline of revenue.

And the business has kind of turned. We talked about the cyclicality with the semiconductor industry. It's the same thing. This is a cyclical industry and rising interest rates have put some headwinds for the solar business. And it's, I think it's pushed the stock back to, I think it's still expensive, but [00:49:00] I think it's a far more reasonable valuation now for a business with really great economics great optionality.

And, and they've kind of proven that they can move into other spaces. And I, and I think they're going to move into the automotive industry as a supplier. And I'd be just absolutely stunned if the stock isn't a bigger winner than Tesla over the next five years. What'd you, what'd you go with?

[00:49:20] Jeff Santoro: So, pretty much the same, but different. I went with Enphase Energy. Now, I only know this company a little bit because it's on my watch list. So, I've been kind of looking at the numbers and keeping track of it, but I haven't really dug in. But, my understanding is... They, their big thing is the microinverters, which you mentioned with SolarEdge too.

And just my very basic understanding is that that helps your solar roof become more efficient because if one panel is underperforming, it doesn't degrade the performance of the entire solar panel.

[00:49:52] Jason Hall: You don't have a single point of failure for the entire solar system. It's, it's easier to manage for emergency responders, right?

All of there's, [00:50:00] yeah, they're, they're, they're required, right? They're, they're part of the building code now. So they're required. And those are the two companies. That's the duopoly basically.

[00:50:07] Jeff Santoro: And this has been on my radar for a while, mostly because when I, when I made my spreadsheet, like I like to do with all my numbers, I was just blown away at how consistently profitable and cash generative the business is. Just the last couple quarters alone, over $200 million in free cash flow each quarter. Now it's down 62% from its late 2022 high, which I think is for some of the same reasons you just mentioned with with your pick.

But I had the same thought you did. Like if I'm looking at car companies for, for an alternate to Tesla, I don't like as investments, I don't like any other car companies. So I was thinking, well, Tesla does solar too. And that, that was the only solar stock I'm really that familiar with it. I'm not that familiar with it. So I don't want to repeat the things you said, but I'm still keeping an eye on this. I, I just haven't quite pulled the trigger on it yet, but I find [00:51:00] it compelling.

I think it's interesting. I, I wish we had more solar panel roofs around. I like, I like the renewable energy angle here. I'd like to have one if I could. So, so yeah, that's why I chose Enphase Energy.

[00:51:12] Jason Hall: So between, I'll be honest, between Enphase and SolarEdge, I like the Enphase pick better in terms of probably going to be a potentially a better performer.

Disclosure, I have SolarEdge, I have Enphase microinverters on my roof. I have an Enphase battery system in my basement. They have a head start over SolarEdge in batteries, so they're in a better position there. The reason I went with SolarEdge in this case is that it has that automotive play.

That it's Tesla, more of the Tesla thing. And yours is shitty in that regard. But no, great, great pick. Great pick. I love it.

[00:51:46] Jeff Santoro: All right. Last one. Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook. This is the one I almost went Trade Desk on back when, when I was doing my picks. Cause they, you know, their whole business is built around advertising as well.

And they're, they are [00:52:00] one of the walled gardens that The Trade Desk kind of fights against, but I did not pick The Trade Desk. I will reveal my pick after you give yours, Jason. Who did you choose to be magnificenter to Meta?

[00:52:14] Jason Hall: Okay, are you ready? I am ready. Hope you're sitting down. Alphabet.

[00:52:22] Jeff Santoro: You can't do that.

[00:52:23] Jason Hall: Yes, I can.

Jeff Santoro: No, you can't.

Jason Hall: Yes, I can. I'm not keeping, I'm not keeping Alphabet for Alphabet, but I'm using, I'm using it instead-

[00:52:31] Jeff Santoro: You are a, you're a dirty cheater. I'll let, I'll allow it. Cause I'll allow it, but go ahead.

[00:52:36] Jason Hall: So again, like, like I said, when we talked about, when we talked about Alphabet before of all of the stocks in the magnificent seven, I think there's still a clear, clear case for Alphabet to continue to grow, right?

We continue to see the advertising industry continue to evolve. Digital ads continue to become a [00:53:00] bigger share of, of spend. You, we talk a lot about programmatic ads, right? So ads that are shifting from linear TV to these more find the user, follow the user, give them the more direct targeted ad for display situations.

So things like YouTube TV, for example, but also for YouTube and all of the, like the Roku on the Roku, like all of those sorts of places where programmatic ads are being served and the thing that makes Alphabet so compelling to me is the walled garden, right?

Because they are so well positioned, whether it's search or whether it's content that, that is essentially no cost for it to produce like so much of the stuff that's on YouTube, where people do it to get a share of that ad revenue, right? So it's a model that keeps their costs low and their expenses increase, right? As, as the things [00:54:00] are more successful, right? So you're not leveraged to, like Disney, where you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to produce a piece of content. And if it's not successful, you lose massive sums of money, right?

If something's not successful, you're not the one that produces the content. Developed it. So now that's starting to change a little bit as they're buying content for like YouTube TV and signing for sports deals and, and that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, I think that in terms of like the ad business, social media, again, YouTube's kind of social media as well, right?

On our videos, we get, have people yell at us. Apparently a few people think that I'm either the son of Robert E. Lee or I'm Amish based on my hair. And they've told us through YouTube, right? So you have that interactivity, which I think is really, really fun. And it's still a growth platform. And I think you look at something like Meta Platforms and it's far more mature, right?

We have Threads that's coming, right? But it's, it's replacing a product that [00:55:00] was a commercial garbage in terms of like a monetizable product with Twitter, right? Twitter was acquired because the owners wanted to sell it because it was kind of a garbage business. So Threads is not much, it's not going to be a big catalyst for it.

So I just think it checks off all of the boxes of what, what I'd rather have instead of Meta Platforms. And well, Jeff, since I've already replaced Alphabet with The Trade Desk, why can't I replace Meta with Alphabet? So I'm gonna.

[00:55:30] Jeff Santoro: I will leave it to the listeners to share with...

[00:55:33] Jason Hall: Oh, I'm gonna catch hell, and I can't wait.

[00:55:35] Jeff Santoro: If, if they think you violated the spirit of this game... By choosing one of the Magnificent Seven to be in the Magnificenter Seven. I'll leave it at that. The audience will decide.

[00:55:45] Jason Hall: But it is Magnificenter. And if you can't tell me, you can't tell... Okay, tell me. Which is Magnificenter? Metasplatforms or Alphabet?

[00:55:58] Jeff Santoro: You're right. [00:56:00] You're right. And if I was going to pick... The most magnificent of the Magnificent Seven, I might go with, I might go with Alphabet. So I see where you're coming from. I don't disagree with you in spirit. I just think had I known that was an option, I might have done the same thing. But maybe I'm just not creative enough.

I wasn't thinking outside the box like you are.

[00:56:16] Jason Hall: I'm a dirty rotten cheater. I was inside the box thinking. Jeff, let's hear it. You got a good one, I'm sure.

[00:56:22] Jeff Santoro: I have another one that... So again, I, I chose these before we had the idea to like make this an actual contest. I just want to caveat that. But when I was thinking meta, I was thinking two things.

It's a social media platform that in my opinion does more harm than good. And it's built on advertising. So when I thought about those two things, I thought about a company that is a social media platform that is pretty positive and doesn't really have much negative about it and is also built on advertising.

And that is Pinterest. So [00:57:00] it has the same social network network effects that make it compelling, right? The more people that are on Pinterest. Pinning photos, the more people come to Pinterest to get inspired. It makes more people want to post more photos and then more people come. So you can see where that flywheel is to grow, grow the user base.

And it's, people are buying ads and placing their pins above others. Now, what's interesting about Pinterest is. They're in this sort of transitional phase now where they're trying to not get rid of the advertising model But build on top of it a shopping model so that if you go to Pinterest to search for inspiration for your It's for parents 50th wedding anniversary and you see a really cool banner, happy anniversary and you, you can click on it and go right to the page to buy it and buy it there.

And Pinterest takes a cut of that transaction versus you saying, Oh, I like that. Let me go find it on Amazon. Or Pinterest gets nothing, [00:58:00] so

[00:58:00] Jason Hall: they're trying to even if it takes you to Amazon and there's

[00:58:03] Jeff Santoro: an affiliate, but if it's an affiliate, right, exactly. So either way, they're getting, they're getting a little bit of a little taste of the action, so to speak, right?

So if they can, and advertising is. Down right now with a lot of these businesses. So if, if advertising can, we'll come back eventually. And if they can really make, get some traction with reducing the friction for people to buy stuff, , through or from the platform, so they can make a little money on that.

I think it's a compelling stock to look at now. I bought it way too. So I have it in my positions down drastically. It is down from its all time high, still 70%. But it's been up ish a little lately, you know, in the last like year and a half, like a year, maybe like a year since like last summer.

So I'm wondering if maybe this is where it should be priced for you know, considering what it, what it offers as an investment. And if I were thinking of it as a. Actual [00:59:00] competitor in a stock picking contest to meta. I, I picked Meta in our own portfolio cause I thought it would have a rough year. I didn't think the year of efficiency was anything more than Mark Zuckerberg blowing smoke, but it turns out he actually meant it and they became more efficient.

[00:59:16] Jason Hall: Yeah. And, and, and the ad market's gotten a little bit better too.

[00:59:20] Jeff Santoro: So it's both, both of those exactly. Yeah. But I don't know, I could see a world where over the next five or 10 years. Pinterest does as well as, as Meta, especially off of a much smaller, it's a smaller company too. So that, that helps as well in terms of overall growth.

So-

[00:59:35] Jason Hall: Yeah, I'll be honest with you, Jeff. I was, I was leaning Pinterest and as much as anything kind of expected you to go with Pinterest. And that was kind of part of the reason I decided to go with, with Amazon, in addition to the fact that it just makes for such good drama.

But back to Pinterest, I think this is clearly kind of a turnaround at this point, right? We know that like their monetize ability with ads is not great as much as it's primed [01:00:00] to be that the problem, people aren't going there for ads. They're going there for ideas and ways to act on them, which either is to get the pin. Or just to spend the money and buy the stuff that they see in the pin.

[01:00:10] Jeff Santoro: So, and their, and their average revenue per user compared to Facebook or to Meta is pennies. I don't remember the exact number, but it is five, six times lower. It's, it's, it's, they're nowhere near that ballpark in terms of monetizing their users and they have a huge user base. They have a huge user base.

[01:00:25] Jason Hall: They do. They do. It's either 5% or 10% the ARPU in, in like the North America, but it's, it has a massive, massive room to grow it. So I like that idea. I really do. I like. I like that one a lot. So let's, let's go through them again. I'm going to Jeff, I'm going to read my magnificenter seven and you can read yours.

So first with Alphabet, my alternative was Starbucks. Yours was

Jeff Santoro: Apple, not Alphabet. Apple.

Jason Hall: Sorry. With the Alphabet, my, my alternative to Alphabet, my alternative to Apple was Starbucks. Yours was.

[01:01:00]Jeff Santoro: ASML

[01:01:00] Jason Hall: And then with Microsoft, I went with Confluent and you went with Adobe Alphabet. I went with Trade Desk. You went with Roku. And then Amazon I went old school. Simon Property Group . You went with-

[01:01:15] Jeff Santoro: Digital Ocean.

[01:01:16] Jason Hall: I love that. I really do love that one. NVIDIA. I went with Texas Instruments. You also went with Texas Instruments. Love it. Love it. And Tesla, we both, man, we went so similar on this and with Tesla, I went with SolarEdge because they have the solar stuff, they have the alternative energy stuff, and they also have something in the automotive space as a supplier. And you went with Enphase. The renewable energy company. Meta Platforms. I went with Alphabet.

Jeff Santoro: Cause you're a dirty cheater.

Jason Hall: I am. I'm a dirty cheater. I'm going to win. And Jeff, you went with?

Jeff Santoro: Pinterest.

Jason Hall: So Jeff, those are, those are our, those are our, I can't even say those are our 14 stocks because I cheated, but that's [01:02:00] okay.

[01:02:00] Jeff Santoro: Now we have an unlucky number thanks to you.

All right. So we would like the audience to either make fun of our pics, preferably make fun of our pics, especially Jason's, but also-

[01:02:13] Jason Hall: Not either. And.

[01:02:14] Jeff Santoro: All right. Fine. And. But send us your seven. If you want to play along, tweet us, tweet at us or send us an email or find us on commonstock or get in touch with us somehow and let us know what your seven were.

I'm curious if anyone had even more interesting off the wall, choices for the magnificenter seven. And if we get anything interesting, maybe we'll, we'll mention a couple on one of the future episodes.

[01:02:38] Jason Hall: Here's an idea, Jeff, and maybe, maybe this is a future show. Maybe in a month or two, we'll do this as a show, maybe your future magnificent seven, maybe the stocks you think that are not the seven largest now.

Maybe five years from now, they could be the largest. That might be, might be fun. So

Jeff Santoro: Like it.

Jason Hall: All right, Jeff, we, we went, we went long, so we're not going to do B segment today. I do want to [01:03:00] say before we, before we wrap things up those of you that normally, you know, our, our, our last show of the month, first show of the month is an update of the portfolio contest.

We're recording this a week in advance. We're going to be, both of us are going to be on vacation. So wait till next week and we're going to have a quick update of the portfolio contest.

Jeff, we did it, buddy.

[01:03:21] Jeff Santoro: We did it.

[01:03:23] Jason Hall: All right, everybody. As always, we love to share our answers to these hard questions about investing and the fun ones too, like which are the more magnificent.

Wait, no, no, no, no. I didn't do that right, Jeff. Which are the magnificenter seven stocks to own. But it is up to you to find your magnificenter seven stocks. And I believe in you. You can do it. All right. We'll see you next time, Jeff.

[01:03:46] Jeff Santoro: See you next time.

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