Did the Santa Claus Rally Start Early?

In this podcast, Motley Fool host Dylan Lewis and analysts Jason Moser and Matt Argersinger discuss:

• The market's incredible November and why we may not be out of the woods yet on rate hikes.
• Why Apple and Goldman Sachs are breaking up their credit card partnership.
• Thoughts on Tesla's Cybertruck and the new details we have after this week's showcase.
• Two stocks worth watching: Docusign and EPR Properties.

Vivek Pandya, manager of Adobe Digital Insights, talks through the trends he's seeing so far in holiday spending and whether it makes sense to buy now or wait for some of the items on your list.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Dec. 01, 2023.

Dylan Lewis: November was one heck of a month for the market. But we may not be out of the woods yet. Motley Fool Money starts. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Cool Global headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Fool Money radio show. I'm Dylan Lewis joining me in the studio. Motley Fool Senior Analysts Jason Moser and Matt Argersinger. Gentlemen, great to have you both here. We've got a tribute to one of the greatest investors of all time, an early look at the holiday shopping trends and of course, stocks on our radar. But we're going to kick off today reflecting on November. Matt, it's a month of thanks and I think a lot of investors very thankful for the month that was.

Matt Argersinger: Very thankful, Dylan. What a month it was indeed. The S&P 500 up more than 9%, Nasdaq 100 which has already been on a super tear this year, was up another 11% in November. Russell 2000 by the way. Small caps which have really not participated finally had a good month up 9% and one of my favorite parts of the market, Real Estate Investment Trust which you have had a horrible year up 12% in November. This is probably the kicker for me guys. This is according to a report from Bank of America, the classic 60, 40 portfolio, 60% stocks, 40% bonds. The much belign 60, 40 portfolio, is least recently that was up 9.6% in November. That was the best month for that strategy in more than 32 years going back to December 1991, the month the USSR dissolved, by the way. That is quite a historic record right there. How about that? It seems like everything did well in November.

Dylan Lewis: Nice to see stocks not alone in the rally bonds in on the action as well. Jason, we typically see a little bit of a Santa rally in December. This one's coming in a little bit earlier for us. What do you see as you look at the past month?

Jason Moser: Well, I think what we saw, we saw a relatively decent earning season. I mean, we saw a lot of companies that there was continued language in regard to scrutinize spending, I heard a couple of elongated sales cycles in there. Still companies are doing a very good job of focusing on the money that's going out. I mean, it's not just about growing that revenue anymore, but a lot of companies are really focused on the money that's going out and they're really doing a good job of pairing that back, making the businesses a little bit more efficient. We're seeing margins expanding in some cases. It's not across the board. There are some pockets of weakness there and some questions. I think it's going to be an interesting holiday season from a retail perspective. But generally speaking, I think particularly considering tech, because that's really been most under the microscope, we are seeing that these companies are taking a look at this and saying, let's focus a little bit more on actually making some money and it's amazing what just shifting that narrative a little bit can really do to investor sentiment.

Dylan Lewis: That was November, and we are here taping on December 1 and as we were heading into production, Fed Chair Jerome Powell turned the lights on at the party and said, hey, we may not be totally done here yet, Matt. [LAUGHTER].

Matt Argersinger: That's right. He gave a speech on a Friday morning and it's something Powell has done a few times, I think over the past, say, year and a half, where he's come on and said, hey everyone, like you said, turn on the lights of the party. Isn't that the worst the music goes out, lights go on, it's awful.

Dylan Lewis: We're here to hang out for a while.

Matt Argersinger: I know, but no, he said hold on. Way too early to say that we're done actually raising rates, which I think is surprising. He says not until we have the full confidence, the Fed has the full confidence that inflation is heading back to our target of 2%. Basically, he said this without saying it. But he said the Fed is not even thinking about lowering rates, which is very in contrast to what we're seeing. Because if you look at, for example, the CME's Fed Watch Tool, looking at the March Fed meeting, they're looking at a 53% chance of a cut. If Pals come out and said we're not even thinking about thinking about cutting, there is a little bit of a conflict here. Now, I would say for all the things Jason said about corporate earnings, I think corporations have done a magnificent job managing their margins, especially during this. But I think one of the reasons the market rallied so much is because there's a sense that, even if the Fed is it might not be lowering, at least they're probably done hiking. We can sort of have a little more confidence in the level of interest rates and we can manage our balance sheets and our credit needs accordingly, that's a big thing. But now, if you're telling me that investors are actually thinking of a Fed cut is coming early in the year, that makes me a little more nervous.

Dylan Lewis: Matt, I'm just impressed that you got through thinking about twice. [LAUGHTER]. Well, cleanly, I struggled through it. Just trying to get out of that once from the big macro, we are going to check in on two big brands. Jason, Apple will be exiting its credit card relationship with Goldman Sachs. The tech firm reportedly submitted a proposal that would end the relationship in the next year. A bit of a change in strategy for both these businesses. This was the culmination of two initiatives for each of them and a new brand of business or a new type of business for both of them. What do you make of this partnership dissolving?

Jason Moser: It feels like it's probably the best solution for both parties involved. This is an interesting story because it brings a lot of companies into play here. You've got Apple and Goldman Sachs of course, but then you've got other companies that are interested in perhaps taking over that Apple business like American Express, or even synchrony. A lot of parties in play here. I think Apple's card aspirations on the one hand it can be seen as an acquisition tool. It's a way for them to give consumers access to more Apple devices. It's an easier way for consumers to be able to finance those devices, give it to you interest free over time, whatever it may be. And for Goldman at the time, it seemed like a reasonable bet in their consumer aspirations. You're saddling up with Apple, one of the biggest networks out there with billions upon billions of users, it feels like. But it just, it hasn't worked out that well and I think it's probably something that was a little bit, both parties were at fault here. I think when you saddle up with Apple, the idea is that you're saddling up with one of the biggest, most important companies in the world. Now, the other side of that coin is that Apple, because of their size, they can really command a lot out of that relationship as well. That typically means lower pricing. Granted, there's higher volume there. But I think also with Apple, this was a way for them to continue increasing engagement. Give people who want to be a part of that Apple universe a reason to stay in that Apple universe. You have your finances with them that means that you're going to find more value in the devices with Apple that you're using, it all makes sense when you look at how this relationship was born and the concessions that Apple demanded from Goldman. They were calling for essentially all applicants to be approved. They want to essentially 100% approval rate, and they went with an atypical billing cycle that essentially was the beginning of the month, whereas all other card companies do it on a rolling basis. That helps smooth out those finances, and so I think Goldman maybe felt like, you know what, this is far more trouble than it's worth. Apple looked at it and saying, well, if it's not going to be Goldman, I'm sure we can find another partner and I think that's ultimately what happens. I think Apple probably continues to try to make this work just with another partner. I would say that other partner better take a look at this example here and maybe push back on some of those demands that Apple's thrown out there.

Dylan Lewis: We've heard for years exactly how difficult it is to be a supplier of Apple. Usually we're talking about small chip companies going into business with them and how those contracts are incredibly demanding. Wind up straining some of the financials of those businesses because Apple can get such favorable terms. Funny to see a company like Goldman Sachs wind up in that same spot.

Jason Moser: Again, I think this is something that for Apple, it's not really a needle mover on the business. It's another service that they can offer and this is clearly becoming more and more of a services business as they work to diversify that revenue away. I don't think Apple card users really care what bank is behind all of this. Most of the time they're not really worried about the issuer of the bank as long as they are still affiliated with that Apple brand, that Apple card. I don't think Apple's going to have any problem finding another partner. But I think it'll be noteworthy how that new relationship is actually structured. Switching gears. It was a busy week for Elon Musk and we're going to maybe sidestep some of the deal book comments and discussion because we did see our first look at some of the details on Tesla's cyber truck. Matt, this was something that was first unveiled as an idea back in 2019. It is now 2023. We have a sense of what this product looks like, some of the costs, some of the specs. What did you think of the announcement?

Matt Argersinger: Well, first of all, I have to say the last few days, it feels like such a perfect representation of Elon Musk's personality. He goes from, like you said, this, let's be fair, bizarre, confusing, maybe even uncomfortable at times interview at Deal Books Summit in New York to the very next day giving this exciting almost Steve Jobs-esque unveiling of the cyber truck in Austin, Texas, or as he put it, the biggest product launch of anything by far on Earth this year. He might be right cause whatever you want to say, I think about Elon Musk the person and I have a lot of things to say, but Elon Musk, the engineer, the product designer, the salesman, is truly something entirely different and I do think the demand for the cyber truck is going to be huge. We can get into the specs, but it has more than one million reservations. It's a product that I think a lot of people four years ago certainly thought there was no chance in heck that this thing was going to roll off the production line anytime soon yet they are really rolling it off beginning this year. I have to say it's such a unique design, you have such a big Elon musk fan base and I really do believe him when he says, "The future looks like the future with this thing". I find myself intrigued and I do feel like it's going to be a success as is often the case with Musk. Some of the details they announced in 2019. A little bit different when they come to real reality here in 2023. I believe the base model will cost around $61,000. The upscale cyber base model, 100K. One of the things that I think is interesting here, Jason, is we saw this announced in 2019. It is now being revealed in 2023 and we'll probably see people really drive them on the roads in 2024 and 2025. The market for EVs and in particular truck EVs has changed pretty dramatically in that time.

Jason Moser: It has, and EVs are going through their own little moment right now where there are some questions as to the value proposition and there's consumer reports data out there showing that people are having more problems with EVs than ICs or even other vehicles.

Jason Moser: Whether that's the case or not, I think with Tesla, when you look at these trucks, it's very difficult to understand exactly what kind of driver wants this cybertruck. I think the cybertruck is a niche product that will probably do OK. I don't know how the company is ultimately defining success. For me, success is this is a contributor to the business. It sounds like for the immediate future, for the near future, at least for the foreseeable future, it's going to be something that loses money until they actually figure this whole thing out, because just making the truck on its own is a really difficult and arduous process. For most people that are driving these big trucks, the trucks are a tool of their trade. It's something that matters, that needs to be reliable. They need to know that it's going to work and how to fuel it up and use and whatnot. I don't know that they're necessarily going to be the ones making the leap to a cybertruck in the near term. Now, I think that as this iterates, as it evolves, there will be more opportunities to open that market opportunity up to more of those types of truck owners. For now, I think you probably see a few on the road, and we'll see how this develops.

Dylan Lewis: Coming up after the break, we've got a tribute and some of our favorite Mungerisms. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Dylan Lewis, joined again in studio by Matt Argersinger and Jason Moser. This week, Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett's right-hand man passed away at the age of 99. He is easily on the Mount Rushmore of the greatest investors of all time. I think it's probably worth spending a little time reflecting on just how remarkable his track record and success with Buffett and Berkshire was, Matt.

Matt Argersinger: Remarkable. It is Mount Rushmore, for sure. If you're talking about, as the young people say, goat, greatest of all time, Warren Buffett is the goat when it comes to investing. But I'm not sure he's quite the goat without Charlie Munger. If you look at Berkshire Hathaway's market value per share, 57 years ago, when he took over the textile mill in Massachusetts and turned this into one of the most successful businesses and companies of all time, he and Munger compound market value per share for Berkshire just under 20% a year for 57 years. Almost six decades. More than double the annual compound return of the S&P 500. Just to put that in dollar terms, if you had invested $100 in Berkshire Hathaway the moment after Buffett took over, that $100 would have turned into $2.96 million today.

Dylan Lewis: Matt, to your point about the duo, I think of Buffett and Munger as Brady and Belichick. They're both individually great, but what they've done together, just absolutely incredible, and I don't know that we're going to see it again.

Matt Argersinger: No, I don't think so. If I could tell a quick story, J. Mo was involved in this too, is early 2015, Jason and I took over a million-dollar portfolio, which is the service we had here at the Motley Fool. As we were thinking about how to run this service, the first thing that came to mind was a quote by Charlie Munger. It goes something like this: If you buy something because it's undervalued, then you have to think about selling it when it approaches your calculation of its intrinsic value. That's hard. But if you buy just a few great companies, then you can sit on your butt. That's a good thing. Now, Charlie used a little bit more colorful language than I just did. But that to me was such more than any quote from Charlie Munger has told me. It really isn't about trying to always constantly massage your portfolio. Deciding what to buy, when to buy, what to sell, when to sell. Find great companies, buy them, hold them. I think that was the lesson he also gave to Buffett six decades ago as well.

Jason Moser: Well, I was going to say you're right because Buffett was the cigar-butt guy.

Matt Argersinger: Absolutely.

Jason Moser: He is the Graham cigar-butt guy. Munger was the guy that came in today. What about just buying good businesses at fair prices?

Matt Argersinger: Yes.

Jason Moser: Buy good businesses at reasonable prices and then Matt says, sit on our butts and just go about this. Now, I think one interesting thing, and the returns numbers you quoted there are phenomenal, it's fascinating to think, and Munger is on record as saying this, he said, you know what? We could have doubled the size of Berkshire, had we done just one thing; used the leverage. It's something we talk about leverage a lot here because leverage can be a very dangerous tool. It can be a helpful tool for certain investors if you know what you're doing, but it raises the degree of difficulty when it comes to investing. He said, we could have used leverage and Berkshire would have been worth twice as much. He said the reason why they didn't do it, was because they didn't want to disappoint the people that had been with them for so long. They generated a lot of wealth. He's like if we lose three quarter of our money, we're still rich. But a lot of these people that have made all this money along the way with us, they're just individual investors. We would have let them down in a big way in understanding the nature of leverage in the fickle nature of markets. Using leverage boils down to market timing in some senses. They made that conscious decision; no, we're not going to do that, we've got our process in place. I think that's a great lesson for investors is, know what you don't know, get your process in place, and trust the process. What? Bell check, right?

Dylan Lewis: As a testament to the process and really just by keeping it simple, how easy they were able to make things for themselves, one of the top 10 largest companies in the United States, even without the benefit of using leverage, so even doing things the right way, doing things simply, and not exposing themselves to too much risk, I think they did just OK. [laughs]

Matt Argersinger: I think they did more than OK. I would say, and beyond also just buying wonderful businesses. One of the hardest things we do as investors is holding great businesses. It's one thing to identify a wonderful business, buy a wonderful business at a fair, reasonable price. Most of us just don't hold those businesses long enough. If you look at their holdings in Coca-Cola, American Express, even Apple, which is more recent purchase they've held that for almost a decade now, a lot of us just have a hard time doing that. As an individual investors, we see a stock we own go up 50%, we're like, hey, should I think about selling? Is the market at the top? What if I don't sell and the dry stock drops 20%? That is also part of the genius, it's part of the goating, which was not just buying wonderful businesses, but holding them, which is such a hard thing to do if you're an individual investor.

Dylan Lewis: I think, Matt, modeling that behavior, talking about that, and being very open about it as such great investors probably helped investor outcomes on the retail side, almost more than anybody else. I think it's probably Jack Bogle, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger, in terms of like good investing behavior and lessons.

Matt Argersinger: Exactly. Lessons that any investor could follow. These were the lessons. What's amazing to me is, I think it was Jeff Bassos who asked Buffett once, why aren't there more investors like you? Why don't they just copy you and do what you do? The whole refrain was, well, because people, they want to be rich fast, they don't want to get rich slowly, and that's what we did, and they did it better than anyone else.

Dylan Lewis: J. Mo, Matt mentioned a Mungerism that he particularly enjoys. Anything jump out to you?

Jason Moser: Yeah. The one that I noted earlier this week and the impact I think that Munger has had on my life from reading and the listening to him speak overall is just patience. It goes back to what you were saying. One of my favorite quotes, the big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting. That really is what it boils down to. A lot of people don't want to hear that because like Matty said, they want to get rich quick. That's not the way it works. You determine your process, you do what works best for you. But I think over time, what we found is that Munger and Buffett came up with something pretty special there. It's not a bad idea to try to mirror that patience. It's not easy all the time, but it matters.

Dylan Lewis: Gentlemen, we're going to see you a little bit later in the show. Up next, we've got to check in on holiday spend and places we're seeing deflation in pricing. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Vera Lynn: We'll meet again. Don't know where, don't know when. But I know we'll meet again some sunny day. Keep smiling through just like you always do 'til the blue sky drive the dark clouds.

Dylan Lewis: Welcome back to Motley Fool Monday. I'm Dylan Lewis. The holiday season is in full swing and we've got an early read on results from Cyber Monday and Black Friday, thanks to Adobe. The firm is the source for online holiday spend data. We caught up with the Vivek Pandya, their lead insights analyst to get a sense of the trends he's seeing in the numbers this winter and whether it makes sense to buy now or wait for some of the items on your list. Let's dive right in. Your firm reported a record $9.8 billion in Black Friday online sales and over 12 billion in Cyber Monday sales. How do you think online retailers and shoppers are looking so far this holiday season?

Vivek Pandya: It's been, I think, something that they've been anticipating in terms of where they would land for these major days. Buyer propensity is the strongest on Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. I think they're probably feeling pretty good about the momentum that they've experienced through these five days. I think what we're going to have to keep a closer eye on is how the demand continues to persist from where we are post Cyber Monday through the rest of the season. I also think they'll have to think a little bit more about how they approach early seasonal discounts, which they did in late October all the way into early November. In the past, that has done well for them. But this season, with the consumers priority around price and discount magnitudes, they really return back to Black Friday and Cyber Monday for their shopping. That's something the retailers are going to have to continue to think about in 2024.

Dylan Lewis: If I'm not mistaken, I think Black Friday spend was up somewhere around 7% year over year. We saw, I think, Cyber Monday results up nearly 10% over 2022. There are a lot of different reasons why those numbers could be going up. I think inflation is probably top of mind for a lot of people. Do you feel like we're seeing a mix of inflation and increases in demand and volume a little bit more, one or the other?

Vivek Pandya: It's a great question because with online retail prices, those have actually been coming down year on year for the past couple of years because we did see prior to the pandemic, we would continue to see online deflation. The reason for that is you'd have more and more online retail merchants enter the space. That gives the consumer much more choice and there's more competition, and that puts a downward pressure on prices. We also saw with categories like electronics, you have the newer products coming out and that pushes prices down on the older versions. That deflation was pretty apparent pre-pandemic. Then we had these supply chain issues that really put consumers in a position where they were seeing much higher prices across the board. Even for online goods, the demand was so high. But then as we got to 2022, the summer where gas prices started going up and durable and goods demand started coming down, that put online prices back on this deflationary trajectory. A lot of the growth that we're seeing is purely because people are buying more goods and buying more items. I think online retailers can really take a lot away from that. I will say that especially in certain categories like electronics, apparel prices and discounts are in the range of 20%-30% That puts a lot of impact in terms of good demand because of just people buying more goods.

Dylan Lewis: Let's talk a little bit about what people are buying. You mentioned a couple of different categories there, where are you seeing a lot of interest and are there any particular products that you're seeing really spike this holiday season?

Vivek Pandya: Well, the good news is we've seen strong boosts in categories across the board. Even categories like apparel that had softer, flat to negative growth in the off season and the rest of the time in 2023, had a bit of a boost through the Cyber Five. With apparel, you really have products that have gone viral on TikTok, things like that. The Birkenstocks, the UGG Tasman slippers, and then we have cosmetic products that have done well because the gift sets and all that are really popular this season. Electronics are massive this time of the year. With the supply chain issues easing, it's a lot easier for people to get a hold of PS5s and Xbox Series X and things like that this season than previous seasons. That's helping. We've also had the iPhone 15 release, which had an initial launch and that picked up some demand. But usually the consumer continues to want some of these goods into Christmas. It has the momentum through the gift giving season. Then obviously, toys are pretty massive this time of the year. You end up seeing the perennial favorites like the Lego and the Barbie products, but you end up seeing variations. I think about Tamagotchis, which have been around for decades, but now you have the Tamagotchi Nano, Harry Potter version, which is a much more advanced version than probably we grew up with as kids. These types of items continue to be popular and we see an uptick, especially this time of year.

Dylan Lewis: Everything old is new again, right?

Vivek Pandya: Exactly.

Dylan Lewis: Exactly. You mentioned the Cyber Five earlier and I think Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue to be the main events and they get a lot of the headlines. But it does seem like, at least anecdotally, the individual days are being blurred a little bit more. Those big days are still important, but is that what you guys are seeing in the data where it's more of a season of shopping rather than these big tent pole days?

Vivek Pandya: Well, in previous years it definitely became the early season, blurring into Thanksgiving. But this season, it's been very much the discount magnitude strengthened within the 5%-10% range to the 20-35% range as we got into Thanksgiving week. You had Thanksgiving all the way up to Cyber Monday, have really strong discounts and those ones were blurring into each other. The Black Friday deals were transforming into early Cyber Monday deals. You saw that transition. But what was interesting was something like Thanksgiving, where consumers are used to going out to the shops. Five, 10 years ago, they'd go out to the shops after Thanksgiving meal and get another deal on a TV or something like that. But then with the pandemic, those stores closed on Thanksgiving and they remain closed, but the buyer propensity and that buy mode that they're in continues to persist. That's when they just turn to their smartphones after eating or while they're talking to family and then start doing their shopping. That's where we saw a lot of spending velocity kick up and that's where we saw $5.5 billion. That really set the tone for what we would see from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.

Dylan Lewis: Earlier you mentioned people looking at their phones and doing some shopping. By my count, I think for e-commerce desktop is still king. But it seems like it's barely still king. What are we seeing in terms of mobile and desktop shopping this year?

Vivek Pandya: It's exactly right, because we're crossing this threshold where mobile devices will make up about 51% share for the season and become technically the majority way that people buy online goods. However, when we think about certain days like Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, it's already surging beyond that 51%. We almost hit 60% on Thanksgiving because as I said, there's just so much of a shift to smartphones. Well, when you're around with family, you don't want to pull out your laptop and then start shopping. But you might pull out your smartphone and be comfortable doing some shopping there. It's been really important for retailers to ensure that their mobile experiences are state of the art and are seamless and frictionless so that when the consumer does that impulse buying, they can support that demand. Because what we still see is online conversion rates and buyer rates being stronger on online desktop. We really need to see that level of strength in mobile device conversion because that's where all the momentum is going.

Dylan Lewis: Are there any retailers that are doing anything particularly interesting or novel with mobile to try to boost those conversion rates?

Vivek Pandya: Well, we think about a lot of these online retailers across the board leveraging these initiatives to get consumers to download the mobile apps, provide additional value and discounts if they download the mobile app because that strengthens the relationship, it becomes less cost prohibitive to engage them once they've downloaded the mobile app and the conversion is stronger. We see constant encouragement to download mobile apps to leverage certain types of deals, to scan QR codes. All these types of things are designed to have consumers who are very mobile first continue to think about e-commerce from a mobile first lens too. You see it also with social media apps. TikTok has been quite the social media story these past couple of years. There's been a lot of investment into these social media advertising platforms so that they can extract the value and have the consumer who's maybe going to these apps just to browse videos and things like that to quickly be shifted into the buy mode too.

Dylan Lewis: I think one thing a lot of consumers have gotten used to over the last couple of years is seeing the option to buy now pay later as they are checking out. I look at the consumer, and we've talked about this a lot on our show. It feels like we have stretched consumers between inflation, interest rates rising, student loan payments going up. It seems like there is probably going to be a decent number of people who are looking for either holiday spend to go on credit card spend or buy now pay later options. What are you seeing over there?

Vivek Pandya: The buy now pay later growth has been quite something even prior to getting into the holiday season. We're expecting about 17% growth for the season in terms of buy now pay later utilization. That will mean out of the $222 billion spent this holiday season, about $17 billion will be processed specifically through buy now pay later. We're already hitting that growth momentum right now. We've seen over eight billion dollar spent. It's definitely something consumers are leaning on. I would say multiple consumers and different audiences are leveraging it for different reasons. Some of them are maybe social savvy, younger consumers and they're going through the payment checkout process and they see, I thought I was going to spend $200. They're saying, I can just do $50 and just break it up into payments. It entices them to just jump on that bandwagon very quickly. Other consumers are in more of a financially strained position and they're having to lean on buy now pay later in order to support their gift giving budget. Really that's one of the things where we're going to have to just continue to see how that moves in the context of larger online growth. What I will say is you have that utilization. You've seen growth in integrations with buy now pay later. It's been a growth factor, but I think we'll have to see in the off season, so coming into 2024, how those growth rates continue to persist.

Dylan Lewis: One of the other consumer stories we've been seeing as a result of some of those pressures is this idea of consumers trading down a little bit and looking for lower priced items or maybe moving from one retailer to more of a discount retailer. Do you see any of that in the data that you're looking at?

Vivek Pandya: Well, it's something that we've kept a close eye on, I had mentioned earlier that since we started to see online inflation turn to online deflation.

Vivek Pandya: That really started kicking off as we look at how the prices shifted from 2021 into to mid 2023. What we're finding is, yes, people have absolutely downshifted to the cheaper goods. We've seen people go from organic products to non organic to save money there. We've seen people go from the higher end luxury version of a cosmetic item or apparel to the cheaper version. The exception a little bit is you see consumers being a little less price sensitive to that during the holiday season. Because A, discounts are helping bring down prices overall, and B, they're usually giving gifts to other people. They're very conscientious of how, the gifts will appear, that they got the person, the premium gift they were looking for versus a cheaper substitute. That's where we see a little bit more of a return to the premium luxury. But in the off season and when we're not in the holiday season, Bonanza, that's when we see people downshifting a lot to the cheaper versions. Cheaper, is sometimes they go for a completely different alternative altogether to make the most of their budget within these categories.

Jason Moser: You mentioned the discounting there, and my last question for you, Vivek is really, in service of our listeners, we saw the huge discounting happen as we would expect during the Cyber 5, and ahead of the Cyber 5. Based on what you're seeing, is this where we're going to see discounts bottom out, or should people wait a little bit on some of these purchases for the holidays?

Vivek Pandya: I would say for the most part, they have bottomed out. Especially in the key categories like apparel electronics. We do expect to see a bit more stronger discounting on December 4th for sporting goods. That's just how that particular category has. We've seen the pricing trends over the years. A bit in early December, maybe a bit more of a deal on sporting goods, but outside of that we're starting to see the discounts we can dissipate across a lot of the products. That's, again, almost seasonally how it's worked in previous years. Credit to retailers, they've had to train consumers that this is the moment and then that's why we also see a lot of spend velocity in the six to 11:00 PM. PST time on Cyber Monday, we see about over $4 billion spent that way because everyone's trying to get the discounts and get their shopping out of the way.

Dylan Lewis: Listeners, we'll put a link to Adobe's holiday shopping tracker in our show notes Coming up after the break, Jason Moser and Matt Argersinger return with a couple stocks on their radar. Stay right here, you're listening to motley money.

As always, people in the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about in the motley fool. May have formal recommendations for or against, start, buy, sell, anything based solely on what you hear. I'm Dylan Lewis joined again by Jason Moser and Matt Argersinger. We tend to focus on stocks here at the motley fool, but this week we are profiling a different investment. NBA owner and Shark Cubin is selling his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to Miriam Adelson, the largest shareholder in Las Vegas Sands. Matt, Cuban will remain in charge of basketball operations and he'll keep a small stake in the business. But this seems like an interesting choice in an interesting moment.

Matt Argersinger: Yes, it was a surprise to me and that's because, I think of Mark Cuban as a pretty successful businessman and investor. Well a highly successful businessman and investor, but at the same time he's this, highly passionate sports fan and team owner. Him selling his majority stake in what I thought was his passion makes me think he's calling a little bit of a medium term top in the market, in terms of professional sports team valuations, especially for non NFL franchise. I think if you look at the Jason and we were talking about this earlier in the week, NBA Major League Baseball, anything not in the NFL. I feel like we might be a little bit of a top and I think Mark Cuban actually might be calling that Cuban.

Dylan Lewis: Cuban timed it pretty well when it came to the.comboom. I think he may be able to time this one and we'll see.

Matt Argersinger: I think so.

Dylan Lewis: Let's get over to stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a question. Jason, you're up first. What are you looking at this week?

Jason Moser: Yeah. Keep an eye on Docusign. Ticker is DOCU. Earnings come out Wednesday after the market closes. They've got new Ish CEO Alan Tiger said he's been there about a year now, a little over a year. We should continue to hear more and more about CLM. Contract life cycle management. That's really the key to the long term strategy here, is taking that core specialty and E signature and just, expanding it out to that full life cycle management. They're adding features and capabilities that are working out. Last quarter reported a total customer base of 1.44 million. That was up 12% from a year. They also saw 6% year over year increase in customers with annualized contract value exceeding $300,000. A total of 1047 customers there. Those are metrics to keep an eye on. They tell us that not only are they landing new customers, but they're expanding the relationships with those customers, even in a time of scrutinized spending and elongated sales cycles. But listen, this is a company, they're going through a tough time, but they've grown revenue at a compound annual rate of 45% over the last five years. Good balance sheet, you want to see that stock based compensation continue to come down, but I think they're doing a good job of keeping the hyperbole to a minimum getting out of this pandemic, stay at home stock mentality and just getting back down to brass tacks. I'll be interested to see what one day brings.

Dylan Lewis: Dan a question about Docusign?

Dan Boyd: So the Docusign stock price is flat. If you don't count the pandemic, it's like the pandemic never happened. It's back to pre pandemic levels. Does this company have enough of a Mote?

Jason Moser: Man, I tell you, I think Mote is a very overused term. I don't know that they necessarily have a mode. There's competition out there, primarily in the form of Adobe. But again, I think this boils down to contract life cycle management. The more they can build out capabilities beyond a signature, the more of a competitive advantage they can build through.

Dylan Lewis: Matt, what is on your radar this week?

Matt Argersinger: Epr Properties. Dylan ticker, EPR. This is a real estate investment trust. You know, I love my reads. For all intents and purposes, this company was dead man walking after the pandemic, their biggest real estate holding movie theaters. Tough business. Well, and especially after one of their largest tenants, Regal Entertainment, filed for bankruptcy last year. Business is far from dead though, thriving this year, revenue in the third quarter is up 17%. Most of the theaters that were closed as part of the Regal bankruptcy have reopened with two operators portfolio was 99% lease at the end of the quarter, great balance sheet, eight times earnings and a 7% dividend yield. I can't turn away from this one. I'm looking to actually add to my position.Dan, a question about EPR properties.

Dylan Lewis: Matt, you go into movie theaters because I haven't been to one since 1919.

Matt Argersinger: I have it, but that's mainly because I have a four year old son at home, but I plan to get back there pretty soon. All right. Dan, which one are you putting on your watch list?

Dan Boyd: I got to tell you, I feel like docusign is becoming a verb like Xerox and Kleenex out there. It's like someone's going to send me a Docusign because.

Matt Argersinger: I'm going to go Docusign.

Dylan Lewis: That's usually a sign of brand strength. I'm right there with you, Dan. Dan, Thanks for weighing in on this week's Radar Stocks, Matt and Jason. Thank you guys for bringing them to us.

Matt Argersinger: Thank you.

Dylan Lewis: That's going to do it for this week's Motley Fool Money Radio show. The show is mixed by Dan Boyd. I'm Dylan Lewis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.