Investing in Recessions and the Latest News in the J.C. Penney Bankruptcy

The U.S. economy entered a recession in February for the first time in over a decade. In this episode of Industry Focus: Financials, host Jason Moser and Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel, CFP, discuss why it's so important for investors to stick to their long-term plans, even in scary times. Plus, reports indicate that Simon Property Group (SPG -0.68%) and Brookfield Property Partners (BPY) are in discussions to purchase bankrupt department store chain J.C. Penney, and the reason might not be what you think. Finally, hear why Matt is watching Seritage Growth Properties (SRG -0.53%) after the recent sell-off, while Jason has his eye on Nike (NKE 0.66%) this week.

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This video was recorded on June 22, 2020.

Jason Moser: It's Monday, June 22. I'm your host Jason Moser, and I'm joined today, of course, by the one, the only, Certified Financial Planner, Mr. South Carolina, Matt Frankel. Matt, how's everything?

Matt Frankel: Good. I chose to be in the office with good internet today, so [laughs] hopefully you get to be able to see me the whole time.

Moser: Yeah, a little bit of a better connection there, but you know, hey, it's a freaky time. We're all trying to just make it work however we can. So, on today's Financials show, we're actually going to look at why Simon Property Group, a company that we talk a pretty good bit about on the show, why Simon might be wanting to buy J.C. Penney. Matt, you published another interesting poll on Twitter recently that I think we could dig into, just, you know, for some more investable ideas. Of course, we'll have one to watch for you, for the coming week, but we're going to kick off today's show, Matt, we're going to talk about an article that you recently wrote titled "Here's What History Says About Investing in Recessions." And for those of you who may not know, we actually did enter a recession in February. That's been confirmed, right, Matt?

Frankel: Right. We're definitely in a recession. And recessions are kind of scary for a lot of people to invest in, and you usually don't know you're in a recession until a few months afterwards, when you see the GDP numbers, because that's how it's defined. It's defined as -- technically, we won't know for a little while longer, but we pretty much know we're in a recession. It's technically defined as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP growth. So, obviously, you don't officially know that until you're two quarters in and you can verify that that's what happened, but it's pretty clear that we started a recession in February.

Moser: Yeah. And I feel like -- I mean, we've been talking for a little while about this. I mean, it really felt like, given the scope of the impact that COVID-19 has had, globally speaking, I mean, when you shut down economies, countries' economies, I would think the recession is almost unavoidable, no matter how long or how short that shutdown is. I mean, it puts everything on hold. And so, we've certainly seen a lot of pain out there. And I don't think we're even really done with that yet.

But I want to look at this article that you wrote, because the one thing I liked about it, you know, you go back to past recessions. You take a look at some of the recessions that have occurred in our lifetime and you talk a little bit about what got us there, what investors were doing at the time, and perhaps some lessons that we can learn coming out of recessions like that. I mean, this is what it's all about is, you go through these types of situations and they teach you. I had never been through a bear market that happened that quickly, I've never been through a bear market that was something that was caused by a pandemic. So, I think that most people probably underestimated the impact of this thing.

But going forward, given what we've seen, I guarantee to you, I won't be underestimating any impacts going forward. I mean, now, this is another lesson that we've learned that I think can make us a better investor. And so, let's take a look at some of these recessions that you were talking about in the article and talk about some of the mistakes, some of things that we learned coming out of these. And we'll start with the 1990 to '91 recession that you had there in the article first.

Frankel: Sure. Well, I did a little dive into the last three recessions. The 1990-1991 recession was the first one. Then we had the 2001 recession that followed the dot-com crash. And then the Great Recession about a decade ago.

So, the first thing I would want to say is, and you kind of made this point for me already, is that the word "unprecedented" gets thrown around a lot in every recession. It's not unique to this one. You hear that this recession is being caused by a pandemic. That's never happened before. It's, you know, quickest bear market in history, you know, things like that.

If you look at all three of these recessions, each one of them is very different in terms of how the stock market behaved during the recession. If you look at the 1990-1991 recession, I'd actually call that one the most textbook recessions that I've seen. You see the stock market -- I mean looking at the chart, the market peaks, it goes down, it stays down for about four or five months and then it slowly starts to build back up. This just kind of followed eight years of really good economic growth. There wasn't any particular event like, you know, the 9/11 attacks or a financial crisis or a global pandemic. There wasn't a giant catalyst. This was just more of -- and that's probably why you saw more straightforward behavior in the stock market, because it was just kind of more of a slowdown after a long period of economic expansion.

Going into the 2001 recession, it was a little bit different, because there were two separate events that led to that. As we know, the dot-com bubble in the late '90s came to an end abruptly around 2000, so you see the market kind of dip down then, then it kind of quickly recovers to its pre-recession levels, and then starts to go down again. And then the Sept. 11 attacks happened in 2001 and it was another leg down that led to a more prolonged recession than you otherwise would have had. So, that was kind of a double-dip recession as they call it in economics, so.

And then the Great Recession, which they call it "Great," because not only was it very deep, but it was very long. This is the one that listeners and you and me probably remember the best out of the three. I mean, I was invested during the Great Recession; I'm pretty sure you were as well.

Moser: Yeah, I was. And I actually was working at Bank of America at the time as a loan officer, and I remember vividly thinking that, man! You know, we were giving out -- [laughs] like, getting a loan was the easiest thing in the world, and valuations were sky high. I mean, you could just walk into a bank and, like, have people throw money at you for pretty much anything. And it just really started to seem like this just doesn't seem sustainable, this doesn't seem like it's going to work. And I mean, you know, in hindsight, obviously, there were a lot of problems there, but it was very interesting. Even at the time, it just felt like it was just too easy to get money. And the unbridled enthusiasm was something I haven't seen since, I don't think.

Frankel: I could tell you a personal story of how eager they were to give away money. [laughs] Shortly after I graduated college, for the next year or two I was a restaurant manager. I hadn't really started my career yet; I was making roughly $35,000 a year and I got approved for a $350,000 loan for investment properties with a credit score in the low 600s at the time. Thankfully I didn't use it, [laughs] but I didn't end up taking out one of those predatory loans, but a lot of people did. And we saw how that -- yeah, I mean, I knew -- like I said, I was a restaurant manager, I knew that one of my servers owned three investment properties at one point, you know, a 23-year-old, didn't really have, you know, put zero down on all three of them and ended up all three of them getting foreclosed when it all went poorly.

So, there was a lot of economic pain [laughs] that happened as a result of the subprime mortgage lending, and it was really a double-dip recession when you look at the chart. I mean, the majority of the market's fall happened initially -- I think, what was it, the Bear Stearns collapse was the biggest catalyst initially. That's what really made us think, OK, this is real. So, when Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers collapsed, you saw the market go down, down, down, then at about September 2008 you got that big bailout, which was the biggest bailout in history until the COVID pandemic. And then, so the market rebounded a little bit after that, said, OK, the government is putting some money in. And then it looked like that might not be enough and the stock market proceeded to fall off a cliff again and didn't reach its low until March of '09. And it lasted a long time. It took years until we got new highs again in the stock market. I want to say, 2015-2016, somewhere around there, before we took out the pre-Great Recession highs. So that's a long-drawn-out example of a recession and its effect on the stock market, especially.

So, the point is, all these recessions are different. But as an investor, if you invest the right way, you don't really have to care about what the stock market is doing during these recessions. So, kind of the key takeaway of the article was, well, one, you're never going to invest exactly at the bottom. That's something you should get out of your head.

Moser: And I refer to that lesson often. My father told me that, like, when I was really young, he said, listen, son, understand you'll never buy at the bottom and you'll never sell at the top. So, just get used to that now and then invest accordingly, because if you're looking at investing in these businesses and holding that sort of indefinite timeline, the longer you hold those stocks, really, the less that matters, you know. I mean, the less quibbling over a couple of hours really matters.

Frankel: Right. So, what I did was, I took two points in each of these three recessions. I looked at what happened if you would have invested at the worst possible time, meaning at the stock market's highest point during those recessions? And what would happen if you invested at the best possible time, meaning you timed the low exactly? Which we know wouldn't really happen, but.

So, the takeaway in the Great Recession, which was the most recent of the three, if you had invested at the worst possible time, you would still have an 8.4% annualized return to date. That's pretty solid, that's investing at the worst time, meaning the highest point of the market during the 2007-2009 time period.

If you invested at the best possible time, you would have gotten more than double that. So, that's a big difference, but remember, this was just a decade ago. If you go all the way back to that 1990-1991 recession, the difference between the worst possible time and the best possible time to invest during that recession was less than one percentage point. Even if you did the worst job of market timing you could possibly do, you would've gotten a 9.8% annualized return for the past 30 years. That's if you timed at the worst possible way possible.

So, just to put that into perspective. This means, if you would have put, let's say, $10,000 in the market 30 years ago, you'd be sitting on -- doing the math real quick -- you'd be sitting on about $150,000 today. And that's if you timed it as bad as you possibly could.

So, the takeaway is, the best way to invest in recessions is to just stick to the plan. Invest a little bit at a time, focus on high-quality companies, and don't worry about market timing, which is the biggest error I see everybody trying to make. People say things like, "Well, I think this one 's going to go down a few more points before I want to jump in," or "I bought American Airlines last week; it went up by two points; should I sell now?" The answer is, do you think it's a quality company? If you think it's a quality company, you should probably buy more and just hold on for the next 30 years.

The point is, don't worry too much about the timing of things. Look at a recession as a time to buy quality stocks at a discount, yes, but don't try to time the day-to-day moves of the market. That's a losing battle.

Moser: Yeah. I would agree with that wholeheartedly. We have this discussion, I think, in all of our services at one point or another. And you know, folks talking about what kind of a plan would you enact in the case of a recession. And I keep coming back with the same answers, like, well, ultimately, we go into recession, I mean, I'm not looking to sell anything in that time. Because, in theory, if I have a portfolio of companies that I really like, I mean, yeah, recession might be a short-term headwind or a drag on the performance of that portfolio, but I still like those businesses. And so then, trying to sell them at an appropriate time to be able to then buy them back cheaper. I mean, there are a lot of "ifs" that have to be satisfied there. So, it becomes very, very difficult to do that on a sustainable basis.

And so, yeah, the longer that you can extend your timeline, the less you have to worry about getting that timing right. I mean, you're going to buy some at the top; you're going to buy some at the bottom. But you know what, I mean. We say it all the time, you know -- adding to your winners is [laughs] one of the most enjoyable things you can do as an investor. And we've said it before, but a stock that's doing well is typically an indication of a business that's performing well. And if that business is performing well, well, why wouldn't you want to own more of it?

So, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, I mean, getting into a recession, the timing part is probably something that people get a little bit worked up over. But clearly, we're seeing through the numbers here that you've published through the article -- it's not that big of a deal and, the longer you stretch that timeline out, even less of a big deal.

Frankel: Right. So, you're going to do fine over the long term no matter when you invest. As long as you're focusing on high-quality companies or even ETFs or mutual funds or things like that. But over the short run, you really can't obsess over the timing. And this is where people tend to go wrong. I mean, your emotions kind of work against you at that point. Your instinct is to panic and sell when things are going down, before anything gets any worse, and when you see everybody throwing their money into speculative stocks -- I mean, Hertz was a big example the other week. There have been a few, you know, the airline, the cruise stocks, when you see all your friends saying these are so cheap and throwing all their money in, it's your instinct to throw your money in as well. You got to ignore that kind of timing mentality of this is cheap now, this is not cheap now, this is a good time for this one but I'm going to wait on this one. Focus on the quality first and then worry about when you're going to buy.

Moser: Yeah. And to that point, we're at a point now where clearly, we're trying to reopen states and the country, in general, which has certainly freed up consumer behavior at least to the extent that it was before. And of course, now we're seeing case numbers go up, right? And so then you wonder, if this continues and we see these cases continue to rise, it becomes an issue, at least in certain locations or hot spots like they talk about.

So, on the one hand, it's probably pretty reasonable to expect that there may be some shutdowns here and there, depending on hot spots, but it also doesn't seem like we should expect the entire country to be shut down again from this. And so then, how does the market behave there? I mean, that's another thing. We're trying to figure that out. It's very difficult to read. It's very difficult to figure out how the country might or how might the markets behave if we shut down part of the country, but not all of the country.

And surely, the market has been performing fairly well in the face of a time where we feel like maybe it shouldn't have recovered as quickly as it did, but maybe that's telling us something.

Frankel: Yeah. I mean, I personally don't foresee any widespread shutdowns. I mean, I live in a place that [laughs] right now, if anywhere should shut down, again, it's probably here. I'm in one of those states where the cases are spiking to record highs every day, but you know, we got to get our Fourth of July on down here. [laughs] So. And our governor has come out and said, yeah, we're not shutting anything down.

So, I don't think it's going to be a big shutdown. By the way, the biggest spike of infection is down here. There's been something like a 900% rise in the twentysomething population getting infected. So, it's the young people who are going out and not social distancing and crowding in bars and things like that. It's not a big spike among the older generation. So, they're doing a good job of protecting the vulnerable, but those numbers sure are scary. And I can see why the market is kind of on edge right now.

Moser: Yeah, it is scary. And you know, this is ultimately something, we're all kind of dealing with the same thing and there are simple things that we can do to try to mitigate the spread, and you know, by the same token, everything shut down, I think that sort of gives you an indication of what behavior will be like when you open back up. There's a lot of pent-up demand, you know, behavior, people want to get out and go do stuff, buy stuff, socialize and whatnot.

So, you go back to a shutdown, well, then that's going to just send everybody back to that same sort of mentality, and then it happens all over again. So, it really all just boils down to ultimately some form of treatment or vaccine, which is still going to be a ways away. But you know, I tend to agree. I have a hard time seeing a shutdown on the scale of an entire country here, because I mean, it seems like maybe the cost there is a bit more than most even anticipated, and we're seeing that through some of the behavior now.

But I think we've all kept investing through this period. I mean, when we were in that bear market, it was very short-lived, of course, but I was able to at least buy some stocks. I was able to build a position in Adobe; I was able to start a position in Starbucks. So, you know, I took advantage of buying. I think when you see these recessionary conditions, I mean, I'm not looking to sell, right? Just generally speaking, if you're in that grow your wealth mode, if you're still trying to grow your wealth and you're not worried about protecting your wealth mode where you might be closer to retirement. I mean, you want to be that buyer of stocks. You don't want to be a seller. You want to be buying and extending that timeline as far as you can extend it, because these things happen, they're difficult to predict, and furthermore, it's difficult to predict exactly how the market will react.

Frankel: Yeah. No, I would definitely agree with that. The one statistic on timing that I always mention, there's a survey done every year about long-term investing returns. We all know that on average, the S&P 500 achieves a 9% to 10% annualized return over time, depending on the exact period of decades you're looking at. The average equity investor achieves a return of about half of that, I think it was 5.4% or so in the most recent year, over the last 30-year period. And the primary reason cited is overtrading.

Moser: Ah! Well, that makes sense. I mean, that makes sense.

Frankel: And it's what I was saying before with how our emotions get the best of us. And I was also asked why I'm always coming down on the day-trading crowd in this current patch. Which, I mean, the timing, the market thing and day trading go hand-in-hand, so it's worth mentioning. One big thing that the day trading crowd misses is that the majority of market moves, especially upside market moves, happen after hours. So, you're missing every earnings move if you're a day trader. I mean, when you look at a chart of, like, let's say Square, which just hit a brand-new high today. One of our favorite stocks. The biggest moves in Square generally happen when it releases its earnings reports, which happen after hours. By being a long-term investor in Square, I've gotten the benefit of every one of those good earnings reports, because I'm holding the stock. If you're a day trader and closing in and out of positions, you miss all of those big upside moves, which if you think something is a good business, you're betting that it's going to have more good earnings reports that bad over time, it's fair to say. And by being a day trader, you miss all of these after-hours moves that over time have a big upward bias ...

Moser: Yeah. And, you know, another thing I was thinking of too is that, in regard to earnings reports, I mean, sometimes it's a flip of a coin as to how the market is actually going to react. You can have a good business that files a good earnings report, beats expectations, everything looks great, and the stock sells off to the tune of 10% or 15% the next day, when it looked like everything was great. And maybe that selloff is due to something involving margins or forward guidance or something. So, it's also, it's not a given that if the company files a good report then the market is going to receive it well. I mean, that is a bit of a coin flip sometimes. And I've seen it enough to know that if I try to day trade around that stuff, it would drive me crazy. So, I mean, it's just yet one more thing to keep in mind is that, sometimes the market's reaction doesn't necessarily seem so rational, but there's not much we can do about that. And if you take that longer-term approach, then you really don't have to worry about it. You can straight up just ignore it, because you know you still own a business that you like.

Frankel: Right. And that's the point. If you're buying businesses that you like, you want those, you know, the news moves, to work in your favor over time. And if you're moving in and out, you never know when -- I mean, the real estate sector, one of my favorites right now. These companies are constantly issuing updates about how COVID is affecting their business, and they're not putting it out in the middle of the day. They're putting them out at night. So, if I believe in one of my real estate stocks long-term, I want those updates to have an effect on my investment over time, I don't want to miss them because I'm trying to trade and time the market and things like that. So, it's really, you don't want to miss these things. If you miss the best days of the market, you're going to lose long-term.

Moser: It's going to impact your returns significantly, absolutely. Well, let's take a quick look here at another newsworthy item that we were talking about earlier. Simon Property Group has thrown their name in a hat as a possible suitor to J.C. Penney. And, Matt, on the surface to me, this seems like maybe not the wisest investment, given what we've seen from J.C. Penney over the last several years, but I mean, listen, this is Simon Property Group, Matt, clearly a team of folks that know what they're doing. So, what's the rationale here? Why might Simon be interested in purchasing J.C. Penney?

Frankel: Right. Well, this wouldn't be unprecedented for Simon. They do buy retail brands out of bankruptcy from time to time. Aeropostale is one of them; I always get told I'm saying that wrong. And Forever 21 is the most recent example; they were part of a group that included Brookfield that bought Forever 21 out of bankruptcy. But I could see how that would be different from J.C. Penney. Those are popular brands still. They have a lot of -- you know, it's a substantial brand power that Simon is getting for that. J.C. Penney is really not.

When I hear J.C. Penney, I think that's where my grandma used to take me when I was little. [laughs] I mean, if we're being honest, you probably have a similar mentality about it. So, the thing that everyone is missing with the J.C. Penney is that they own most of their real estate, including the real estate that they operate and that's attached to Simon Malls. So, J.C. Penney either owns or ground leases, meaning that they own the physical building, of most of the stores. If you look at the actual amount of rent Simon collects from its tenants, when you see a company like Gap, that's their biggest tenant, it's something in the 4% ballpark, 4% of their rent comes from Gap. When you see, like, a J.C. Penney, or Sears, or Macy's, it's like 0.1%, because they don't get a lot of rental income from these anchor tenants, because they own their property. So, it's more of a real estate play.

We've talked about Seritage Growth Properties a few times on the show before. That was the REIT that was created specifically to buy a bunch of Sears properties and redevelop them. So, I could see Simon wanting to do this with the J.C. Penneys that are already attached to their mall. So, this is a way to build out entertainment complexes, office spaces, hotels at a cheaper cost than adding on completely from scratch. They're acquiring all this J.C. Penney real estate.

And not only that, but they don't want all J.C. Penney stores to just go vacant right away. That's bad for business. They're not getting a lot of rental income from J.C. Penney, but it's an eyesore in a mall to see a giant vacant department store. You know, it's not being done, not being redeveloped, not being used for anything. So, one, it prevents them from getting, you know, 300-or-something giant holes in their mall where J.C. Penney used to be, but it also gives them a ton of real estate to -- I mean, Simon views the redevelopment of Sears properties as one of the biggest opportunities. That's where they're putting these hotels, their new restaurants, you know, the things that are bringing foot traffic into their mall.

So, they not only, all of a sudden, had these vacant J.C. Penney stores but now own the real estate as well, which creates a ton of big opportunities. And it's real estate that they would be buying for a fire sale price at this point. So, I think it's more of a real estate play. I don't think they want the J.C. Penney brand. I don't really think they care about the brand. I think it's definitely a real estate play. And remember, J.C. Penney's original plan to emerge from bankruptcy was to split off into a real estate investment trust and an operating company. So, there's a lot of real estate there, and you'd be surprised how much real estate these companies, like, J.C. Penneys and Macy's and, formerly, Sears, you know, they own big real estate portfolios that are valuable and these companies can acquire for pennies on the dollar right now.

Moser: Well, that definitely makes sense; that certainly clears it up. Matt, earlier you posted a poll on Twitter from a few days ago and you said, which of these early 2020 investments will end up producing the best returns in 10 years? What do you think your best COVID-era investment will be? And you gave voters four choices, Pinterest at $16.70 a share, iRobot at $35 a share, Occidental at $13.50 a share, and Ryman Hospitality at $17 a share.

And so, the voting is over, Matt, and Pinterest here won just running away, it's almost 65% of the vote out of almost 300 votes. I mean, there was clearly a bias here toward Pinterest. Now, I know you have a different feeling on the matter, though. [laughs]

Frankel: I obviously think all four of them are going to do well. Those are stocks that I bought and the prices that I paid for them, give or take a few cents. So, I like Pinterest, but for one, iRobot, I'm surprised that it was No. 2. I think it got about 20% of the vote. iRobot has already more than doubled off of that level. So, they have the biggest [laughs] head start out of the four, which I was surprised they didn't do that much better.

And I'm not surprised that Occidental was dead last. A lot of people are really negative on oil stocks right now, even the ones that Warren Buffett owns, like Occidental. And even though I got it at a very low price, a lot of people think all oil stocks are going to zero right now.

Ryman was my biggest surprise. I think it got 8% of the vote. And that's Ryman at $17. It's roughly double that already. And I think Ryman is just -- that was a $90 stock before the pandemic. They are a conference-based hotel. I don't think the conferences are going anywhere long-term. I could see that being a $100 stock within a few years. [laughs] Apparently, a lot of people disagreed with me.

Moser: Well, you know what they say, Matt -- the market is just one big disagreement. Everybody thinks they're right, you know.

Frankel: [laughs] Like I said, I think all of them were going to produce great returns over time that's why I bought them. But I mean, Ryman was the one I was most excited to click the "buy" button with that price on my screen.

Moser: Yeah, and I bet you're right. I bet you maybe it's just there's an unfamiliarity factor that comes into play there ...

Frankel: That's true. It's not really a household name like Pinterest.

Moser: Yeah, I think most people when they see the two, you know, it's easier to see Pinterest and understand what that's all about versus a Ryman Hospitality where you're really trying to piece together this real estate investment trust and exactly how their pieces all fit together, so. But, hey, listen, I know that you like those REITs. Ryman certainly is one that has a lot of value there to unlock and it sounds like you're a big fan of it as well. So, even though the majority there was leaning toward Pinterest, you're sticking with your guns and going with Ryman, huh?

Frankel: Yeah, I mean, I'm keeping all four of them, but I could see, I think Ryman is going to be the best -- and it's going to be a double-digit dividend payer as soon as it reinstates its dividend, so.

Moser: Well, we're just going to have to keep track of it and we'll revisit this one.

Frankel: We will. I'm going to retweet that in 10 years to see how that aged.

Moser: [laughs] Yeah. We'll revisit this one every once in a while, see how things are going. Well, Matt, before we wrap it up this week, let's go ahead and jump into one to watch. We're going to give our listeners here stocks that we're watching here for the coming week for some reason or another. What is your one to watch this week?

Frankel: I'm going to go with one that I briefly mentioned earlier, Seritage Growth Properties. Ever since the big rise in the market that happened last month, their reopening stocks, as they call them, have really been beaten down. And Seritage has been beaten down worse than most. I think it's a great long-term redevelopment play, and I think the market is really mispricing it at this level.

Moser: All right. Seritage. And what's the ticker for that?

Frankel: SRG.

Moser: SRG. All right, well, I'm going to take a look at Nike later this week. Ticker NKE. Nike's earnings are out on Thursday. And, you know, this is going to be really interesting, because I want to see signs of the continued recovery in China. Remember that when they reported last, when they reported in February, I mean, it was a quarter that had done -- they did OK. Revenues were up 5%, actually 7% excluding currency effects. But they had just started to see the recovery taking place in China, whereas we were really just in the middle of what was a very difficult stretch here domestically. So, I'm just going to be really interested to see their take on the situation on the ground in China versus the situation on the ground here, how they are looking at the rest of this year. I'm sure the guidance is probably going to be something that remains nebulous, as always.

But I mean, with a global company like this and given the pandemic is of a global nature, it'll be interesting to get their input on how things are looking outside of this domestic box that we live in here. And certainly, we'll be looking to see that their investments in digital are continuing to pay off. So, that Nike earnings on Thursday.

But, Matt, I think that's going to do it for us this week. I appreciate you jumping in here and teaching us a thing or two about recessions and real estate and whatnot.

Frankel: Of course, glad the sound and internet held out in this cool little cubby I'm in right now.

Moser: That's right. Well, remember, folks, you can always reach out to us on Twitter, @MFIndustryFocus. You can also drop us an email at [email protected].

As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear.

Thanks, as always, to our man Austin Morgan for putting the pieces together for us each and every week. For Matt Frankel, I'm Jason Moser. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.