Richard Bernstein is the CEO and chief investment officer at Richard Bernstein Advisors. In this podcast, he joins Motley Fool host Ricky Mulvey for a conversation about:
- Trade wars.
- Degloblalization.
- The crypto industry.
- How investors ought to make sense of the news.
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A full transcript is below.
This video was recorded on March 21, 2025
Richard Bernstein: What I'm trying to say to people is it really has been Mag seven or TAC however you want to describe this versus everything else. That has been what we've seen and people always say diversification is a risk reduction tool, but right now diversification gives you an opportunity set. It gives you something other than these seven companies. And I think people are finally starting to understand that those seven companies, Number 1, aren't the only growth stocks in the world. And Number 2, many of them aren't even superior growers. There are better growth opportunities in other markets.
Mary Long: I'm Mary Long, and that's Richard Bernstein. He's a CEO and Chief Investment Officer at Richard Bernstein Advisors. My colleague, Ricky Mulvey caught up with Bernstein for a conversation about trade wars, deglobalization, the crypto industry, and how investors ought to make sense of the news. We played a segment of this conversation on last Friday's show. So if you've already listened to that, you can just skip to the nine minute mark on today's show. We wanted to get that part of the discussion out to you right away, as it helps to make sense of the current news cycle. And as a topical, timely reminder that as investors, what we need is clear information.
The news is unclear, it's probably best to ignore for your investment purposes and your sanity. We think that message bears repeating, which is why we're playing that piece again today. But we also wanted to share the whole conversation with you because Richard and Ricky talk about a lot of other topics, too, including what Bernstein calls the greatest untold investment story of today.
Ricky Mulvey: Richard Bernstein is the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Richard Bernstein Advisors. He joins us now on Motley Fool Money. A macro-focused investor. What a time to have you on the show. Thanks for being here, Rich.
Richard Bernstein: My pleasure. Thanks for the invitation.
Ricky Mulvey: We got a trade war brewing. We got a trade war game of chicken, maybe a full out war, maybe a negotiation. How is this brewing trade spat changed your process, if at all, at Richard Bernstein Advisors?
Richard Bernstein: I think, Ricky, the first thing we have to understand is that the news flow is totally out of control right now. Legit 25 years ago, I wrote a book that was called Navigate the Noise. Investing in the New Age of Media and Hype. That was 25 years ago. It's clearly more applicable today than it was 25 years ago. But the point of the book was that there's always going to be this news flow, and a true investor is going to try to ignore that. That we know that there are certain rules of investing, ways to build wealth and trying to react to the day to day, minute by minute generations is really a losers game. I think it's very important. I think if somebody tries to keep up with the news flow today, you're going to be ready for a rubber padded room. I just think it's insane.
That's Number 1. Number 2 is that I think what's happening in this news flow right now, is not that it's good news or bad news, right? The politics tends to overwhelm everything. Everybody has to remember, we're investors. We're not politicians. What we want is we want clear information. Whether the policy we agree with or don't agree with is really immaterial, nobody's calling us up and asking us, but we need clear and consistent information so we can make investment decisions. I think that's the big issue that's going on right now is that whether it's the trade war, whether it's employment policies, you name it, it's changing every 10 minutes. I think that's very hurtful for the markets overall.
Ricky Mulvey: I understand the fast news flow, but at the same time, you've also had a tremendous rise in algorithmic trading. In a lot of cases, I would think it's not just human traders making decisions off these news items. It's algorithmic traders causing huge spikes, good and bad. You know what I'm saying? Volatility only happens when it goes down, otherwise, everything's good when it's going up. How much of this is also just algorithmic trading driving the market based on headlines, not just human reaction?
Richard Bernstein: I think that's true. I think that's, to some extent, always been true, though. Earlier in my career, it was the evil program traitors that were causing things to happen. Now it's the algorithmic traitors. They're always around. I think the thing that we all have to remember is that the fundamentals are the fundamentals. If you take a step back and you look at the fundamentals and you assess them properly, what happens in 10 or 15 or 20 minutes is really pretty immaterial.
Ricky Mulvey: Then what are the story lines you're paying attention to? Because I understand the news is changing extraordinarily fast right now, but it seems we are entering a period of deglobalization. If tax cuts continue to pass, that's going to affect corporate profits. At the same time, you're starting to see companies, including Delta Airlines saying, this macro uncertainty is leading us to cut basically our revenue and profit forecasts. I understand the headlines create a lot of noise, but there is meaning there. How are you separating that?
Richard Bernstein: Absolutely. I think take what you just said, Ricky and put it into a little longer term lens. You mentioned Delta. I'm not saying anything positive or negative about that particular company, but many companies now are having a lot of trouble forecasting their fundamentals. More uncertainty. What you forecasted yesterday, may be completely different today. That's uncertainty. Number 2, if you think about trade and everything else that's going on there, trade regulations changing within the day. If you're an importer or an exporter or you have a supply chain, how you're keeping up with that, I have no idea. What you have to do is you have to say, look, there there are forces out there. You mentioned deglobalization. One of our main macroeconomic themes is deglobalization.
The combination right now of the fact that we're going through a period of deglobalization at a point in time where the United States has a massive and ever growing trade deficit. That is a terrible combination for the US economy. What we're trying to do is we're trying to look for ways to invest to take advantage of that. In other words, we do think the capital markets are going to be smart enough to allocate capital where it's actually needed within the economy. You got to look at these themes. You have to work out what's the symptom, maybe a tweet on trade versus what's the actual issue, which is deglobalization.
Ricky Mulvey: Let's stay on deglobalization because your take is that it is disastrous for US companies. The other side of that argument would say, what we're actually doing is we're encouraging these great big companies to set up shop and create jobs in the United States, and this is actually going to be wonderful for the US economy. At the same time, these tariffs, these bills we're placing, this is like charging foreign countries a premium to access a premium market the same way that you would pay for box seats a New York Rangers game in order to get access to those better seats, we're going to do a similar thing for access to this market. There's going to be a period of transition, but really, it's going to shake out, and over the long term, the US stock market will be fine. That may not be my personal opinion, but I'm trying to steel man the other side.
Richard Bernstein: Absolutely. As I can tell by what you just said, you can probably tell I have a Rangers Jersey behind me that I am a Rangers season ticket holder. You could argue that tariffs can be an effective way to change the economy if and this is the big if, if there is underutilized domestic production. The problem is in the United States, and the reason we have this monster trade deficit is we don't have production. We have bragged for decades now how we are a service oriented economy and not a production oriented economy. We're now feeling the other side of that.
If you want to build a steel plant, if you want to build an aluminum plant, if you want to build a refinery, anything like that, this takes years to do. You put a tariff in. Everybody has this notion, oh, well, that'll affect employment next quarter or two quarters from now. No, it doesn't work that quickly. In the meantime, what happens when you have this massive trade deficit is that you stick it to the consumer. Here's a way to think about it. Right now, Ricky, is anything you are wearing made in the United States?
Ricky Mulvey: My jeans say American Eagle on them, but I'm not entirely sure.
Richard Bernstein: I guarantee you, they're not made in the United States. If they are manufactured in the United States and sewn in the United States, the material is not from the United States. That makes sense, because in the last 30 years or 40 years, the United States has lost between two-thirds and 90% of our textile manufacturing capacity, depending on how you measure it, how you define textiles and all that stuff. That's why I gave you the range. If there's a 15% tariff put on clothes, we have a pretty simple choice. We can run around naked or we can pay 15% more for clothes. We have no choice. There is no domestic substitution to take that place. Will there be in five years? Will there be in 10 years? Maybe, but in the meantime, there's no domestic substitution, so tariffs immediately stick it to the consumer.
Ricky Mulvey: When you talk about this trend of deglobalization, I wonder if parts of the trend of globalization are almost too big to fail. We'll stick on the closed metaphor. If I'm making American Eagle jeans, I don't know if they make these jeans, and let's say Vietnam. Even if there's a 15% tariff, it's still going to be significantly less expensive to outsource that production, and some of these things cannot be solved by policy. Where are you seeing the evidence of widespread deglobalization and that it's enough of a phenomenon that you're reacting to it as an investor?
Richard Bernstein: I think turn that around a little bit. If you're a US investor, you want to look for the reassuring theme. That's really what you want. You want to see the United States economy attempting to regain some element, no matter how small that might be, some element of economic independence. Really? That's really the whole thing you're investing for here. Not necessarily we're going back to 1950s and 1960s, manufacturing, dominating everything. That's highly unlikely because of some of the things you just mentioned. But it's a pretty good guess we're going to regain some element of economic independence. There are many different industries that are involved in that that people aren't talking about. Here's the way I like to describe this, if I could show you a strategy that has outperformed the market for 10 years, for five years, for three years, for one year and has zero technology stocks in it, would that capture your fancy?
Ricky Mulvey: I think I know where you're going.
Richard Bernstein: This is mid and small cap industrial stocks here in the United States. This is what we call the American Industrial Renaissance, which truth, we told we have an ETF. You have full disclosure. I'm not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes here. We have an ETF. It's been around for ten years. This is a real theme, but people don't think about it. Think about how people drool over the magnificent seven stocks, and I bet not one person who's going to watch this can name one ball bearing stock. People are probably laughing ball bearings. What is there in ball bearings? But yet they've actually done pretty well over the past 10 years.
Ricky Mulvey: Companies that make things can do well. You said on CNBC that mid cap, small cap industrial stocks are the greatest untold story out there.
Richard Bernstein: Exactly.
Ricky Mulvey: We got as much time as you want to tell that story.
Richard Bernstein: I think this is a very, very simple and straightforward story. It is literally that globalization's contracting. We see it in the Middle East. We see it in Eastern Europe. We're seeing it now with our relationship with Canada and Mexico. If you're really paying attention, this is going on in Africa. It's going on in Latin America. Globalization is contracting. The problem for the United States is that we have this massive and ever growing trade deficit. Now, people have whined about the trade deficit for a long time, and realistically, it didn't matter to a hill of beans. The reason why is because as long as globalization was expanding, we were getting better and better quality goods for cheaper and cheaper and cheaper prices. Who cares? Who wants to stand in the way of that?
But when globalization starts contracting and you're dependent on the rest of the world for everything, that's what our trade deficit basically says. You're dependent on the rest of the world for everything, that is a terrible combination. In other words, you're at the mercy of everybody else around the world, and you don't have the productive capabilities to make up for it. I use clothes as my fun example before, but even President Trump has talked about shipbuilding. If you think about refineries, you think about the grid infrastructure, these are all things that desperately need to be improved.
We do not have a state of the art infrastructure in the United States. How can we possibly compete as an economy when we don't have a world class infrastructure. You can say what you want about the Chinese, and I get all those arguments. But one thing that they did that was very, very smart was they started this whole competition by building the best infrastructure in the world. We're sitting here with many industries in 1950s technology infrastructure, rather. That is ridiculous. We should all be embarrassed by that. That's the investment story that even if we just improve it a little bit, these small and mid cap industrial companies are going to do fabulously well. Now, what's the caveat behind this, Ricky? The caveat is that small and mid cap industrial companies are really cyclical. You can't turn an industrial company into a food stock, let alone small and mid cap industrial companies. No, their earnings streams are very volatile.
This is the type of theme that you have to think about. You're going to put it in your portfolio. You're going to let it germinate and come back in 5-10 years, you're going to be really, really happy. You almost have to think of it as an alternative investment where you can't get your money back. That's the way you want to treat this. You try and trade it? Again, you're ready for the rubber lined wall. Boom. It's crazy because they are so volatile, and what do people do? They buy high and sell low and they don't get the returns they thought they were going to get. This is a great and, I would argue, the best long term story out there. I think it makes AI look like nothing, but yet, most people on this probably think I'm nuts for saying that.
Ricky Mulvey: I don't know whether or not you are nuts. I guess we will see in the next 5-10 years. I guess I'm trying to sum this up and basically, there's a trend toward deglobalization, more things being made in the United States, as now a trade deficit is a bad thing. It could be a good thing. It means that you're able to go buy cheap things or I'm able to go buy cheap things at Costco. I bought socks on Amazon that arrived just before this recording, and I think it was like 12 bucks for 14 pairs of socks. I'm not mad about it. But as you see this trend, especially for this advanced manufacturing stuff, we need greater infrastructure investment in the United States, and that will end up flowing down to these small and mid cap hyper specific industrial stocks.
Richard Bernstein: Or as they build that infrastructure, a lot of these small and mid-cap companies are involved in the building out of that infrastructure. Not necessarily that they're going to make socks, using your example from two seconds ago, but they may help build the factory that's going to make the socks here.
Ricky Mulvey: If you're playing a highly cyclical game as an individual investor, and I know you're in more of the ETF landscape, the people listening, we're able to buy those individual companies. If we're looking to play that cyclical game, generally, what are the metrics that we should be watching for, and maybe what are some of the areas that we should be paying attention to?
Richard Bernstein: In terms of areas, there are any number of different places you can look at. You can think of companies that contribute to the electric grid. I think one of the things that people don't realize is the electric grid is, in fact, 1950s technology. Even doing simple replacement of the wires and updating the wires, which are now predominantly copper and aluminum. When copper and aluminum gets warm or hot, those wires sag, and as they sag, they lose conductivity. That can be changed very easily through carbon wire. Carbon wire does not sag, is not affected by the heat. Let's change 1950-2025 technology. All of a sudden, you increase the capacity grid by 25 or 30%. Maybe there's something in carbon wire. Transportation, inland barges, electricity, everybody's gaga over data centers. How about the companies that are going to do the electrical for data centers and things like that? These are the type of companies that people should be thinking about. A lot of them are doing really, really well.
Ricky Mulvey: Places to look. In your beginning of the year video, one of the places you mentioned was emerging markets. When you're on the show on Motley Fool Money a few years ago, you talked actually about China and how the profit cycle was heating up in China. It made it sound like maybe this is a place for individual investors to take a look. This year, it's emerging markets with one exception, and that is China.
What's happened in the last few years and what data has maybe caused you to change your mind a little bit?
Richard Bernstein: Well, Ricky, I'm sure everybody who comes onto your show gets every call right, and I wish we could have such an ego to claim that that was true. Certain things we get wrong, and China was clearly one of them. What we saw was that China's profit cycle was starting to accelerate, fundamentals were starting to improve a couple of years ago, and the stocks were actually doing well. Then we started getting political whiffs of what was going on, and the stocks started underperforming, despite the fact that fundamentals were doing well. Then the fundamentals in China began to erode, and we simply said, hey, if the stocks aren't outperforming when the fundamentals are good, what's going to happen when the fundamentals get worse?
Of course, the fundamentals did get worse, and the stocks did underperform. We went through a whole period where we tried to avoid China as well. Right now, we may be, honestly, a tiny bit cute in trying to say EMX China versus EM itself. The takeaway from what we're trying to say, and the takeaway of the way our portfolios are positioned right now is not so much China versus non-China, but it's the broadening of global opportunities, whether it's in Europe, whether it's in emerging markets, regardless of where it is. I think people spend too much time worrying about the economy, and we're forgetting, we're investors, we're not economists.
And so the economy is an interesting discussion, but ultimately, what you care about is the stock market, the valuations, and everything else. I've said to people, just taking Europe as an example here, and running with the earlier portion, is what do the European stock markets not have that the US stock market had that caused every believe the US is the place to be, and that's the only place to be. Why would they think that? What in the stock market is making them do that? The answer is that the United States stock market has a big tech sector. You don't find that in most other markets around the world, multi companies, not just one company in one market, in one country.
But we have a very well developed tech sector. What we saw through this narrow leadership was tech dominating everything. If you look around the world and you look at US small and mid caps, you look at Europe, you look at emerging markets, what you will find is they've all performed very similarly during this Mag 7 period, and they're all valued very similarly too, not perfectly, but within a range. What I'm trying to say to people is it really has been Mag 7 or tech, or how we want to describe this, versus everything else. That has been what we've seen. People always say diversification is a risk reduction tool, but right now, diversification gives you an opportunity set. It gives you something other than these seven companies. I think people are finally starting to understand that those seven companies, Number 1, aren't the only growth stocks in the world, and Number 2, many of them aren't even superior growers.
There are better growth opportunities in other markets. It's just momentum was carrying the day and nobody was looking, and I think people are finally starting to look at it. The message in our portfolios, Ricky, is really not so much China versus not China, but the opportunity set, whether it's small, mid cap, developed markets, emerging markets, whatever. There are plenty of investment opportunities out there right now, many more than I think most people think.
Ricky Mulvey: I wasn't trying to catch you on the China stuff. I was to figure out what happened there. I've made plenty of bad calls on this show myself. I got the scars on my hand from juggling some falling knives. Shout out Big Lots. Let's dig into a little bit of this here. One of the fundamental problems I've seen with investing in Chinese stocks as well, one is not actually purchasing the stock. It's like some odd profit sharing agreement that goes to a different bank. You're not necessarily buying an ownership position when you're buying something like Alibaba. Is that a problem for anyone who is interested in buying Chinese stocks, do you think?
Richard Bernstein: Ricky, many years ago, I used to teach in the grad school at NYU, in the business school. One of the things I used to try to point out to the MBA students was that Chinese capitalism is not the same as Western capitalism. Western capitalism, as we're all taught, is based on the notion of profit maximization. That's what companies try to do. Chinese capitalism is based on employment maximization. That's the goal. If you understand that difference in the goal, you can understand a lot more about what goes on, why the government intervenes the way they do and all the different things.
What you found, you know, 5, 7, 8 years ago, was that Chinese capitalism began to mimic Western capitalism. We began to talk about profit maximization, and wealthy individuals. What did the Chinese government do? They smacked that down in two seconds. They like capitalism, but not our version of capitalism. That's very difficult for people to understand. Now, the propaganda stuff, all of a sudden you hear about the Chinese Communist Party and all, but no party stays in power, unless ultimately people's lives are getting better. Unless it's going to be a really difficult power hungry type economy, that's probably not going to happen, but normally, you'll see that happen. I think the Chinese Communist Party wants to stay in power. They don't want a cultural revolution.
Ricky Mulvey: Then the mega cap stocks. There is a rush of capital there, but I want to give the opposing viewpoint on this, and that is that it is deserved. Let's start from a place of why is all of the capital flowing there? It's because these are the companies that are dominating the world. Billions of people go on Meta every day. NVIDIA is driving the AI revolution. Google owns the Internet in many ways. For all of these mega cap companies, while there's been a tremendous amount of inflow into those stocks, the forward PE multiples are not in outer space. They're all below 30 for the ones I just mentioned, which is relatively high, but that to me does not scream that there's a huge level of excitement and belief in future earnings power for these companies.
Richard Bernstein: Let me respond to that. First of all, let me say something that I'm going to bet nobody who's watching this news, that right now about 25%, maybe 30% of the S&P 500 companies are forecasted to grow their earnings 25% or more. The opportunity for growth right now in the S&P is pretty broad, 30% of the index is supposed to grow 25% or more. Here's the better part, only one of the Magnificent 7 makes that group. Only one of the Mag 7 is forecast to grow earnings 25% or more.
Ricky Mulvey: Is that NVIDIA?
Richard Bernstein: I think it is. That's probably coming under a little pressure right now too. Now, the second thing that I was going to say on this is that narrow markets are the exception, not the rule. By our reckoning, '23-'24 was the narrowest market since '98-'99, which was a tech bubble. Giving credit where credit is due, Fidelity has pointed out that before that, it was the Nifty 50 period of the early 1970s. Again, credit where credit is due. Goldman Sachs has pointed out that before that, you have to go back to the depression. Now, during a depression, one can understand narrow markets. I think economically, that makes a lot of sense, because during a depression, companies are trying to stay alive. Forget growth, who can stay alive? You get very narrow leadership because everybody's going bankrupt. That seems to make perfect sense. Now, we could argue all day long about how strong or weak the US economy has been over the last couple of years. But unless I missed it, we didn't have a depression. I think this is more like the early 70s Nifty 50, the tech bubble of '98-'99, because you don't have this economic justification of why we had such narrow markets. Narrow markets are the exception, not the rule.
Why are they the exception? They are the exception because of capitalism. Capitalism is all about competition. If you're a big guy sitting there, somebody's going to try and compete with you. We got a whiff of that with DeepSeek. What did everybody say? No, it's just DeepSeek. Then, let's go buy and video on the deep. No, the message was that these big companies are sitting there and they're starting to be competition. That was the message, and that's what should happen. Now, if you believe that, to use the word that it really likes to use, their moats are so big that nobody can possibly compete with them. I would suggest that you file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about antitrust and unfair competition, and things like that. Because never in history do these big companies never have competition. This has happened over and over again. This is not the first time we've had big dominant companies. Either they get competition or they're broken up because of antitrust. I don't know what's going to happen here, but I will suggest to you the growth prospects for the next wave of whatever's the next big theme, are probably very cheap relative to people hanging on to these big companies right now.
Ricky Mulvey: Always love getting a contrarian perspective on the show. As we start to wrap up here, one thing I want to make sure we talk about is crypto, because you've said that this is the first truly global financial bubble. We can get to the crypto reserve in a sect, but what is it about crypto that makes it a truly global financial bubble versus ones we've seen in the past, shout out mortgages?
Richard Bernstein: The reason I say this is the first true global financial bubble is that most financial bubbles have been reasonably local. You mentioned US mortgages. The tech bubble, '98-'99 was largely US effect. If you think back to Japan, that was the Japan market in the late '80s. Even tulips was really just Holland, it wasn't all over the place. But this is now a global effect that's going on, and that's partly because of the technology, of course. Now, what people say is the technology associated with Bitcoin in particular is fantastic technology. Honestly, I don't know if that's true or not. I don't think anybody really knows. I think people just parrot this notion that it's a great technology, but let's assume it is a great technology. I don't think that has anything to do with whether Bitcoin is at 10,000, 20,000, or $100,000. I think that's the speculative nature of what's going on. Part of the notion for cryptocurrencies is their scarcity. Bitcoin, in particular, people talk about the scarcity. There's only a limited amount. I think that's wrong for two reasons. Number 1, every financial bubble in history has talked about scarcity. Every single one has talked about scarcity, this is nothing new.
Even in the tulip days, they started trading other flowers, believe it or not, because there was a scarcity and everybody wanted to get in. Look how many cryptocurrencies there are, and there's no scarcity of cryptocurrencies. Number 2, let's say Bitcoin does replace the dollar. Let's go down that rabbit hole, and let's assume fiat currency is dead, Bitcoin is the only that becomes the currency of the world. Let's assume that's right for a second. I think what people are missing is a history and an understanding of money and banking. Let's assume that Bitcoin is at $100,000 and there's no more dollars. I don't know how we're valuing it, it's just 100,000 Bitcoin, whatever. I would suggest we have a crushing global depression because most people won't be able to buy it. We just have this massive depression, or what's more likely is that people start lending Bitcoin. You can do this already. What happens is that people confuse the money supply with the monetary base. The money supply is always bigger than the monetary base. In the United States right now, the monetary base, basically the amount of stuff, amount of currency, that ratio, the money supply to monetary base, I'm going to round here a little bit, let's say it's 3-4, somewhere in that range. That's in a normal functioning economy, the money multiplier is about 3-4, implying that's how much lending is involved.
That would argue that if there really is a limited supply of Bitcoin and it come and becomes a normal process, there will be 3-4 times the amount of Bitcoin available than there is in this monetary base, your Bitcoin base, if you will. That would argue to me the way people are valuing Bitcoin right now, let's just say it's four times to make the math very easy, it shouldn't be 100,000, it should be 25,000 because it's going to be four times the amount of currency. Well, that's in a well, some people would argue, overregulated financial sector right now. Prior to 2008, prior to the global financial crisis, the money multiplier in the United States was about 10, actually a little more, but for the sake of math, let's do 10. That would argue it's not $100,000, it should be $10,000.
But the whole beauty of Bitcoin supposedly is it's completely deregulated. If it's completely deregulated, why would the money multiplier stop at 10? Why wouldn't it go to 20-30-40, whatever it takes to make sure that there's, in other words, forget the scarcity, adequate Bitcoin availability in the overall economy or the overall global economy, so that the economy functions. If it's 20, or 30, or 40, that would argue it shouldn't be 100,000, figure out the math, what it should be. It should be like a tenth or whatever, of what it is right now, or 5% of what it is right now, or something like that. I don't think people have actually thought this through. You mentioned Bitcoin Reserve, I don't think anybody would be interested in a Bitcoin Reserve if cryptocurrencies were cascading down. One of the big things of financial bubbles is the difference between a bubble and speculation is that bubbles pervade society. They go outside the financial markets. I can't think of a better symptom of a bubble than our government talking about a Bitcoin Reserve. It's gone outside the financial markets, and it's now invading government.
Ricky Mulvey: Numbers going up and there might be some conflicts of interest, but that's a whole other topic. I know we got to end it there. Rich Bernstein, really appreciate your time, your insight, and thanks for joining us on Motley Fool Money.
Richard Bernstein: Thanks Ricky.
Mary Long: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards, and is not approved by advertisers. The Motley Fool only picks products that it would personally recommend to friends like you. For the Motley Fool Money team, I'm Mary Long, thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday, Fools.
