In this episode of Motley Fool Answers, host Alison Southwick is joined by Motley Fool personal finance expert Robert Brokamp and Motley Fool analyst Ron Gross to answer listener questions about how many stocks people should own, what makes a 401(k) stink, what to do when your spouse wants you to sell all your stocks, and much more.
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This video was recorded on January 26, 2021.
Alison Southwick: This is Motley Fool Answers. I'm Alison Southwick, joined as always by Robert call-me-Buck Brokamp. This week, Ron Gross joins us to talk about when to sell a stock, what to do when your 401(k) stinks, asset allocation, and Roth IRAs for the kiddos. All that and more, on this week's episode of Motley Fool Answers.
It's the mailbag episode, and Bro, who do we have joining us this month?
Robert Brokamp: Fellow Tampa Bay Buccaneer fan, Ron Gross.
Ron Gross: What a pleasure it is to be here with you two on this special occasion.
Southwick: Yes. I don't know if our listeners know this, but Bro, as our resident [...] , you know how to pick a football team. How do you feel [...] your team is actually winning?
Brokamp: I know. As a Buccs fan since the '70s and at periods, it's been among the worst pro football teams in history. It's so nice to be back in the Super Bowl.
Gross: First-time ever that a Super Bowl is being played in the town where one of the participants is playing. Very exciting.
Brokamp: Yes.
Southwick: Yes.
Brokamp: Ron is a fan as well.
Gross: Yes.
Southwick: There you go.
Gross: It's going to be a fun day.
Southwick: That's all the sports talk you're going to get on Motley Fool Answers for the next five years. We're going to get into the questions then. Our first one comes from Wayne. "I'm a recent subscriber and I need a good framework for when I should sell a stock. What resources are there for me?"
Gross: Me, that's the research. What more research do you need in The Motley Fool? You can actually Google, as I did in preparation for this show. Believe it or not, I did prepare. You can actually Google that. Lots of various articles will come up from widely respected organizations. We have published quite a bit on this as well. There's a bunch of reasons why you would want to sell a stock. I picked five to highlight. But the list goes on and on. The first one for me is, if your thesis is broken, or if the reason that you originally bought the stock no longer exists, that might be a time where you would say, I no longer believe in this company or where it's going or what it's doing and I want out.
If you need the money for another purpose is a perfectly fine time to sell. For example, many folks, when it's time to buy their home, their first time, their second home, whatever it may be, their summer home even, would liquidate stocks and sell to raise money.
Thirdly, if the stock is very overvalued, I think it's fine to take profits and sell. If you're not following the companies close enough to know when a company is very overvalued, this might be a dicey one and you would have to go again to the internet to see what some other folks, including The Motley Fool, are saying. Don't focus too much on valuation, but there does come a time where stock price has gotten so high that your future returns will probably not be what you hoped they would be. That's a fine time to sell. Two more quick, if a new CEO, if you're not happy with the direction that he or she is going to be taking the company, other senior management team in the C-suites as we say, the executive suites, if you don't like something about their background or where they seem to want to take this company, that's a perfectly fine time to sell.
Finally, if a position has become too large a part of your portfolio, the allocation is just too high a percentage, there's too much risk involved in that, you're not sleeping at night because of that, that's a fine time to pare back. You don't necessarily need to sell all of the stock, but certainly you could sell some. Pair that position back to a more manageable size that matches your risk tolerance and you can sleep way better each evening.
Brokamp: I'll just add that, for the people who invest in actively managed mutual funds, you should certainly see if they are beating their benchmark over the past three to five years. That would be a reason to sell. Since this person did mention that they are a Motley Fool subscriber, just pay attention to the emails you get. I know you get a lot of emails, but every service will tell you when to sell something or whether it's been moved from super-duper buy to a lesser buy or something like that. You just have to stay on top of that. I've come across many situations where a member is still holding on to a company that the service recommended be sold, just because they missed that sell recommendation.
Southwick: Our next question comes from Ronald. "I'm 40 with probably 30+ years until retirement. I'm obviously in the growth part of my investing life, but with millions of other people retiring or planning to retire soon, would using a part of my portfolio to invest in strong dividend-paying companies be smart? I would assume that as the retired and soon to be retired start moving their money into these safer investments, that would create more demand for these stocks. Am I thinking too much or not enough?"
Brokamp: Well, Ronald, Ron and I are the co-advisors of Total Income, which is a service of The Motley Fool. Every recommendation in that service, every stock recommendation pays a dividend. That's because it is for people who are looking for income and dividend-paying stocks are a good place for that. I would say if you are farther from retirement and you're not looking for income, I would focus more on just finding good companies and then worry less about whether they're paying a dividend or not. That said, a dividend that is consistent and growing is a good sign of a good company, it means it's cash flow positive. Dividends impose a certain amount of discipline on management, so you could certainly look at dividend, if it's growing consistently at above-average rate, that's a good sign. As for the theory that there'll be even greater demand for these as more people retire, I think we're already seeing that. The stat you've probably heard is that 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. So, there is already this demand for income-producing investments. You'll see that yields generally are below average these days. I would say we've already reached that point where a lot of people are retiring and want demand from these types of investments. That said, over the last few years, growth-type investments have been more popular, so I would say some of these dividend-paying companies are probably a little cheaper right now.
Gross: This is funny. I actually answered this exact same question on this week's episode of Motley Fool Money. I guess Ronald asked it in two places, hopefully we'll get a complete answer and combine both. The only thing I'll add is, when you think of buying dividend stocks, always keep your eye on a total return of a company. So, that's the appreciation potential plus the dividend yield, because that's really what should be driving your investment decision, not just whether a company is yielding 2% or 3%. Some great places to look for companies that have generally generated nice total returns are the Dividend Aristocrats. You could just Google that. Those are companies in the S&P 500 that have increased their dividends for 25 consecutive years. They are household names like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Target, Walmart. Companies that have both produced nice dividend yields and stock price appreciation over the years.
Southwick: Our next question comes from Eric. "I subscribe to the long-term buy and hold investment style." Eric sounds like our type of person here. "I have about 50%of my portfolio in various low fee ETFs. 40% spread across about 20 individual stocks, many are Motley Fool picks, and 10% in cash. I've been following this allocation for about six years and have had market-beating returns. My question is, how do I convince my wife to stay the course with the investment plan? She is generally more risk-averse than I am, and has been reading a bunch of articles that say stocks are in a bubble, sell everything now, and you have to be stupid to buy stocks in 2021. When I tell her that trying to time the market usually doesn't work, she says we should sell everything and then slowly buy back over the next 12 months. I am not articulate enough or knowledgeable enough to fully explain the pros and cons of lump-sum versus dollar-cost averaging in this way. Given her risk-averse nature, my argument of losing potential gains does not overcome her argument of limiting potential losses. How do I convince her to stay the course and ride through the volatility? Feel free to tell me I am wrong and she is right."
Gross: I would never do that. I'm married as well. I'm not going there. There's a lot to unpack here, and there's a lot of studies that will tell you why market timing is not a good idea and that's because it's too difficult to get right. I'll just talk about one. Over the last 20 years, missing out on the 40 best days in the market would have resulted in a triple-digit percentage loss. So, in other words, if an investor on average, missed just the two best trading days each year over the 20-year period, returns would go from very positive to very negative. You need to be in the market to capture those good days and suffer through the bad ones. But if you own good stocks that you're proud of and you're happy to own, you should be able to ride through the tough times. Look what happened in March of 2020. It was a disaster, but if you held on, you're perfectly fine right now and maybe even had some cash on the sidelines to put to work when things were cheaper. You'll never hear me advocating for a market timing strategy. It's too difficult to get right. If we could get it right, I guess I would say go ahead and do it, but it's just too difficult. You'll end up missing out on more upside.
Now, I will just say one more thing about risk tolerance. It sounds to me like, as you say, your wife has less risk tolerance than you, and so as a team, you really should get together and decide what kind of tolerance you have as a partnership, and then maybe adjust your allocations. Maybe you want to hold more cash, maybe you want to hold something other than equities like bonds, although they're not super-duper right now, but just something that would lower that risk tolerance so you both can sleep at night and yet both be invested in growing for the future.
Brokamp: I've said this before, and it may not be appropriate in this situation, but if you as a couple, disagree about anything about money investing or otherwise, there might be a good time, just have a check-in with a fee-only financial planner, because that way it's not a decision about you versus her, but you have an objective professional there in the middle, and the professional hopefully will not only have a typical financial planning answer, but have some experience with sort of navigating these things between spouses. Ideally, one solution with spouses too, is that each spouse has a little bit of money to spend. We've talked about that before. It might make sense that each spouse has a little bit of money to invest too, and that each person has their own account and they can do whatever they want without the other spouse judging it.
Southwick: Yeah, and I'm trying to think like, what would work on me if I was reading all these articles that said, don't buy stocks, stocks are going to crash, and I wonder if it's about explaining how long they're going to be invested for. The people who are writing those articles are writing articles more for traders, more for short-term thinkers, more for people who are like, yeah, maybe they shouldn't buy stocks over the next 12 months. But it's a different audience, she may be reading articles that say, only stocks are for suckers, but that's more for an audience that's more short-minded, traders, people like that. Whereas, if they're holding these stocks for five, 10 years, you can just pull out a chart [laughs] of the stock market for its history and see if you hold these stocks for five to 10 years, this is where we're headed and those articles aren't about us. They're not for us, they're not about us, they're not going to help us.
Gross: If you look at a long-term chart as you just suggested, the real bad times look like just a blip in time.
Southwick: Yeah, exactly.
Gross: The whole thing is up into the right, which is the beauty of the stock market. Now, when you're living through those tough times, I know it hurts and it's scary and it feels pretty rough, but just take the wider long-term historical perspective and it will make you feel much better.
Brokamp: Yeah, because if you look at the chart, you are going to see they're either going to be those times. At some point, before this couple retires, there is going to be a time when stocks are down 30%, 40%, 50%. That time is going to come. So whether it's this year or not, it's going to come and they have to find some sort of middle ground, as Ron was suggesting, where they're both going to be comfortable because at some point, that day is going to come.
Southwick: Our next question comes from Nate. In the previous episode, Bro made reference to the "stinky 401(k)s". Can you please elaborate on what would make a 401(k) fall in this category? Mine is Roth 401(k). Is that one of the criteria? I thought it's not so bad to have at the moment given the current low tax environment. Also, STOCKS! Who's got the stinky camembert 401(k)? What does that mean, Bro?
Brokamp: Well, your 401(k), the quality of 401(k) really comes down to three things: cost, investments and features. It costs more to run a 401(k) than just to go somewhere and open an IRA or just a regular brokerage account, and the question then is who's covering those costs? If you have an excellent employer, the employer's covering almost all of them, but most employers have sort of a cost sharing arrangement and some employers, but most of the costs on the employees. So that's the number one thing to look at. Who's paying for the administrative costs. It could be just an annual dollar fee, or it could be a percentage of your accounts. Talk to your HR department and see who's paying for that.
Then there are the investments within the 401(k). Hopefully, you have a good menu of 15 to 25 low cost mutual funds, index funds, actively managed funds that beat their benchmarks, and then the third part is the features, and the features can be the Roth. So, having Roth is great. About 70% of 401(k)s offer the Roth, but not all do. Another great feature is the side brokerage account that allows you to invest in individual stocks, other ETFs, other mutual funds, maybe 15% to 20% allow that, and you can always just ask for those. Go to your HR department, maybe get some of your colleagues together and say, you know what, we'd love to have this feature in our plan. It may not even cost more to your employer. Just go ahead and ask it. Those are the three criteria. If you have a plan where the employers cover most or all the costs, you have good investments and you have good features, you have a good plan.
Southwick: We did get a tweet on Twitter, I just said that like the oldest woman in America. One of our listeners was saying, I work for a massive employer. Am I really going to be able to have an impact on my company's 401(k) and they were just very skeptical that you could actually change the way your company is doing things.
Brokamp: Yes. That's certainly understandable. The good thing is, some of the best 401(k)s are from the big employers because they have negotiating leverage, so when they go to a Fidelity or a Vanguard or whomever, they can negotiate lower fees because they are bringing in more assets. Ideally, the great example is the Federal TSP for savings plan. You will not find lower-cost investment choices than what you find in the federal plan, because it is the biggest employer in the country. Hopefully, this person's already in a good situation. But I will say, and I've talked about this before, HR folks, great folks, but they're not necessarily investment for professionals or experts. They may not even be aware of the benefits of having the side brokerage account. Maybe you could get some people together and just talk to them about it and just educate them a little bit more.
Southwick: Our next question comes from Mark, "I just signed up for Motley Fool Premium and I'm loving it." Thank you for putting sandwiches on my kids' plate there, Mark, I appreciate it. "For an entry-level investor like me with a limited amount to invest, would you suggest I buy at least one share of every stock that Tom and David currently own, or purchase more of the individual companies that my limited knowledge and time-constrained research of their picks allow."
Gross: Good question. We get similar questions to this a lot about how best to use our services. Of course, this is somewhat personal preference, but I don't think I would look to buy every stock recommended. There's simply too many of them, especially in Motley Fool Premium. It's a long list. So, I think it makes sense to focus on, this is a little inside baseball, but if you go to that site and you look at our performance, you'll see a whole list of all the stocks recommended, and then I think you can focus on the ones that have the label starter. Those are starter stocks, where we recommend in a nice way to start your portfolio. It creates a nice little base. That's a perfect way to start buying some stocks. Then you can look at the stocks that are labeled "Now". That stands for 'best buys now.' That's the stocks that we feel are the best ones to buy this month and the best buys now get updated each month and you can take a look at what we're saying and pick and choose from those lists each month. Then lastly, I think maybe take a look at the last several months of latest recommendations, our newest recommendations and see if any of those resonate with you. Airbnb would be a good example of a new stock that is a recent recommendation which may resonate with you because you're a user of it or you like where it's going. Between the starter stocks, the best buys now, and the recent recommendations, I think you'll have plenty to choose from and you don't need to go and put money into every single recommendation.
Brokamp: I'll just add as someone who is a big fan of diversification, you would also want to compliment whatever you're buying with what you already own, whether individual stocks or actively managed mutual funds. I was reading an article the other day about the S&P 500, how it's now more concentrated than it's ever been since 1980. If you buy a share of the S&P 500, 7% of it is Apple. At no point since 1980 has one company made up so much of the index. If you have already a lot of money in the S&P 500 index, you may not want to then buy additional shares of Apple, just as an example.
Southwick: Our next question comes from Rich, we've had Ronald, and then we got to Ron, now we got to Rich for our Rick. What is the best way to start a Roth IRA for my early mid-20s children with some inheritance money I've received? Do I have to give the money to them and leave it to them to open an account and make the investments with my advice, or is there some way for me to have more control of the process and the investment choices?
Brokamp: Well, very kind of you for helping out your kids get started on their retirement. Just as a reminder to open or at least contribute to an IRA, you have to have earned income. Ideally, your kids are working and making enough money so that you can contribute that $6,000 or whatever you're going to put it in. But $6,000 is the limit for this year if you're under 50. You can open up and manage someone else's IRA. You need a limited power of attorney. You can just call the brokerage that you're interested in and say, "Listen, I'm going to open and manage this account for my kids, what POA form do I need to do that?" I will say that, when my wife and I opened an IRA for my son based on the income here and being a lifeguard, we kind of just did it ourselves. He just signed the application form but we did it and we sent the check in. Our names were on the check. They didn't care with our name on the check, and then we helped him choose investments and stuff like that. But if you actually wanted to be able to log into the account legally and manage the account, you will need some sort of a power of attorney.
Southwick: Our next question comes from Robert. We had a Ron, we had a Richard, now we got a Robert. I hope there's an Alison question coming up here soon so I may have to make one up myself. [laughs] Robert writes, "I started purchasing your recommended stocks in March. I figured it was now or never with the market decline. I never had been confident buying individual stocks, even after investing for over 40 years in mutual funds. Since March, I've bought about 50 of your recommendations. My question is, should I reduce that amount to 10 or 15? I'm really confident in your research and would hate to sell any of them. But listening to one of your podcasts, it was recommended that the best way to get maximum growth is to not diversify too much. A counterintuitive approach, but it makes sense." Ron, does it make sense?
Gross: I do agree that diversifying too much is not a great strategy for two main reasons that come to mind. First, it's hard to keep up with all of the companies that you own if that is something you desire to do or you would like to do. I recommend at least peripherally, being aware of how your companies are doing that are in your portfolio. The second thing is that the more stocks you own, as you approach 100, 200 stocks, you start to have performance that's more like the stock market as a whole, and you start to mirror the indexes that hopefully we're all trying to beat, like the S&P 500, for example. Now, specifically, I don't think you have a problem with 50 stocks. You're not going to get into that kind of indexing by mistake situation with 50 stocks, so I don't have a problem with that. Just keep in mind, I do think as you get closer to the 150 mark, you start to diversify some of that stock-picking extra special sauce out of the mix. 50 seems fine to me. The other side of that question, paring back down to 10 or 15, I think 10 is too little. If somebody wanted to do that, we typically say 15 or more stocks will provide you some nice diversification. Lately, to be honest, we've been talking more in the line of around 25 stocks even is perfectly fine. Again, I'm probably around somewhere 50 myself, I haven't counted. I think that's perfectly fine and you're not in any danger of diworsifying, as they say.
Southwick: Our next question comes from Benjamin. "You keep talking about getting an emergency fund and I am working my way toward having three to six months' worth of funds saved and cash. I have a whole life insurance policy in my name and the cash value is a few thousands of dollars that I can borrow at any time without surrendering the policy. I was wondering, could I apply the insurance funds as a backup for my emergency fund since I can access the cash anytime? For example, if I have saved 3,000 in cash and the whole life policy allows me to access the cash of 3,000, doesn't that give $6,000 of an emergency fund, or should I just pretend the funds and the whole life policy or off limits? If either if you are ever in Dallas, please let me know and I can recommend some good barbecue places to you."
Brokamp: I'm coming on that road trip.
Southwick: Yes, we went to Austin and just ate our way through all the barbecue places in Austin. So, maybe we can try Dallas too. What do you think, Bro?
Brokamp: So, I like the way Benjamin is thinking. So first of all, I would say, he needs to start to think about how big of an emergency he has to worry about and what an emergency means to him. The way to think about it really is, if something happens to him, like he loses his job, if he is young, if he's single, if he can move back in with his parents, he's probably going to be OK. It's a lot different if you're married, you have kids, you have a mortgage, you have car payments, then you need more of an emergency fund. I like the idea of thinking of emergency funds beyond your cash, and maybe a little bit of the cash value life insurance policy. More and more financial planners are looking for these things like what they would call 'buffer assets.' They would also sort of home equity into that because you can get a home equity loan if you need it or a reverse mortgage if you're over 62.
Just be aware of the consequences of borrowing the money from anything, but in this case, life insurance, and that is we borrowed the money, that's great. It's called a loan but you don't have to get approved or anything, it's your money. Interest rates are low-ish, generally. The thing is, you have to know that if you don't pay it back, there are consequences. So, that could be the policy lapses and you no longer have life insurance. That's a problem. If the policy lapses and depending on how much money you took out, some of that could be taxable, that cash value. If you don't pay it back and you pass away, that loan will be taken out from the death benefit to your heirs. So, while I think it is a fine idea to think about these things as backup assets if you need them, just be aware of the consequences. The problem about thinking I'll just borrow some money from anything, if I'm in dire financial straits is, if you are in dire financial straits, how are you going to pay that money back, and if you can't pay it back, what are the consequences? So, that's why I think you just have to be aware of.
Gross: Bro, do you recommend that people that own a home always have that line of credit that HELOC, Home Equity Line of Credit already established, even if they don't intend to tap it, just in case they need quick access to cash or is that too much?
Brokamp: I don't recommend it, but I don't see a problem with it. I know people do it. The reason why you would do that is because I think some people are worried about -- I would want that if I lost my job, but then if I lose my job, it's hard to get a loan. But because the house serves as the collateral for the loan, it's actually not that difficult, but I certainly don't have a problem with people doing it, just be aware of the cost of taking out the loan. There are usually some costs being approved and establishing that line of credit.
Gross: Great.
Southwick: Next question comes from Jack. "I am currently a junior at Penn State University pursuing a double major in finance and economics." Well, look at the big brain on deck.
Brokamp: We are.
Southwick: My question is, what is the optimal asset allocation for a 20-year-old? I keep up with the stock market a lot and follow a ton of companies, I just do not know what the best stock, bond, ETF index fund allocation would be for me right now. I have about $22,000, I'm going to start to invest within the next few weeks. It's so sweet when they start young.
Gross: Yeah, I was going to say, [laughs] I love this question, Jack, and I love that you're getting in early. It's really wonderful to see. Bro, you might know more than me on this one, so check me on this. I'm not a financial planner, I'm more of a research stock picker guy, but I personally would like to see a 20-year-old in 100% equities. I'm personally indifferent as to whether that's ETFs or individual stocks. I think a combination makes perfect sense. I have a combination in my own portfolio, and the one thing that I thought maybe, Bro, you could speak to here as well, is that since he does seems to have some income coming in, maybe a Roth IRA as the vehicle for some of that $22,000 would make sense, so that can grow tax deferred, but I think he's thinking about this perfectly right, and he's in the game really early, and it's great to see.
Brokamp: Yeah, I would agree. The great thing about the Roth IRA, again, you do have to have the income to contribute, but even though it's for retirement, if you want the money you put in out at some point before retirement, that comes out tax penalty free. It's the earnings that might be taxed and penalized if you take it out sooner. I'm fine with a 100% stock allocation for a young person as long as they have more than three to five years before they need it. If he's investing this money to buy a car in the next year I would feel differently, and like you, my portfolio's a mix of individual stocks, ETFs, index funds and actively managed funds. The more he is willing to stay on top of companies and he believes in companies, and it sounds like he is, you could have all individual stocks as far as I'm concerned.
Southwick: Next question comes from Mike. I took a Cares Act distribution of $30,000 from my employer retirement account, a 457 plan at Fidelity. I chose not to have any taxes withheld by Fidelity. I made sure that I did not take enough to push me into a higher tax bracket. I know I will need to pay taxes on the distribution and intend to do that over three years as allowed. How does the mechanics of this work? I assume Fidelity will send me some type of form to the IRS showing that I got a $30,000 distribution. Do I simply add one third of $30,000, $10,000, to my income when I file my 2020 Federal taxes, and do that when filing for 2021 and 2022? I assume also there will be some form to fill out but I have not yet found any website that discusses a form to fill out." Will there be a form to fill out? The man's looking for a form, Bro. Help him out.
Brokamp: Mike, interestingly enough, probably one of the reason that there is no form is that the IRS is behind, and they've already had announced that normally they start processing tax returns by late January, so you could submit your tax return for 2020 now, and expect them to look at it very soon. They've already said they are not going to be accepting tax returns until February 12th, but that doesn't mean the tax deadline has been moved. You still have only until April 15th to file your taxes. They still have 7 million returns from last year they still haven't processed, and those, by the way, are all paper returns. You definitely want to be filing electronically this year because they are so behind in processing paper returns.
I would say this, first of all, Fidelity is going to tell Uncle Sam that you've got the distribution, you'll probably receive a 1099-R. I think you'll be fine just doing like you said, just reporting the $10,000 this year, $10,000 the next year, $10,000 the next, because as the CARES Act says, you can do that. You might want to call Fidelity because they're pretty much on top of these things and see if they plan to send a special type of thing to you, but certainly once you file your taxes, the tax return, whether you're using an online tax return or a paper form, there will be some new place to indicate that you took a CARES Act distribution, and I'll just remind you that you have three years to return the money if you change your mind. Even if you file your taxes this year, say you're paying taxes on $10,000 of it, but then later on you put the $30,000, you can do an amended return and get that money back that you paid taxes on that distribution.
Southwick: All right. Our last question comes from Cameron. Not Alison. [laughs] Here we go. I've been investing for about a year. Although I'm doing well I'm still confused when it comes to buying stocks. Which is more important? The number of shares you buy or the amount of money you invest in a stock, and why? All right, Ron, bring us home.
Gross: We get this question a lot, actually. The number of shares should never be the focus. Just put that out of your mind. The only thing that matters is the amount of money you put into an investment. It doesn't matter if the $1,000 you're putting into a stock is spread over five shares or 20 shares. The $1,000 of capital that you commit is the only thing that matters, that's the only thing that will generate your rate of return based on when you do the math, the number of shares is completely out of the picture. You don't do better if you have a lot of shares, or worse if you have fewer shares, it's about the amount of money you put into an investment.
Brokamp: I'll say the reverse of it, because we'll sometimes get questions that go, what I want to buy a stock but I only have enough money to buy a partial share, a fraction of a share? Does that mean I am not going to benefit as much in the same issue, or does it matter whether you have a half a share or 100 shares? If that stock goes up 10%, you'll still make that same return.
Gross: Yeah, and then in the old days you couldn't actually buy a fractional share, but now many mainstream brokerages allow you to do so. You can buy a quarter of Amazon, or half a share of Apple, and become an owner of that company, even though the price per share in the old days, it would have been prohibited. You wouldn't have been able to do that. Now, it's a pretty exciting thing that you can become an owner of those companies that have share prices that are high.
Southwick: All right. Let's have a disclaimer. The legal wants me to say that The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against the stocks we talked about on the show, don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you've heard here. Ron Gross, thank you so much for joining us.
Gross: Always a pleasure, go Buccs. Thanks guys.
Southwick: [laughs] We'll have you back soon. Let's not have it be so long.
Gross: All right, sounds good.
Southwick: That's the show. It's edited by Tom Brady. No, I'm just kidding, we still have Rick here. We didn't replace him, are you kidding? The show is always-ly edited by Rick Enghdal. Our email is [email protected]. For Robert Brokamp, I'm Alison Southwick. Stay Foolish, everybody.
