hi, everyone. welcome to the "wall street journal report." i'm maria bartiromo. my rare conversation with one of the richest men in the world, larry ellison, on how he's spending his billions and his friendship with steve jobs. >> he was our edison, he was our picasso. and are you saving enough for retirement? how to boost your bottom line, especially if you're nearing that magic number. "the wall street journal report" begins right now. >> this is america's number wall street journal report."

now maria bartiromo . >> here's a look at what is making newsing as we head to a new week on wall street. a crucial report came in better than expected. the september jobs report showed the unemployment rate fell to 7.8%. the best number since january of '09. the economy created 114,000 new jobs for the month in line with what economists were looking for and job creation numbers for the two previous months also revised upward. after a mixed start to the week the markets bounced back after positive economic data and what some called a romney rally following the presidential debate. the market was mixed, though, on friday. the auto sales are powering on an annualized basis, auto sales hit 15 million units, the best number since march of '08. gm and ford posted flat numbers but chrysler, toyota and volkswagen were strong. a major milestone for facebook. the social network surpassed the 1 billion user mark for the month of september. ceo mark zuckerberg made the

announcement this week. the company stock is down from its share price earlier this year. there's no such thing as a foolish question about money, the markets or the economy. so says my next guest tom gardner, ceo of "the motley fool." tom, good to see you, thank you for joining us. >> good to see you, maria. >> we got the numbers out on friday showing 114,000 new jobs created for the month. the unemployment rate the lowest in 3 1/2 years, 7.8%. were you surprised by the numbers? what do you think it tells us where we are in the recovery? >> this is good news, no question. i think there are a couple of things to remember. first you get the context. we're 7.8% unemployment. historically over the last 60 years it has been 5.8%. two percentage points above where we would like to be in the u.s. the other thing is where are the jobs coming from? we see health care is a healthy

area for unemployment, manufacturing is not. i think that will continue to be true. american workers need to understand we are moving to a knowledge economy, technology, solutions and services and not product. there is that shift going on in the workforce as well. the markets neared multiyear highs this week. money has been moving in to stocks, do you think it continues to go up and do you think this is a post-debate romney rally? >> i don't know how much the debate influences the markets overall. i think that for long-term investors like us at "the motley fool" this is a fine time to be an investor. of course we generally think that. we like to add money every month. one of the worst things that happens and a lot of discussion on the macro issues the crisis that come along on wall street and the high-frequency trading that makes people think they have to pay attention on a second-by-second basis. a lot of retail investors have been pushed out of the market or withdrawn their capital. i think that is a big mistake

here. i think you want to be in equities, more than ever before over the last ten years if you look at the performance of stocks. i hope retail investors watching this program are thinking about getting more program in the mutual funds, equity and low-cost funds and stocks of businesses they believe in. >> part of the reason for the rally we have been seeing the momentum in the stock market is because of the federal reserve. this week the fed released the minutes from the last meeting which it announced a plan to buy $40 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities every month until the labor market improves. were you surprised by anything in the minutes about the federal reserve buying all this bond for stimulus? >> you need to do three things to get us out of the de-leveraging process. you need to print capital and have cuts in spending that are meaningful and then you have to raise taxes and close loopholes. uh got to have all the three working in concert to de-leverage out of the system we are in. $40 billion makes sense to me. qe3 makes sense to me up to a

point. i did note in the minutes that i would read from the minute that is if unemployment is above say 6.5% and inflation is below 3%, you're going to continue to see qe3 from one month to the next, but one you are getting close to the numbers they will start to shut it down. $40 billion a month will inflate the monetary supply by 15% a year. that's not something we are accustomed to seeing. we are de-leveraging but at some point inflation creeps into the process. >> tom, what about the civil suit that we saw this week, the civil suit by new york state attorney general against jpmorgan chase, they are alleging widespread company by the bear stearns business by the sale of mortgage-backed securities back in 2008. first, do you think this is a day late and dollar short and is it fair to target jpmorgan chase since they were forced to acquire the company during the financial crisis? >> it is always tough when a parent has to pay for the penalties of a subsidiary, of an acquisition n this case one that

was forced upon them. at the same time i think it is rampant in the industry and i think is anyone surprised, i don't think it is a day late or a dollar short, it is a couple of days late and more than a few dollars short. for an investor out there, just stay away from wall street altogether. get you low-cost index funds from a company like vanguard and buy individual stocks through a discount broker, you do it yourself inexpensively and build your portfolio over the long-term. the average investor out there should double their holding period if it is two years then it should be four years. if it is five years it should be ten years. but that fits in a category of stay away from wall street. i don't think that wall street has anything to add. >> you want to be in equities for the long term. where do you want to be then? where should toward allocate money right now? what's your investing advice? >> my investing advice is to look at trenders in the world and to buy into them. a company i love is linkedin.

it is transforming recruiting and we see so much focus on employment in the world and linkedin has a network model behind it. so much recruiting ten years from now, new jobs and upgrades in people's career will come to a connection to linkdin. these are going to come with some next to linkedin. i would also like to mention the ability to raise prices. starbucks is another stock i own and the motley pool owns. starbucks at $50 a share, i couldn't buy enough of this for somebody who's looking to invest and hold it more than five years. if you are in for three months or three weeks we don't have much to offer in terms of advice but long-term business-focused investors, i think those are the sorts of companies you want to invest in. >> good stuff. tom, great to talk to you. thank you so much. >> tom grad ner joining us here on "the wall street journal

report." up next on "the wall street journal report," let me ask you about your own use of capital. and we'll get larry ellison's rare take. and what boomers are doing to save for retirement and how the new normal changes the rules of the game as we go to break look at how the stock market ended the week. open enrollment is here. the time to choose your medicare coverage begins october 15th and ends december 7th. so call to enroll in a plan that could give you the benefits and stability you're looking for, an aarp medicarecomplete plan insured through unitedhealthcare. what makes it complete? it can combines medicare parts a and b, which is your hospital and doctor coverage

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for as low as a zero dollar monthly premium. this includes plans with part d prescription drug coverage. now is the time to look at your options start getting the benefits of an aarp medicarecomplete plan insured through unitedhealthcare. remember, open enrollment ends december 7th. call unitedhealthcare today about an aarp medicarecomplete plan. you can even enroll right over the phone. or visit us online. don't wait. call now. larry ellison is the founder, ceo and chairman of oracle, a business software company. in a rare interview this week we talked about his friend, the late steve jobs, the hawaiian

island he just bought and the state of oracle's business today. >> our business is actually fairly good. our software business is growing and our part of the hardware business we care about the most, our engineered systems, are growing at over 100% rate. >> you have been really a serial acquirer and the growth has shown throughout all the deals you have done. where are the holes, where are the opportunities to grow in terms of the next acquisition? are you poised to do another deal soon? >> we are not planning any major acquisition. we are really focused over the last seven or eight years we have reengineered all the applications for the cloud. we think that's a huge opportunity for organic growth. >> you have these smaller companies, these upstarts trying to take some market share, particularly as it relates to bigger data. how are you going to ensure enterprises are looking at oracle for the top-to-bottom solution? >> we have a much more complete

sweep of things than cloud. not just the marketing automation. we do accounting and financial planning. and human capital management and talent management, all those things. so we have a complete suite of applications in the cloud. that's something a small company can't do. >> let me ask you, i came across a lot of quotes preparing for the interview. one is we do not write software, we write checks. >> good old quote. >> does that mean you are not considering raising the dividend? you are not going to do a big deal, how will you use the money with a dividend increase? >> we could do a dividend down the road. i'm just saying over the next couple of years senior management down to individual programmers and salespeople are focused on one thing, selling applications in the cloud, selling our platform in the cloud, and selling the infrastructure in the cloud. so we are laser-like focused on that kind of organic growth and that huge organic growth opportunity for us.

a couple of years down the road we could look at a big acquisition again. so having a lot of cash in the bank is not a bad thing. my friend steve jobs had a lot of cash in the bank. >> i want to ask you about steve jobs. i feel like what steve jobs did for the individual you have done for the enterprise. and i know you are very close and were hit hard when he passed. >> it was almost exactly a year ago when he passed away. he was my best friend for 25 years. he's just irreplaceable. irreplaceable in our industry and irreplaceable as my friend. >> do you think apple will still have the innovations and the products in the pipeline going forward the way they did with steve jobs running it? >> i have great respect for the company and steve cook. but i will say it again, steve is irreplaceable. we have all lost something. he was our edison. he was our picasso. there's no one like him. apple will continue to thrive

not like when steve was around. >> reporter: let me ask you about your own use of capital. allocation of capital. we know you have made tons of headlines recently buying an island in hawaii, buying tons of homes, how many homes do you own, 15 or 11? >> homes that i live in or -- >> why do you buy homes if you don't live in them? >> i bought one in newport, rhode island, that i am concerting to an art museum. and i got this idea -- my favorite museums are things like the brick museum where it is someone's home that you walk through, home and garden in the case of donnie and hartford, and you see the art in a very comfortable, natural setting on a much smaller more human scale. >> the island of lanai, you love hawaii? >> i love hawaii and lanai is

a very interesting project. there what we are going to do is turn lanai in to a model for sustainable enterprise. we are going to convert sea water in to fresh water, and then have drip irrigation where we will have organic farms all over the island. hopefully export produce, really the best organic produce to japan and elsewhere and the hawaiian islands. we will support the local people and help them to start these businesses. we will help electric cars. so it's going to be a little, if you will, laboratory for sustainability in businesses of small scale. >> so what happens now? i mean, you've built this unbelievable company, a hundred-billion-plus, you've got an enormous amount of personal wealth. do you pinch yourself? when you look back at your

modest beginning, it is pretty extraordinary? >> it is extraordinary. steve and i used to talk about this a lot. both of us agreed, you know, every once in a while you stop and think about it, but 99.9% of the time you just kind of get on with the miracle of life, just being alive every day and going out and doing your job and enjoying being alive. >> my thanks to larry ellison. up next on "the wall street journal report," why it is never too late to increase your personal financial literacy even if you're edging closer to retirement tips on finances retirement and managing your bottom line. and follow us on twitter and and google. look for @maria bartiromo.

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welcome back. 50 may be fabulous for learning something new. never too late to shore up your foundation. for more i am joined by carrie schwab pomerantz, president of the charles schwab foundation. nice to have you on the show. >> wonderful to be here. >> 50 and fabulous. you are teening up with the aarp foundation targeting those over 50 who need to boost their financial confidence or are struggling to make ends meet. >> so we teamed up with the aarp foundation. let me paint a picture for you. 25% of americans are going to retire in the next 20 years.

that's a quarter of the population. what we found through our research is that 20 million americans today are struggling to make ends meet. they are not even thinking of retirement right now. so we think with this program, by giving them a little education and coaching, we can really make a difference in their financial lives. >> this is important because i think you go along in your career and you think, okay, i'm fine. i have money in savings and retirement. next thing you know you turn around and you are 50 and thinking, wait a second, do i have time to retire? do i have the right tools in place? >> absolutely. time does go by. of course we were talking about how we feel 25 years old, but that is always why we want to get the word out to get people to start saving younger. at 50, 60 years old it is not too late.

that's why we created the program with aarp. we had an elderly woman who is single living off social security and she learned she can get a credit report for free and saved $25 a month and she made it automatic with her bank. the bottom line is we have time and there is opportunity to creation a cushion for ourselves. >> a large percentage of the long-term unemployed are workers. talk to us about that. what are the challenges for the 50-plus age group? >> first of all, living within your means. talk about debt repair, credit repair and addressing your debt. it is also about saving, to prepare for retirement and then protecting your assets. so it is really about building some type of nest egg for these people. >> are people in the baby boom generation postponing retirement? are they planning to postpone retirement? what do you hear from that age group in terms of the concerns? >> 50 is still pretty young,

right? and in our culture it has changed where we baby boomers think we can still concur the world. and that's what's happening. retirement comes in all shapes and sizes. people are starting new businesses, taking on new hobbies. they are taking part-time jobs, it can be whatever they want, doing some volunteering, so you do see a lot of that happening. but then again, given what has happened with the economy, people have to reassess. they don't have the options like they had. that's why we created this program really to address this issue that people are ill-prepared. and, of course, this program focuses on the at-risk population, but as you know, so many americans at all income levels are not prepared. >> let's do that, focus us. what's the checklist or the steps we need to be aware of in terms of assessing retirement savings, assessing where we are for potential income?

>> at charles schwab we found through all of our research there is a large percentage of people that don't plan for retire and those that are in retirement wish they planned better. take a step back and assess your situation. how much money do you have now? how much money will you need? and how will you fill that gap? make a plan for that. i highly recommend seeing a financial adviser. i have my financial adviser. it is hugely critical to your success. lastly, a lot of people don't have an emergency fund. for a younger person, three to six months of cash to cover expenses is really important. if you are five years from retirement you should have one year's worth of cash to cover expenses. >> oftentimes you think of retiring but it is not necessarily the traditional retirement. you may start a business or do something else. >> keep in mind, retirement even at 65, you still have probably 30 more years to live. it is not about selling stocks and putting them in bonds.

you should always have at least 20% of diverse portfolio stocks to outperform inflation. >> carrie, great to see you. thank you so much. >> thank you maria. >> we appreciate the advice. up next on "the wall street journal report," a look at the news that will impact your money. and he is one of silicon valley's most watched executives that welcomes a bundle of joy. back in a moment. in this lab d, one sheet of bounty leaves this surface cleaner than two sheets of the leading ordinary brand. bounty. the clean picker upper. all of a sudden, when you have been making them with somebody else for 35 years. i guess there is something in me that has always been strong. i've always gotten through some pretty rough stuff without falling to pieces. ♪

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you can find more about the show on our website, wsjr.cnbc.com. now a look at the stories coming up to impact your money this week. monday is the columbus day holiday. banks and bond markets will be closed while the stock market is open. earnings season kicks off. companies reporting third quarter results include costco and jpmorgan chase. thursday the latest reading on the u.s. balance of trade. the vice presidential candidates take the stage for their one debate of the campaign season. also, thursday night. friday the producer price index is out, that's the ppi tracking inflation at the wholesale level. and a new addition to the tech industry has people talking. yahoo ceo marissa meyer welcomed her first child and she said he has not been officially named yet and suggestions are welcome. social media has changed the way we communicate with friends and family and name-specific

websites enable parents to solicit ideas and vote for connections. is this the wave of the future? head to facebook to let us know what you think. that will do it for today. thank you so much for joining us. my guest next week, academy award winner matt damon will be with me and his latest development bringing clean water to the developing world. >> it is the place where i feel like i can have the biggest impact on people's lives, the biggest positive impact on people's lives. >> keep it right here where wall street meets main street. have a great weekend, everybody. i'll see you next weekend. you. ♪ [ p] we know you. we know you're not always on top of it. and how could you be? that often you just want... quiet. we know all that life demands from you. and how it's almost impossible for you to escape.

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