e-mail us at investing in you@foxbusiness.com. we'll be back next week on "the wall street journal at large." i hope you're having a wonderful july the 4th weekend, thanks for joining us. ♪ ♪ jack: welcome to "barron's roundtable" where we get behind the headlines and prepare you for the week ahead. the three most important things investors should be thinking about right now, a record jobs report that millions are city out of work. we'll look at what's next for the markets. it's been a tough time for utility stocks, but there are also some good opportunities. and why are money market funds not quite as safe as you think? on the round table tonight, ben levisohn, carlton english and jack howe. so, ben, it was a short and

sweet week for the market, up nicely, but if you look a little bit farther back, we're actually right where we ended up in may. we went nowhere in june. what would move the market up or down going forward? >> yeah, that's right. the market had a great week. the s&p 500 finished up 4%. only up 2% from a month ago, it's gone nowhere. there's been this push and pull between good news, we had a lot this week, both the payrolls numbers close to 5 million new jobs added, better manufacturing surveys, and that caused investors to overlook a lot of the bad coronavirus news. but that's just making back what we lost last week when the coronavirus news was the focus of the market, and we're really going nowhere right now. jack: so what could change that? you're looking ahead to earnings, i assume. >> yeah. that's going to be the big one. the earnings reports are coming. we're going to get banks in a couple weeks. we're also getting a few trickling out. there's companies that have these weird reporting schedules.

this week we god fed fedex, andy had a monster day on thursday after it beat earnings. it wasn't really expected it's been doing a lot of business, we know that, but this is supposed to be their low margin business, but they did very well. and this is something we could see from other companies, that they're actually doing a lot better than the market thinks they are, and that could push the market higher. but we really need to see that kind of message. otherwise it could be a tough ride for stocks. so really pay attention to those bank earnings when they start the reporting in the middle of the month. jack: carlton has been digging into bank earnings. the key here is not whether they'll be good or bad, but whether they beat or miss expectations. that's what the market's looking for. what do you think they're going to do? does mr. market have it right on the high side or not? >> you know, a lot of the big bank ceos have already telegraphed that they expect margins larger in the second

quarter than in the first, so i think a lot of the analyst community has had a chance to work that into their estimates. so i think it will be kind of neutral, but expect a little bit of noise with some of the names there. i think a lot will beat expectations, but there may be some one-offs that will diverge from that. jack: on the upside? >> some potentially on the downside. some banks may not be able to pay the same dividend level as before so, and, you know, banks won't be able to raise their dividends, certainly. jack: sure. speaking of dividends and yields, utilities have long been an investor favorite for their nice, steady ride. and that changed a little bit this spring. it was kind of rough. you're look at a few with the help of an activist investor that you think could do pretty well. >> exactly. and to the point that you made, you know, during the week people do look to utilities, so it has been a tricky sector. we found elliott management has

made several utility investments, two currently active. they initiated those positions this year. they're pushing for either a full or partial sale in either or both, i should say, in the third or forty -- fourth quarter. some potential upside. jack: and barron's has a story looking at what they call the uglies -- [laughter] a couple of stocks that have just been doing badly but we think maybe have a brighter future in front of them. >> yeah. so one of those was sally buy ifty. sally beauty, basically, gets about half of its revenue from salons or salon professionals. when you have salons closed, you can't rely on people like me trying to keep the brand going. but now salons are open again, so we see potential for there to be some acceleration there. the company has gotten a little bit better with its online offerings as well. jack: gotcha. >> hey, carlton, it's jack howe.

i've got a question on sally beauty. i saw a picture on twitter of these big, giant hair curlers that some of the tv celebrities have been wearing -- [laughter] jack: oh! >> i think we've got a picture on screen. do they sell those kinds of things at sally beauty? [laughter] >> they do sell those kinds of things, and i have been relying on them so much to get through this work from home -- jack: do you realize jack and i are just jealous that you have enough hair to do that with? [laughter] there's nothing we could ever do. so, jack, because of this concern in the markets, there's a lot of money sitting on the sidelines. people park it in money market funds. they figure that's safe. it's not 100 safe. you can explain that for us, right? >> yeah. i mean, try to contain your excitement. i'm not talking about money markets for a moment. they are supposed to be boring sweep accounts, right? but we had a situation in the first few weeks of march where people pulled some money out of the type of money markets that

own corporate securities, about $120 billion. there were a few funds that flirted with breaking the buck or slipping below a dollar per share. the federal reserve set up this facility, it's called the money market mutual fundly quitty facility. -- liquidity facility. our writer in barron's writes that now is a good time if you want to shift to something safer. getting out of those looking at government securities or treasuries, you could even look at money market accounts. those sound like money market funds, but those are are bank savings accounts, puts you under the umbrella of fdic insurance. it's not going to take your breath away, but yields respect great all around right now. jack: that's true. but even boring old cds can be good. please join neil cavuto on thursday, july 9th, at 1 p.m. eastern for a virtual town hall, "america together open house." among his guests, real estate

icon barbara corcoran who will be answering your questions. sends your questions to fox business, facebook or instagram or e-mail investing in you@foxbusiness.com. coming up, one uniform food company's ceo says his company will be in a better position coming out of the so covid-19 crisis e than it was before. he'll join us on the future of dining, next. ♪

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♪ ♪ jack: the restaurant business is one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis with many struggling to adapt to social distancing restrictions. but our next guest has transformed his company to bring fast food dining into the future. jonathan nieman, thanks a lot for joining us.

when this pandemic hit, it looked like you were in the worst possible position. you run a restaurant. people weren't going to restaurants. most of your restaurants are in cities. those were the worst hit locations. most of your clients were office workers. none of us are going to the office anymore. so how did you pivot to save the business? >> so, you know, for many years now our, one of our core philosophies at sweet green has been to meet customers wherever they are. so we've been investing in technology to enhance the ordering and eating experience for a very long time. our business has been run off of five channels which is our in-store, our digital order and pick-up, our native delivery and our outpost business as well as our marketplace delivery business. we had a lot of flexibility how we could meet our customers. so while when covid hit, our in-store business went completely away, we had to pivot to 100% digital orders, because of the investments we had made

in our technical infrastructure and in our ordering experience, we were able to adapt and pivot very quickly. so we pivoted to delivery and pick-up only, and we were also able to move part of our business, our outpost business and flex that to support hospitals most in need. so we were able, we were able to spin up outposts at 400 different hospitals serving over 300,000 meals during this time. we also learned that during this time people were looking to eat more hot, hot food, a little bit more homey food and dinner food but still wanted to eat healthy. and so we also rushed to introduce a new food category which we called hot plate which is our first foray into dinner. so the combination of these moves from the technology pivot as well as the new menu addition have a allowed us to weather this storm really well. jack: and you told my colleague at the barron's tech conference that you actually had 50% adoption of your app even before

the pandemic hit, which is amazing. but it's not just technology. you actually had to make the store, the restaurants work with the apps. that means changing the physical chant, and you created something you call ghost kitchens. what are those? >> yeah. so i think a lot of people think that innovating on technology for a restaurant has only something to do with the front-end side, the consumer app. but really the magic is in how you build the physical infrastructure as well as the back-end technology to enable this sort of experience. so ever since 2012 we've been investing in ghost or virtual kitchens within every single restaurant. so call them secondary or kitchens within each restaurant as well as customer journeys, courier journeys to create a really nice, frictionless ec experience whether you're ordering in-store, coming to pick up or ordering for delivery. so there's a lot that goes into

understanding, to building a digital experience not just on the consumer end, but on the back end. and i think we were very fortunate to have been making a lot of those investments ever since 2012. which, again, enabled us for this pivot and acceleration that the whole world has seen to digital, you know, over the past few months. jack: i want to ask you about a very low-tech thing you do but nonetheless interesting, which is you sourced almost all of your food through local farms. why do you think that's important? >> yeah, jack with. we believe that the choices we make about food, where it comes from and how it's produced has really, really huge implications on our health, our community and on our environment. and so those direct consequences of those food decisions are one of the reasons in which we believe buying local is important. one, food tastes better when you buy local. we're buying food seasonally, and for anyone who's been to a farmers' market or eaten, you

know, fresh fruit or vegetables when they're at their peak, you know that burst of flavor that you get. secondly, we love to support local economies in that way. and, third, we find it to be more sustainable. also if a business perspective, it gives us a very resilient supply chain, so we have a diversified and resilient supply chain that crosses, that encompasses over 350 small and medium-sized farmers. and we believe that this is just the way that food should be served. so it's a core part of the sweet green experience and our mission to bring to life this incredible food that these local growers are producing in every region that we're in. finish. jack: thanks a hot, jonathan. we don't have time to talk about it, but i want to point out that you had to furlough 2,000 people, but you've hired 70% of them back, and you've given all the ppp money that you borrowed. thanks for joining us today. >> thanks again for having me.

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♪ ♪ cc jack as we head into the second half of 020, covid-19 cases in the u.s. are approaching the three million mark. the market has had a great run, but hope for a v-shaped economic recovery are fading. the barron's cover story this week attempts to answer the question, what should we expect in the second half of 2020. jack, there are an awful lot of variables at work here. we're not going to give people a crystal ball, but lay out the base case that we heard from economists and pundits as we researched the story. >> i thought you said you were going to ask a tough question. i've got all the answers here, jack with. i've got the base case from the

separated gists we talked to. -- strategists we talked to. the federal reserve will do whatever it takes to support, you know, financial markets and the economy. congress likely to pass more assistance for households and businesses, at least a trillion dollars is the thinking right now. company earnings will probably look better by the end of this year, so the base case is that stocks go up a smidgen from here. and i know that might not sound great, but the 10-year treasury yield last i saw was about half a smidgen, so that compares pretty well right now. jack: if you told minute at the beginning of the -- somebody at the year that we'd lose 20 million jobs, it's not bad at all. you don't have a crystal ball in terms of the near term, but you have been sharing your thoughts about the long term based on current stock valuations. share that wisdom with everybody. [laughter] >> well, stocks are pricey

relative to their history, right? i mean, so that doesn't really tell you anything about what happens in the near term. there's a very poor correlation between stock val weighs and what happens in the next six months. there's an excellent correlation between valuations and what happens over the next, let's say, ten years. over a long time period, stocks tend to go up, right? but you can pretty much, you know, bank right now on the stock market returning hess than you have seen -- less than you have seen over the past couple of decades. i don't think you're going to have those rip-roaring stock market returns like we've seen because your starting point is more expensive than it used to be. but still pretty good. stick with stocks. jack: of course, it's time to cue carlton, because she loves to play debbie downer. give us the bear case. what could go wrong here? >> i don't know debbie downer, maybe realist. the economy hasn't fully reopened, and we've seen economists have projections for gdp to decline in the range of

10% or more. and while we have seen some positive economic data, of course we would see some sort of snapback in activity as, you know, the economy reopens. we're now in that kind of prolonged phase. what's that going to look like. that's where you hear about that reverse square root shape where not everyone is going to come back to work right away. you know, we hear that the economy is about 60, 70 percent of the consumer. most of us are home, so we're buying things to make staying at home more bearable, but that kind of daily activity of picking up the coffee on the way to work or taking the subway, that's not happening. that's the type of activity that we need to see to really accelerate the economy. jack: sure. and all the travel stuff, certainly. which brings up the mask issue. a lot of mask news this week. goldman sachs had a fascinating report that said if there were a mask mandate, that that could essentially replace 5% of gdp, that's how important it is.

then the vice president declined to really strongly endorse masks but then the governor of texas actually is mandating masks. and, jack with, you found a goldman report that you also found interesting. >> goldman tries this recovery index, it's been doing this since the spring. they track a range of things, streaming, flights, restaurants, things like that. we've seen it getting better. this past week was the first week where it backtracked a little bit. it's not a doom's day sign to me, but it is a reminder that you would expect this recovery to be uneven, lumpy in different regions around the country and also may be halting at some moments. you just have to be realistic as an investor. jack: ben, we're almost out of time, but send us off on the happiest note possible. what's the bull case? >> look, the economy keeps accelerating. the cases that are rising don't rise too much, hospitalizations and deaths today lower and

government stimulus gets pass. all those things happen, the market can go perhaps as high as 3800 for the s&p. jack: that would be pretty good -- >> i'm going to break into song, my goodness! [laughter] jack: up next, round table [indistinct radio chatter] (mom) come on, hurry up! all systems go? (mission control) 5 4 3 2... ignition and liftoff. (vo) audi e-tron. the next frontier of electric.

♪ ♪ jack: jack, earlier in the show we heard from a restaurant guy who feeds very healthy food to his clients, but there's more to life than kale. tell us about your experience. >> why are you coming to me for the unhealthy stuff, jack? [laughter] i take offense. look, i don't mind telling you, i had a milestone doughnut this past week. it was pumpkin-y, glazed, and i

ate it on premises at a restaurant near me. it's the first time i've done that since the shutdown in march because restaurants around me have started to reopen their tables for diners. but it's an uneven recovery. i saw a report from bank of america, and i looked at data from, you know, open table reservations, can they're saying during the end of march, you know, they were recovering nicely, slow to a crawl at the end of june, and they've slipped into reverse for a handful of states. the situation is nircht at different places across america. the restaurant industry, when you hook at 25 stocks, you know, big companies and small, a lot of them are getting clobbered. but there's four that are just killing it right now. the two pizza heavyweights, domino's and papa john's, there's chipotle, and then one word for you, jack, unless wingstop happens to be two words, but think it's one. it's up more than 60% year to date. mostly takeaway.

i don't know -- i know carlton's a big fan. i've got to check into what else is going right over at wingstop, but they're doing very well. jack: that stock has actually done better than amazon in 2020, which is a pretty neat trick. i'm going to go to ben first, what do you have this week? >> take a look at gold with. it's been going sideways just like the market has, but where the market -- i'm not comfortable calling which way it's going to go, gold really does look set up to head higher. it's been moribund for so long, and it's finally starting to move. and with the feds buying bonds, rates so low, everything so uncertain, gold is starting to look very interesting again. jack: and, carlton, a very important reminder. finish us off. >> yeah. before i'm debbie downer, i do love wingstop. my reminder is pay your taxes. we had that extension to july 15th. be tour sure to pay and file your taxes. if you don't, you face severe penalties. jack: thanks very much. jack, ben, carlton, all good

ideas. check out this week's edition at barron's.com. don't forget to follow us on twitter. that is all for us. wear your masks, see you next week on barron's round ... ♪ dr. michael youssef: you couldn't possibly have heard me for any length of time without hearing the depths of my gratitude and thanksgiving to be an american citizen. god brought me here because it was the longing of my heart, and god was so gracious to me, not only to honor me and bring me to america, but also gave me a passion to continue protecting the great freedoms that so many have died for. and so, i'm bringing you a message. it is the burden of my heart. it's an immigrant's perspective.