to follow me on twitter, facebook and instagram, and i'll be back next week right here on "the wall street journal at large." thank you for joining us and have a great weekend. ♪ ♪ ♪ jack: welcome to barron's "barrs roundtable" where we get behind the headlines. i'm jack otter. coming up, trevor milton on how his company is competing with the world's most valuable car company, tesla, and barron's pick for the best robo advisers. we begin with what we think are the three most important things investors should be thinking about right now. big tech testifying in congress aztec giants reported blowout earnings. what's next for the sector?

why these special purpose acquisition companies are so hot and what the phenomenon says about froth in the market. and gold's record rally. is the yellow metal poised finish even more gains? on the "barron's roundtable", my colleagues. so, jack, this week was interesting. four very powerful dudes get hauled up in front of congress, they're asked some dumb questions, some tough questions, the market shrugs, the next day they come out with earning, and three of the four stocks soared. >> yeah, actually rose during and after the testimony and end then again after results. the stock market this week, if you look at the s&p 500, it was up close to 2%. now, that's a wonderful result, but it's particularly great when you consider the backdrop. what did we learn this week? gross domestic product, the economy shrank 9.5% from the quarter before. if you feel compelled to annualize that figure, yes -- jack: no, please don't!

>> -- 33%, right? either way, it's the housiest number in 70 years of -- lousiest number in 70 years of recordkeeping, so why would stocks rise with that backdrop? look at the 10-year treasury yield. you know it's low, right in but it's lower than you probably thought if you haven't looked in a while, it's just above half a percent right now. deutsche bank did some digging around, they figure that's the lowest borrowing rate in 236 years. and that's a tough environment if you're trying to get income. that's why people keep flooding into stocks. and then you mentioned those tech giants. those results? i mean, amazon's profit doubled to $5.2 billion for the quarter even on higher spending. apple had great sales growth even though so many of its stores were closed. so, you know, i would just keep an eye on valuations. it was only six years ago that i was writing about apple. think you might be a good deal at 12 times earnings. it's over 30 times earnings right now, so watch those prices.

jack: and the one thing, while that gdp number was awful, it wasn't a huge surprise, we knew it was going to be ugly, but right now we're seeing some flattening in some of those high frequency indicators, everything from how many people are going outside and traveling to other stuff. as jay powell said he was actually watching. it's not all smooth sailing ahead, right? >> well, one thing i can tell you about gdp i don't think you're going to see a worse number than that. i would hope we don't see a worse number in our lifetime. think back, what did you do in april, may and june? i did like this and maybe watching some netflix. i did, like, nothing. i think a lot of people, that's the case. i'm doing more things now, and it's more economic activity, so, you know, we're not in great shape yet, but we're beginning the mend. so it remains to be seen what happens -- you know, there are signs that the recovery isn't quite as fast as we had hoped, but hopefully the process has started. jack: so you mentioned some of

those earnings in tech getting a little high. carlton has also been looking into an area of the market that says to me things might be getting a little frothy, these are these spacs. can you explain what they are, carlton, and why should we be looking at them? >> special purpose acquisition companies. basically, a blank check company that goes public with the intention of acquiring another company, typically within two years. they've been around for some time. this year they're outpacing traditional ipos. some companies that have gone public this way are draft king, virgin galactic, and the surge come when you have a bunch of companies going public via the traditional ipo route, but on the investor side interest rates are low are, there are few publicly-traded growth companies. there aren't many of those opportunities. so investors are really itching to swing for the fences there. most recently activist investor bill ackman launched the largest

ever, raising about $4 billion. he's looking for a mature unicorn right now. jack: and one other person who's jumping into the game shortly we'll hear about a spac from money vault, a value investor when it came to choosing baseball players. we'll see if he can do the same with stocks, radioit? >> absolutely. jack: with all of these things, it suggests one ought to have a little conservativism in their investing portfolio. reshma, gold is just the thing, right this. >> yeah. as a real asset, gold is almost on the other end of the spectrum for, you know? we saw gold hit a record high, up 30% beating just about every other major asset class. it's one of the few asset chats reflecting the anxieties that main street as the u.s. grapples with the virus and the economy is hurting and we're having real questions about the pace of the recovery. throw in the political

uncertainty, it's easy to see why investors want some insurance. their options are limited. gold doesn't yield anything, but that's still something with record low rates and negative yields, like $16 trillion of global debt. and we have the risk of inflation and weakness on the dollar. and, you know, while the government is having a little difficult few printing money, it's a little harder to mine gold. newly-manipulated metal adds just 2% annually, so all of that should add to gold's luster. jack: real quick, back in september 2018 gold was about $1200. barron's recommended it. that same writer has a story now where he says stick with that trade, list three quick investments, and we'll move on. >> sure, glp and iae and then a gold mine etf for the miners. jack: coming up, nikola founder

trevor milton on why he thinks his trucks will be better than tesla's. that's next.

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the first time in history that's been able to be done. so it went from about $16 a kilogram, and we're down to about $4 a kilogram. that's one of the reasons. jack: you just sell hydrogen stations. >> actually, we tell people we're an energy technology company that happens to build really cool vehicles. so the reason why we build the semi trucks you need a balanced base load every day of hydrogen stations, or you'll lose all your money. they're very, very expensive, and if you don't have thousands of kilograms a day running through those stations, they essentially, the maintenance just goes through the roof. so so that's why we designed the company the way it was. jack: so we just showed a big rig cab on the screen but also the badger. now, the big rig cab i believe you're building with a european partner? is that right?

>> yeah. so we -- yeah, we partnered with case holland are, they're one of the top five largest truck manufacturers in the world for semi trucks, and we actually have a factory in germany right now coming online, and five of our first prototypes coming off the assembly line right now, and we'll be in production middle, to the end of next year with. we'll be the first ones out there in production. jack: and we're also looking at pictures of the badger. those images look pretty cool. >> it's a beautiful truck, definitely very well designed. it'll be built with an oem partnership, and we hope to announce that a couple month prior to december, so in the next two months-ish is when we're hoping to announce that partnership. jack: that seems like something as a public company you would want to share as soon as possible with shareholders, no? >> i would love to right now. [laughter] this one's not on me. it's around, unfortunately, when you're dealing with very large companies, it is, there's a lot of p.r. teams involved, product

release dates, legal involved, filingses with the sec, so we're probably 60 days out or less, and the whole world gets to know who's building the badger with us. jack: so, clearly, investors are putting their money in your company hoping it'll be the next tesla, right in the stock zoomed from $10 to 93, it's now settled around 30, but that's still a 200 percent gain on the year. you name your company nicola after nicola tesla, the same guy. you've got a huge twitter presence, but some have accused you of being more promotional than truck building. the rcm said you've got more of a business plan than a business. what's your response? >> a's okay. -- that's okay. i'm a creator, i love building things. we built this company from my basement. it's a 12 or $13 billion company today. it's publicly traded on the market. you know, they may not like our business plan, but it's not just a business plan.

we've got some of the largest companies in the world partnering with us, and it's kind of a cheap shot. i mean, look,s we've got to prove it to them, and we have trucks coming off the line, trucks being driven every day, being tested and production beginning next year. factory just broke ground last week. we have -- so very exciting times, and we have, i mean, i don't know what else you could do than just execute, and that's our business model now, we've just got toes's cute it. -- to execute it. jack: not only do you have, obviously, tesla, but volvo e and these old school companies who have been a little slow to catch on, but dameler and volvo formed a partnership, how do you beat back competitors? >> i think it's great. it shows nikola was the first, the pioneer on it. everyone else said it was a fool's err rand, and now they are going hydrogen. they're all following us because it shows everyone that our business model's actually

accurate. here's the key though: nikola makes -- wherever you buy a diesel, you're going to spend $150 grand on the diesel and spend about a million dollars for the fuel over the life of it. we have hydrogen revenue, so when we sell a truck, we can make between 750,000 to a million dollars a truck in revenue, five times the amount of money our competitors work. so our business model's a very creative one that sucks all the money out of the oil industry and brings it right into initiation ka --ny nicole la. jack: that is a very different model. trevor milton, thank you so much for coming and talking to us. >> yeah, thank you so much. appreciate it. see ya. jack: coming up, barron's exclusive reactioning of the best performing

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♪ muck if. jack: market volatility put robo advisers to the test this year, and so far they've passed. an exclusive barron's ranking shows which performed best. deputy ed editor alex yule. so these automated portfolios came of age during a decade-long bull market. so the market crash this spring was really the first time they'd gone through the wringer, and they merged looking pretty good. >> yeah. i think we all wondered how they would do, and i've got to say i think we now know the answer. they performed well. the average robo portfolio that we looked at was tracked by a group we work with, it was down just 2.9% in the first six months of the year. that's both a mix of stocks and bonds. 2.9 -- -2.9% is pretty good,

plus a lot less volatility along the way. >> hey, alex, it's jack howe. just for the benefit of people who might not know what a robo adviser is, and that's not a confession on my part, i'm canning for other people here. if i'm an index fund investor, what does it do for me, how much does it cost, is there an actual robot that will come to my house and whisper hot stock tips into my ears? >> i can arraigning that for you, jack, but i think it's worth thinking about of it as an evolution in the index fund, the target date fund, right? they are putting your into index funds, for sure, but they're first doing a risk assessment all online, and then they're going to put you in an asset allocation that they deem most appropriate based on your racing tolerance. and then -- risk tolerance. then it's all a automated. basically, they're trying to do -- and i think somewhat successfully -- a lot of what

the traditional human advisers did on the asset management side and more and more on the financial planning side. jack: you worked with benchmark to rank these guys. can you give us an overview? >> yeah. back in benchmarking, in fact, the top performer based on its two-and-a-half year annualized or trailing year is a smaller robo adviser, i think less than a billion in assets under management. they also work for some of the bigger market banks, but their performance was off the charts. you also had two names in the top three, td ameritrade and fidelity go also did very well. td ameritrade the particularly on the financial planning front and few dellty go being --fidelity go a steady performer. >> we at a point where you would feel comfortable recommending these guys to your family and friends? >> we've been writing about the robos at barron's for probably

five years now. i feel like especially having seen how they did in the volatility and the turbulence are, i think you can recommend these things. i think the most important notion is that they test people invested, they test people involved in the markets. it would have been very easy to sell in march alongside for you, basically, you couldn't get out, it would be harder to get out. they encouraged you to stay, and people got the rewards when stocks came roaring back in principle. jack: that's an important point. everyone said, oh, they'll do great in a bull market, but when things turn south, everyone's going to sell. but they didn't. carlton, you've got a question. >> i'm just curious, with so many robos occupant there, how do you choose among them? what would you make your choice? >> yeah, we tried to look at that, and benchmarking helped us. wells front was the first ones to do this, i would say, you know, betterman is probably still a good choice for the

first-time investor. they're very digital first, they've got some good tools there. you've got a more complicated situation, interestingly, we would go and suggest vanguard because of their mix of live and digital. and wells front too, it's still a pretty important player, and they've done a lot around planning for multiple goals like buying a home and retirement, and they're also offering a new tool that lets you split your paycheck because, by the way, these guys are involved in banking too. so you can split your paycheck into different buckets like bills, savings and retirement. jack: one important point, alex are, when you referenced the performance of the portfolios, of course, one can make a smart portfolio allocation that doesn't do as well as someone else's just because you were diversified in something that didn't perform well. foreign stocks haven't done great, but over the previous ten

years everyone who was in foreign stocks was very happy about it because the s&p was flat over ten years. as you get older, more complicated financial situation. are these things really good enough? >> i think that's what we're trying to figure out and what we're starting to see. and i think added human advisers, these things are really not robo anymore in the way we first thought of them. they're much more hybrid advisers, so it's a mix of digital advice and human advice. there are different tiers that you can be a part of here, so they've really broadened the scope of it. you know, if you're -- i think for most people these robo can become increasingly useful in terms of your financial planning and your savings. jack: thanks a lot, alex. up next, round table members giving i like liberty mutual. they get that no two people are alike and customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. what do you think? i don't see it. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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♪ ♪ jack: so, jack, did you spend six hours watching every single second of that hot testimony in front of congress by the tech giants? >> i spent some of that time shopping on amazon, but i caught a bunch of it. the house antitrust subcommittee and, yeah, the showers rallied, as we -- shares rallied, despite the video conference scolding. why would they think this group is going to crack, i don't know, it might have been the 21-term house member who seemed to confuse facebook and twitter, could have been the 30-second shouting match that broke out amongst house reps that had nothing to do with technology. but i think when you look at the chiefs of these four companies, together they've got market values collectively of close to $5 trillion. coincidentally, $5 trillion might be the budget deficit that that congress runs this year.

i know there's a pandemic, but not nearly all of that deficit will be due to the pandemic. i think there's some investors wondering who should be scolding whom on objectionable performance. jack: yeah, that congressman has been in congress longer than mark zuckerberg has been alive. two quick actionable ideas. i will start with you, carlton. it's kind of techie. >> sure. looking at mastercard. continued efforts in contactless payments which are going to be a huge deal going forward, and also recent revenue growth in its cybersecurity and data analytics offering, so it's hooking interesting. jack: and, reshma, an interesting story on the chinese consumer, and that led you to the stock pick of an american company. >> estee lauder, play on the recovering chinese consumer. they still favor premium products, especially skin care and cosmetics. possibly for all those video calls we're doing. jack: thanks very much, everybody, great insights, as

always. to read more, check out this week's edition at barron's.com. don't forget to follow us on twitter. that's all for us. wear your masks, be healthy, and we'll see you next week lou: good evening, everybody. president trump today fighting back against the radical dems, calling out their radical political ambitions. they come at the expense of the american people and this nation. the president today giving a full-throated condemnation of the party of hate during an event at the white house. >> i i think the democrats don't care about the people of our country. i really don't. i tell my people the democrats do not care about the people of our country, they don't want to do what you should be doing for the people of our country when it's unemployment or anything else. and all they care about is the election.