to stay in business for so long. that's it for us this week. be sure 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 very much for joining us. ♪ ♪ ♪ jack: welcome to bare ron's round taik where we get behind the headlines and prepare you for the week ahead. i'm jack otter. coming up, andy sieg on how to reduce risk in a turbulent market, and which companies are leading the pack in a vaccine? we begin with what we think are the three most important things investors should be talking about right now. the s&p edged correction territory, how things are affecting the market. activist investor nelson pelts

disclosed his firm, what that thens for the stock, and a rough week for banks. reports of suspicious transactions and backlash against wells fargo ceo, but there could be some positive factors ahead. my colleagues, ben levisohn, carlton english. ben, i'm going to start with you. we've been chatting this week about the market, and you kept on saying stocks are behaving in a weird way. what's so unusual in. >> the week started pretty badly, fears about covid resurgence in europe that really knocked the market down. it built with the questions about economic stimulus and the likelihood that we won't get any, fears about the economy, about the election. and the market kept dropping, and it really looked like good news wasn't going to matter much. nike's earnings were great, it didn't help the overall market. darden, which owns the olive

garden, it reinstated its dividend, this is a restaurant stock. but, again, that didn't have any big effect on the market. and even when california announced that it was going to ban fossil fuels for cars by 2035, it didn't help tesla which was down about 10% on thursday. the market couldn't fall that hard. it kept trying to bid down 10%, a level we call a correction, but it wouldn't stay there. it kept bouncing back up off that level. and then finally on friday we got a really big bounce in the market so that the nasdaq actually finished the week in positive territory. and the s&p 500, though down for a fourth week in a row, was down less than 1%. jack: ben, when the market goes down 9.9% and then rallies and does it over and over, it's really interesting. i mean, i'm of the camp of those people who say that technical analysis is about as reable to liable as read -- reliable as reading sheep entrails, but

there's a behavioral analysis that explains why this goes on. >> that's right. people are looking at these levels. it's traders, it's portfolio managers. they bought stocks, perhaps before the market had these runs. they're sitting on profits, and they're trying to decide do i take profits, do i not take profits, can i keep holding on. when you see a level like this break, 10% level is also a support level based on another technical metric, everybody could start selling at once. the fact that it held was a very good sign for the market. jack: carlton, one sign of maybe normality coming back to the market, and that is activist investors flexing their muscles once again. >> yeah. so it was really interesting in the first half of the year we saw activist activity drop by about 40%, but this week we saw two campaigns launched to. elliot management and then nelson pelts' partners initiated a stake in comcast. waiting on the sidelines to see what opportunities would emerge

as markets start to recover. jack: one thing about peltz, when you go after somebody like comcast, it's hard to amass a big stake, but a lot of that stake is owned by the roberts family. how to you make change happen in that situationsome. >> it's going to be a tough lift for peltz. he's been in this situation before. he's gone after large companies like general electric and procter & gamble and dow dupont. so the thug he might be -- thinking he might be pushing for the company to break itself up. it has its broadband business, but that entertainment business that houses nbc universal and sky, that's been troubling a little bit. you know, theme parks are closed, three e yachtly call releases have been pushed back, sports weren't really happening, the fall tv lineup is a little different, so he could be targeting something like that or pushing for a cost cut at the company. jack: gotcha. let's talk about banks. waiting for the turn around but

they just can't catch a break. >> headlines definitely don't help that unloved category. earlier this week we had a report detailing $2 trillion in suspicious transactions, nearly 20 years, several big banks including deutsche bank and jpmorgan, raising questions about money laundering. analysts downplayed the report, but it could bring more scrutiny to the industry, and we saw a backlash against wells fargo's ceo where he i attributed the difficulty in hiring minorities to a, quote-unquote, very limited pool of black talent, of course, everyone's grappling with racial justice and lack of diversity in the financial services industry, and guesserty experts really see this as an excuse. you know, there's plenty of talent out there, perhaps the banks are not looking for it. and, you know, not attracted to -- but in general it's been a rough go for the banks. jack: at the same time, earnings are actually looking decent. >> yeah. even if you look back over the

last three years prior to the pandemic, the spider bank etf had 20% average earn growth, but the etf was down 30 over that time period. so we have some good things coming around. we're seeing goldman sachss, for example, upgraded at ubs, really a surge in trading volume that help it. jack: we'll be watching carefully. banks are the cheapest sector in the s&p 500. coming up, what merrill lynch wealth advisers are telling nest clients. andy

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and the upcoming election can be extremely unnerving to investors. merrill lynch wealth management president andy sieg joins me now. thanks so much for joining us. all those things, elections, covid, everything else, you have 15,000 advisers, i think it's about $2.5 trillion in client assets they're managing. what are they doing to calm investors who are worried about all this stuff they're seeing on the horizon? >> well, hey, jack, it's a great question. wonderful to be here. more important even than the number of advisers is our client base which is over a million high net worth and ultra-high net worth people in the u.s. i have just deep admiration for the way they have weathered the pandemic, and i'll tell you, watching them today we're very bullish. we're bullish about the economy and about markets. they feel good about their businesses and the way they've recovered from the depths of the sprung and early summer -- spring and early summer, and people are relatively -- they

are not overly aggressive in terms of investing in the stock market right now. and that is, as a contrarian, a bullish sign. jack: right. when everybody gets too excited is when you get worried. what about clients who have trouble sleeping at night? >> right now, jack, if you have a time horizon that's longer than three months, this is a time to be bullish. however, we all see what could be coming. there's uncertainty around the virus, a around the election, and we should expect these markets to be sloppy. our cio likes to call this a little bit of a quick sand moment. this is not a time for a lot of movement side to side. you know, this is a time to stick to your time horizon, your risk profile. but constructive about equities because we think equities will continue to be the story here for the decade. 20's been a tough year -- 2020's been a tough year, we think the

'20s are going to be phenomenal for the u.s. economy and the markets. jack: any mar asset classes -- particular asset classes meryl likes? >> i think -- merrill likes? >> i think there are some extraordinary stories. let's just think about manufacturing in the u.s. there's been a discussion for years about reshoring supply chains. you know, post-pandemic that story is maturing very fast. we expect to see over a million -- a trillion dollars invested to bring supply chains back to the u.s. that's going to be a boon for the heartland and a for manufacturing businesses -- and a boon for manufacturing businesses and businesses that supply them. for every dollar that's invested in the kind of infrastructure to reshore a supply chain, that has a multiplier effect in terms of jobs and economic impact. jack: one innovation we've seen in recent years is the robo-adviser. low price, can manage money pretty well. make the case for hiring a human and paying more. >> well, i mean, hey, the case

is a lot like the reason we all still go to the doctor. there's -- technology's had an enormous, positive impact on the health care business as it is, as it has in our business. however, you know, when clients, when they sit down and when they really want to talk about what matters in their life, they want to have a dialogue with someone who really understands what makes them tick. it's the same reason you go to the doctor. you may know something about your condition from web md or an online service, but you want to sit down and have that put into the context of your personal situation, your future, somebody who knows you well. you know, and knows you well in our business not just financially, but emotionally, what keeps you up at night, what are the hopes and dreams that you and your family have, and how can you bring not just focus to the way you're investing, but the rest of your financial plan. how you're borrowing, you know, where you're saving, how your personal financial situation and you day job interact with each other. jack: andy, look, i know you run

a different part of the business, but i do want to ask you about this big story that broke. you are a senior, you know, official executive at bank of america, and buzzfeed reported on $2 trillion of suspicious transactions at big global banks over about two decades. why can't the financial industry do more to stop this kind of activity? >> well, i mean, jack, i appreciate you asking the question. there are a lot of laws around in that preclude what we're in position to say publicly. what i will say, however, is we have extensive policies, processes, procedures that insures when we see any transaction that a appears to be inappropriate, you know, we make that known to government officials. and, you know, that is at the very core of the culture at bank of america and merrill lynch. jack: i can't let andy sieg go without asking about the big ten, new chance your nittany lions can beat ohio state?

>> i'm bullish about that. i'm thrilled to see the lions back on the field, the big ten playing, and they're doing the right way with a lot of protocols in place. i had a conversation earlier in the week with the penn state coach, james franklin, coincidentally, and he's doing an incredible job. pretty optimistic about what the season's going to look like. jack: well, good luck. andy, thanks for joining us. >> thank you. jack: coming up, when a covid-19 vaccine is likely to emerge and how the pandemic has sparked medical innovation, that's next. ♪ ♪ ♪

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♪ ♪ jack: barron's recently held a round table with experts that

dove into the science and investing opportunities involved in the development of a covid-19 vaccine. one of those e experts is here, svb, dr. jeff porges joins us now. thanks for coming in, jeff. >> thanks for having me, jack with. jack: i need to start with the question everybody is asking, when will we get a covid-19 vaccine? >> well, the timing, i think, has really narrowed. we have a number of companies who have a pretty high degree of confidence that they will have at least preliminary indications of efficacy for a covid vaccine probably in the next month and a half or so. those companies are pfizer and probably also moderna and possibly j&j. now, you have to remember this is preliminary data, very early, but it's also pretty exciting that we could see whether these vaccines actually prevent the disease. jack: absolutely. on a different note, for all the

horror of coronavirus, there have been some really exciting developments that were sort of kickstarted by the work on coronavirus. can you explain at least one of those? >> yeah. look, it's interesting, it's axiomatic, but technology advances most rapidly in a time of crisis, typically in war. but this is still a crisis of a different dimension. we've seen remarkable progress. the speed with which these clinical trials have been deployed, and the speed of advancing into the clinic, frankly, it is, indeed, remarkable. we have multiple vaccines in the clinic. that's going to lead to lasting changes in how drugs are discovered and developed. we'll be using electronic data ways much -- databases much more aggressively, we're going to be going national in terms of recruitment much quicker than in the past, and this mra technology really hope is es the opportunity that we can move in

a matter of months, not the typical years that's usually involved. jack: can you give us an example of one stock that you think the market is underestimating it potential in your field? >> yeah. in the coronavirus vaccine field, there are a number of companies involved, and i think, actually, the market has pretty much discounted all the opportunity in those stocks. you know, there's some smaller companies that are partnered up, so, for example, translate bio has partnered up with sanofi, participating through those smaller companies, and if you want to go a little more out on a limb, there are emerging companies such as know v.a. advantages -- novavax, they could be in phase three by christmas time which puts them maybe three or four months behind the leaders. that's pretty remarkable for a company that was really, you know, a very small company at the beginning of the year.

jack: i want to go to the rest of the panel for a quick lightning round. geoff was just one of four experts. ben, can you give us a stock pick that somebody else mentioned? >> sure, the health care sector leader at my if dellty investments, he likes humana. the insurance company, it's a leading seller of medicare advantage plans, and it's going to benefit from the aging population in the united states. and during the covid crisis, it's been making sure that seniors are getting their food, they're making sure that they're getting their prescriptions and seeing the specialists they need. he calls that a win/win for stakeholders and shareholders too. jack: reshma? the founder of an investment firm focused on biosciences likes china's large provider of molecular tests, and it's really a way to invest in china's biotech industry. this is a recent ipo, but the u.s./china tensions have taken it off its highs. jack: carlton, what caught your

eye? >> this is one that ely likes and also abby, she has her eye on revolution medicines. the company went public earlier this year, it's focused on cancer treatment, and it's a $500 million development deal with sanofi, $325 million cash on the balance sheet, and it could be a game-changer in cancer treatments. jack: geoff, in less than a minute, can you tell us about the skepticism that we're seeing about vaccines? what do you think of that, and what can we do about it? >> yeah, this is a big concern. up to 50% of the u.s. population has indicated they would not be willing to take a covid vaccine. we have to do absolutely everything to restore confidence in both the regulation of the vaccines and also the manufacturing if development. that means that we cannot give the appearance or have the reality of taking shortcuts. we really need e these large trials to continue, not to be truncated or shut down, to

continue to reassure people that even when tens of thousands of people receive these vaccines, they're safe, there's no untoward consequences, and they provide lasting protection. if we're transparent about that data, people's confidence will go up. jack: first do no harm. thanks very much for your insight, geoff. >> thank you. jack: up next, round table members give their investment ideas for the coming week. stay right there. ♪ ♪ i can't believe it. what? that our new house is haunted by casper the friendly ghost? hey jill! hey kurt! movies? i'll get snacks! no, i can't believe how easy it was to save hundreds of dollars on our car insurance with geico. i got snacks! ohhh, i got popcorn, i got caramel corn, i got kettle corn. am i chewing too loud? believe it! geico could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. ( ♪ )

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♪ ♪ jack: in barron's tradition, we want to leave you with at least one actionable idea. carlton, i'm going to start with you. >> well, i am focusing on snack foods. i am looking at conagra this week. we just got positive data from general mills, and i think

packaged foods are still poised to do well. you look at conagra, it has a lot of snacks and breakfast foods in its portfolio, two very strong categories. and also it's been able to continue paying its dividend, and, you know, i really enjoy some swiss miss for the holiday season too. jack: i've heard you've been tucking into the popcorn as well. [laughter] >> i have. i've got to have my big bowl of orr absolutely redenbacher as well. jack: ben, what are you lookingt this week? >> costco reported earnings last night, numbers were fantastic. the stock dropped today, down more than 2% at one point, though it finished a lot less than that. but it's one of those stocks where, you know, it often falls after reporting good numbers, and it's usually a buying opportunity. it's a stock that just tends to go up over time and, yes, there are sometimes concerns about valuation and things like that.

but they turn out to be buying opportunities. jack: it's a really interesting company. obviously, it's doing well on online retail. one cool thing about the company is it loses less to shoplifting than most retailers, and that ease but because you have to bea member to join, so they have got your information. >> that's right. andrew berry, one of our writers, wrote a story and it was fascinate dog see how they're able to strive their profits and their profitability by being very good about that. jack: reshma, what are you looking at? >> efa, strategists have been allocating more to europe and japan, citing cheaper valuations. and these are markets geared towards sectors that will benefit early from an economic recovery. from plus, these markets have been ignored for years, and it's the perfect anecdote to the crowded u.s. tech trade. jack: that's a good idea. ben, carlton, reshma, thank you so much.

check out this week's edition at barron's.com, and don't forget to follow us on twitter @barronsonline. wear your mask, see you next week on barron's roundtable. ♪ ♪"lou dobbs tonight" starts now. ♪ ♪ lou: good evening, everybody. riots and more violence in louisville. police arrested dozens of rioters last night including a state legislator arrested and charged with rioting. businesses and vehicles were vandalized by the left-wing mob. the city's library set ablaze, the city's 9 p.m. curfew extended through the weekend. the suspect in the shooting of two louisville police officers wednesday were arranged today. the suspect's name is lorenzo johnson. he pleaded not guilty to two charges of first-degree assault on police officers