facebook and instagram, and be sure to be watching fox business on november 3rd for election night coverage. i'll be back next week right here on the "wall street journal at large." thanks for joining us, and have a happy hallowe ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ jack: welcome to "barron's roundtable" where we get behind the headlines and prepare you for the week ahead. i'm jack otter. analysts expect a trump win to affect the markets differently from a biden win. we'll give you the stocks we think do well regardless. but we begin with what we think are the three most important things investors ought to be thinking about right now. stocks stumbled on uncertainty about the election and worries about the rising number of covid cases. when will anxiety subside? the big tech stocks took a

beating after reporting solid earnings, when a to expect -- what to expect next, and m, and a is ramping up following a pandemic-induced slowdown. which deals are on the table. on the barron's round table, ben levisohn, carlton english and jack howe. happy halloween, ben. we just saw the worst week since march cap off the worst month since march. what do you see happening in the markets? >> yeah. this week was definitely more trick than treat. [laughter] there's, this was the week where everything just came home to roost. we had the election uncertainty which the market had been able to put aside for a while. it came back bigtime. we have these rising covid cases, and there's something about the fact that it hit a record that really stock spooked the market. and then you can have the end of the stimulus dream, earnings from all kinds of companies that no matter how good they were, they really didn't seem to really help the market at all,

stocks at all. and by the end of the week, it was just awful. jack: so is there any particular outcome to any of these problems that will help, or is it just anything that shows us here's the course from now on we'll get a boost in the markets? >> i think the good news is that despite everything, the fundamentals are looking good. apple's stock got hit really hard after earnings, but its numbers were pretty decent. industrial companies like g exe, honeywell, their guidance was decent. everything is looking fine. we just need to get past the election. a daut looming in the future that just had so much uncertainty associated with it that once you get past it, things will help. but we also have the fed meeting election next week and payrolls, and the fed can really do a lot to help the market just by saying it has investors' backs. jack: let's just hope we actually know who the next president will be are. jack, ben mentioned tech stocks.

it was pretty incredible. i mean, all the numbers kind of rolled off good, it all sounded great, and then the market just took each stock out to the wood shed one by one. >> yeah, the numbers were good. hey, jack, quickly, i just want to nominate carlton for employee of the month. [laughter] because last week on this show carlton pointed out the numbers were good for snap, she thought that that looked good for pinterest, and this week pinterest went bananas after earnings. the stock was up 26%. i want to give an atta boy to carlton, whatever an atta boy is for laid duhs -- ladies. [laughter] >> thank you. >> amazon's getting ready for a huge holiday quarter. facebook had a big beat, but it did have a cautious outlook. i don't think investors loved that. alphabet beat across pretty much everything, search, youtube and cloud. now, apple had a beat, but it

was kind of small, and as ben said, investors didn't love that. i have actually kind of changed my thinking on apple. i was unsure about whether investors would rush to i upgrade to that new iphone, but when i saw the carrier subsidies, i ordered a couple new phones for myself and my wife. of it's basically like getting free phones right now because the subsidies are so generous. piper sandler upgraded their forecast for iphone volumes in the holiday quarter. i think you could see upside there but maybe a short-term profit pinch for the carriers if they turn in a price war. jack: i think

we sometimes forget about a company like amazon. that's growing like, you know, what young companies used to look like. and amazon is basically, you know, it's an algorithm. it goes into new industries and tries new things, and if it works, it sticks with it. if it doesn't, it moves on. so a company like that could have plenty of room for growth. jack: carlton, with md buying psi lynx, that could herald a surge in m&a? >> absolutely. back in march everybody thought that activity was going to be ted for a or year -- dead for a

year. but we are seeing m&a recover. recent data from goldman sachs shows announced deals with up 8% quarter over quarter. year to date we are still down about 20% on value of m&a transactions, but if you 2,000%e 2014. so why not use that currency to buy something? do you think there's fear that antitrust could be coming back in and they want to get these deals done before that happens? >> you know, for some sectors, that may very well be the case. we certainly heard that earlier this week with some of the big tech names. but i think overall m&a activity, the conditions are

ripe for it to continue. you have low interest rates and also you have the conditions of the recent market volatility kind of forcing some tie-ups, so if a deal makes sense to go through, it will still probably go through. jack: not to mention money is cheap. are efforts by the fed to prop up the economy distorting the market, and where are the investment opportunities? ceo

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♪ ♪ jack: of the many forces that move the stock market, none have had a bigger influence than the federal reserve in recent years. here to talk about market issues

is thornburg investment management ceo jason brady. jason, thanks for come coming on the show. >> yeah, it's a real pleasure. thanks for having me. jack: the question of whether and when we might see investors rotate into cheaper areas of the market. there are good reasons, of course, behind tech's dominance, but i want to ask you about federal reserve policy. this week the barron's cover story is about jerome powell's influence on the market. can you explain why low interest rates help tech stocks? >> sure. so i think a key thing to understand about tech stocks, particularly those with less profitability today is that a lot of the value in those names is a punitive value far to the future. as you have lower and lower rates, a lower discount rate, it increases the value of that long distant future value. that names that are typically called values, ones with a dividend today, those are paying you cash now so a lower discount

rate that's maybe worth less relative to cash in the future. one thing that's very interesting is the experience in 2020 is almost exactly the opposite of the experience as recently as the end of 2018 when the market was down in the context of rising rates, and you saw better performance by things traditionally considered value and worse performance by growth. jack: so rising interest rates could trigger that rotation we've been waiting for. i want to ask you about the bond market. one little niche that you've noticed is that recovery in bankruptcies recently has been going down. how does that play into all of this? >> well, it's really coming back to the fed again. of course, pursuant to your cover story. so in march, jerome powell announced that one of the key elements of the focus of the fed was making sure lending markets were working. now working maybe in the context of continuing money may not be working in the context of assessing risk appropriately, but the fed was very successful in opening up markets and pumping a lot of liquidity in. but the fed can solve liquidity

much better than solvency problems, particularly in the context of companies overlevered even coming into the covid crisis. it's important that investors know that corporate america was more levered in january and february than it had ever been before, before we even had a recession. so the fed can solve liquidity challenges, but ultimately, a number of these companies are in trouble regardless of covid. so so when they go bankrupt, there's not a whole lot left for bond investors. jack: just a quick question, the focus is not on jerome powell, it's on the white house and the senate. how important do you think elections are to what goes on in the stock market? >> sure. look, at thornburg we're looking much longer term and, frankly, the elections are not really much of a black swan event. we know a lot of what we're about to get. we have some pretty clear choices, and frankly as far as markets are concerned, other

than taxes -- not a small thing, but a known thing -- there's really not that much difference between the two candidates. so it's something that we're watching but isn't a primary focus of you ours, quite frankl. jack: you mentioned financials before. they've not been popular, they've gotten hammered pretty hard. a lot of value investors have been hopping they'll come back. are you one of those? >> i consider us to be balanced investors. we want to make sure we don't have all one thing in our portfolios whether it's stocks, bonds or multi-asset. there is earnly a place for growth -- certainly a place for growth names, and they've been pouring the market -- powering the market forward. i think investors realized that all growth names are not awe cyclical. acyclical. financials, on the flip side, are pretty cheap relative to the market and somewhat to their

let's history. but more importantly, we think they're underearning. theywe would be beneficiaries ie context of rates righting. and so it's important to have balance in your portfolio. so just not all growth names as, frankly, or the s&p 500 is continuing to trend toward as those names outperform. you want to have some balance in your portfolio, that's what's key. jack: very quickly, 15 seconds, obviously, the bond market is not giving you a lot of returns, but you see an opportunity in consumer-type investments? >> yeah. we looked at corporate america is overleveredded, but consumers are doing better today better than pre-covid. so mortgages are interesting and, frankly, the investors in those names got a little bit over their skis earlier this year, we were able to pick up great bargains there. jack: jason brady, thank you so much. >> it's a pleasure. jack: coming up, the panel comes back with their picks for stocks

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♪ ♪ jack: it may seem like everything is becoming a political issue these days, but barron's has a refreshing antidote. this week we found five stocks that we think are poised to do well no matter who is in the white house. ben, let's point out one thing. while we're all fascinated with the political narrative, the president and congress actually have less influence over stock prices than many investors believe. >> yeah, that's right. what we've seen is that the market really moves with the economic cycle, and it doesn't really matter if the president is a democrat or a republican. and when you're trying to bet on sectors that will benefit under one or the other, you can often misyoung it completely. e -- misjudge it completely. under president trump there was a lot of talk that banks and energy stocks were going to benefit, and they did well right out of the gate when he won, but sincen then they've just been awful. and the same, the stocks that

have done the best did well under obama, the giant tech companies. and we've even seen that during the last four presidential elections the s&p 500 has dropped in october, heading into it. so i think it's less about who the president is and just more about the market and the cycle. jack: yeah. it's funny when you think about remember trump was always fighting with tech and, oh, it was going to be terrible for tech and, of course, they've just done wonderful flu. one interesting opportunity that i sometimes see for investors is the conventional wisdom is so strong along the lines you just talked about, sometimes you bet against conventional wisdom and do well. hillary care was going to destroy health care, that was a great time to invest. then there was obamacare, same thing. elizabeth warren, remember, we were scared she was going to destroy the sector.

now maybe there's an opportunity to invest in health care, and, carlton, that's our first pick, abbott labs. >> it's not just about the election, but about the pandemic. they have one test that gets results in about 15 months, and it saw a -- 15 minutes, and it recent hi raised it full-year guidance. any stimulus plan that includes more testing will help the stock, but the company has very strong medical device business. its blood glucose monitoring system for diabetic patients saw a 36% jump in sales. shares are certainly up, but analysts see there's more room for this one to grow regardless of who is in office. jack: unfortunately, covid is not going away no matter who wins. jack, you're going to talk about a stock that barron's also looked at called roper. i was not familiar with that company, although i guess i use them all the time. their products. >> roper technology, this is what you call a mull i de-industry -- multi-industry company. no one has any idea how to describe how its various businesses go together. the one i think you're talking about is highway tolling, electronic tolling where you and i live, we call that ez pass.

they have different names for it around the cub. that's one business. there's another business that makes equipment for prostate procedures. i'm trying to imagine what the sunergys are there, and i can't come up with it. [laughter] that's probably why i'm not an investment banker. here's something more important to know about roper, the stock has returned more than 460% over the past dad. that's almost double9 what the s&p 500 has done. lately, the company has been focusing an acquisition on niche software companies that generate a lot of free cash flow. and investors really seem to like that. the stock trades at 24 times this year's projected free cash flow. next year wall street expects free cash flow to ruse by 15%.

to rise by 15%. jack: software does continue to heat the world. ben, another trend that is not going to be marley affected by whoever wins this election is 5g. so you're looking at a company that will benefit from that trend. >> that's right. it's sba communications. they build the towers that allow the phone companies to do 5g and to do any kind of cellular network. and we need more of those. 5g is a huge opportunity. those networks are getting built9 out. but sba can also benefit from building towers in rural areas, and that's going to happen no matter who wins the election. we're going to be building more towers. and they're very good at that. and so we see them benefiting no mart who 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,

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if your answer is yes, listen to this segment very carefully. the correct answer is, no, if a stock falls from 10-5, it'll have to double, 100% gain to get back to even. jack howe, the same math error was repeated when the gdp numbers were reported, and you became agitated about this. >> that's not fair, i happen to n

entire year. but the bigger eshoo is putting them in bars like this, it looks like these numbers offset each other. it's like the shutdown never happened, we're back to square. now, look, we had great third quarter gdp growth. let's show a line chart that does a better job of explaining what we actually got. we did have solid growth. i'm glad to see it. i hope it continues. but we have a little further to go before we get back to square. this is what gdp numbers should look like. i know that, and i only wore one calculator watch during math class. [laughter] jack: now i need your crystal ball, that looks like the pretty good beginning of a v. is it going to continue that way? >> i think it's going to be like a v if you drew a v in the backseat of a car driving down a bumpy road. i don't know if it's going to be a smooth, straight sax.

i -- straight v. i think we'll get there soon enough. it depends on the course of the virus. jack: that is why people watch bare ron's roundtable. another reason, of course, is actual ideas from carlton and ben. i'll start with you, carlton, what's your actionable idea this week? >> a i'm looking at the owner of sharpie and rubbermaid. they were able to offset some of that weaker back to school send with strong week ware and home -- cook ware and home good sail sales. they're in that continued stay at home trend. jack: and once my 7-year-old realizes she can order sharpies on alexa, that stock is going to pop. [laughter] ben? >> stocks that could do well if the u.s. finds the same path as china, and one of the stocks is te connectivity. they have a big auto business, they're into electric cars among other things. they reported great earnings

this week, but this was a week where it didn't matter, and the stock fell 9%. we think they look great here. jack: jack, thanks for that explaining. to read america check out this week's edition of bare ron's.com and don't forget to follow us on twitter. wear your max on halloween and all other times. ♪ >> from the fox studios in new york city, this is maria bartiromo's "wall street." maria: happy weekend to all. welcome to the program that analyzes the week that was and helps position you for the week ahead. thanks for being here. coming up in just a few moments, i'll be speaking with director larry kudlow on the heels of historic third quarter gdp growth, and lauter my interview with ice cube on his work with the trump administration and their plans to help more african-americans prosper. but first, let's take a look at some of the week's big