"the wall street journal at large." thank you for joining us. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ jack: welcome to "barron's roundtable" where we get behind the headlines and prepare you for the week ahead. i'm jack otter. video game sales have been soaring, will their success continue postpandemic? the ceo of take two interactions says even more innovations are coming. and hater, what you can do to avoid making three big mistakes in investing for retirement. we begin with the three most important things investors ought to be thinking about right now. airbnb continued to climb after more than doubling on its first

day of trading, but the broader market was done a bit for the week. disney plus blew away expectations, can they give netflix a run for its money? and a wave of celebrities are getting into spacs. my colleagues, ben levisohn, carlton english and jack howe. ben, a tale of two markets. everyone was so excited about doordash and airbnb x then the market slud a little bit. finish. >> that's right, jack. ipos got so much attention, it was almost as if the rest of the market didn't exist. i know i had to go check to see how we were doing on the week. airbnb, as you said, more than doubled on its first day, doordash gained 86%. there have been 19 ipos that have doubled on their first day this year, and that's the most since 2000, the dot.com bubble. despite all that, the market did finish down just a little bit, the dow was down 0.6%, the s&p was off 1%.

and it's really bad data, jobless claims, but i think it was really more about political fear. jack: so stimulus, i know those negotiations are still going on. the market wants that money. >> they do want that money. they want it badly. and i think they still think it's going to come. the losses would be much larger if it wasn't. but every day this goes on is another day where the money's not getting out to the economy, and it is another day where the likelihood of it not happening is growing. and to the market's a little bit worried about the election coming up in georgia, the runoff for the two senators there. there are worries that if the democrats do actual win those seats, that you could get a selloff particularly in stocks because stimulus could be so large, and that just forces everybody out of growth and into economically sensitive tocks. jack: because those stocks are still a smaller share of the market, the overall index could go down even if they surge and tech falls. >> that's right.

jack: that's kind of interesting. just one more thing happened this week that was a little interesting to market watchers, and that was facebook is in trouble with regulatorrers. the question is will it get broken up. the market yawned. >> the market didn't care at all. and it could be for one of two reasons, that they don't think the case is going to work, or even if it does, you're going to end up with facebook, instagram and what's app that are fantastic company,, and you're going to do fine either way. jack: i think we'd probably see a hot more innovation if they were forced to survive on their own, and it might even be better for investors. look, jack, i want to go to you. you have been bullish on disney for a while, and this week the market agreed with you bigtime. i think it was a new hull after time high for disney. >> yeah. if there's -- if the streaming business for television is an arms race right now in terms of spending on content,-then disney, i think, is starting to look like the the death star to

its competitors. the company if had a future-year future-year -- five-year goal, and it reached the high end of that goal not in five years, but in about one year. so there's a new goal now, and talking about disney plus, espn plus and hulu, they want to reach a combined 300 million to 350 million subscribers by fiscal 2024. so you say, well, how many is that? well, netflix is close to 200 million today, so disney has, you know, ambitions to be much larger than in the flicks is now. i think there's a very real possibility that disney could catch up with netflix, maybe even overtake it in the years ahead. i think even the bulls didn't really anticipate something like that. it's not cutting prices on streaming, it raised prices, and this revenue windfall from automatic subscribers, it's and spending massively on content. there's ten new mar having shows, ten two "star wars" shows, 25 new shows and movies

across disney studios and pixar, that's all for streaming, the company says by 2024 it might be spending $12-14 billion in just that year alone. the stock jumped 13% on the news. investors love it. these two companies, disney and netflix, had about the same market value for a while. you have to ask yourself, why are they so close at this point? disney looks to be every bit the winner in streaming that netflix is, and that's not even counting the theme parks and everything else that we know are coming back down the road. jack: yeah. they've nailed the pandemic, and when things come back, the streaming loves recurring revenue. ing carlton, let's go to you, and you get to talk about this esoteric investment vehicle known as a spak, special purpose acquisition company. why are they in the news right now? >> yeah. so spacs are basically these blank check companies where a backer or sponsor raises money from investors or in an ipo with

the intention of acquiring a company in a certain time frame. the offering documents may offer some indication of what, you know, that type of industry it might be in, but this year has certainly been a hot one for spacs, more than 200 have gone public raising about $75 billion. a few reasons for this, obviously, low interest rates have investors, you know, just chasing different investment opportunities, and we see ipos take off as they have, that's another reason why people would want to go into them. but it's only a mart of time before people -- matter of time before people who may not be experienced get involved in them, and we're seeing some celeb fews attaching their name, and that might be raising questions. jack: i guess the advice is do go with someone who is investing in his or her area of expertise, right? shaq is a great ball player, you may not want his real estate advice, but if somebody has a great track record in reality, maybe you do that. >> exactly. and we have a piece this week,

and what we find is the ones that were founded by known operators, people who led the company, those have been some of the most successful. so, or you know, a celebrity on its own is not necessarily a reason not to invest in one. you want to look you should the hood, but -- under the hood, but this is kind of a new area that's taking off where a lot of money is chasing it. even having a great team isn't always a guarantee, but that would be what you would be looking for. jack: investing in a new fad isn't always a great approach. thanks very much, carlton. coming up, adults over the age of 35 are sending more time than ever -- spending more time than ever playing video

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♪ gerry: sales of gaming software and consoles have gone through the roof during the pandemic, and so have the stocks. will the gaming clause continue after the crisis is over? take two interactive ceo strauss zelnick joins me now. thanks for maybing time. >> thanks for having me. >> jack: i'd like to quickly explain the scale of gaming. it is a $140 billion a year industry, and that's even before you include gaming consoles. and just to put that in perspective, it's more than three times global box office back in 2019 when we used to go to the movies. can you give us a sense of the scale of your biggest, your marquee game, grand theft auto. is it a blockbuster on the scale of a "star wars"? >> well, at least on that scale. ing many people think that grand theft auto is a franchise, it's the biggest entertainment property ever created. and i put that in context. grand theft auto v has sold 300

million uniwiths, and seven years later, it's expected to have another record year this year. jack: and i know you don't like to give out numbers, but i guess people can multiply that times $70 a apiece and get a senses of what we're talking about here. i want to dispel one myth. often people think of the video game player as the dekid in the basement. i know you don't marly like that stereotype. the data proves that isn't an accuratester to yo type. >> something like three billion people around the world play video games. over 200 million americans play video games. the average age is between 36-45, and while it skews slightly male, it's almost evenly balanced male and female. so video games are really america's pastime. jack: it certainly seems that way in my household. i have a 14-year-old son. and, obviously, his use, everybody's use increased during

the pandemic. they were stuck at home. but, again, i think there's a misunderstanding here. it's not just someone interacting with the screen, they're actually interacting with their friends and with other people with their headsets and so forth. one really interesting thing i heard about with your nba2k game was there was actually a gathering of people mourning george floyd's death when that happened. can you, plan how that works? >> in the game, in the neighborhood. so people's avatars actually could gather in the neighborhood and, in fact, we have t-shirts that they wore to signal appreciation for the moment and sadness and collective engagement. what is amazing about interactive entertainment, and you said it, is we don't only give fans an opportunity to have great stories, great characters, great graphics and great game play, you can actually play games cooperateoffly or competitively with friends in communities all around the world, and you can talk to friends all around the world

while you're playing. we like to consume entertainment with ore people. you mentioned going to the movies or watching television at home. and interactive entertainment allows you to enhance the experience while you're having it. jack: i want to ask you where that goes in the future, but just quickly, gaming used to be a very cyclical industry because you didn't really have that. you buy the game, you play it for a while, you get sick of it, and when the new one comes out, you buy the new one. but now your recurring revenues really as people buy stuff in game. how does that work? >> as you said, we used to put out a game, people could consume it for a few months, that would be the end of it. now we give consumers content after the initial release whether that's part of a multiplayer online offering or just additional content that is downloaded for a game. so if you love something, you can stay engaged with it, and you can have an ongoing living,

breathing experience of the game. so basketball for us used to be a three month experience, now it's a twelve-month experience. and as i said earlier, grand theft auto online has been going strong for seven years and more constant drives that engagement. the fact that we have new content coming in just a few days. jack: and in the real world, basketball's like a three-month exappearance. but real quick, i want do you, if you can, to look into your crystal ball. you have a broad entertainment background, you ran fox, you ran cbs. how does this interactivity man it's itself in the future? will movies become interactive? will there be a joining of gaming and movies, so forth? >> i think the media will influence each other. i think games are becoming more sin mat ific. i don't think stories need to become interactive. i think there is a difference between a competitive video game experience and a linear story experience, and i think to the

extent that people are choosing their own endings, for example, it's pretty hard to continue to suspend disbelief. so i don't know that the media will merge. i do think that more and more video games have have stories that are powerful, characters who you really believe in and immerse sieve opportunities -- immersive opportunities, and much of that has come from the motion picture business. cc jack and, clearly, you are winning the share of eyeballs. strauss zelnick, thanks very much. >> thank you so much. jack: coming up, are you making one of the three biggest mistakes in retirement investing. the panel we love the new apartment. the natural light is amazing. hardwood floors. there is a bit of a clogging problem. (clog dancing)

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plan for retirement savings is actually not that hard. but it's also ooze su to undermine by making some common missteps. this week's barron's has a story about common errors. ben, i'm going to start with you. it is so tempting to try to outsmart the market by timing your buying and selling, but that rarely works out well. >> yeah, no, it's a big mistake. you know, you look around and you see these u e if pos that are doubling on their first day of trading or hear about the spacs that carlton was talking about, and it's like, oh, i've got to get into these. but if you're chasing these kinds of things, chances are you going to lose money. it's a cliche, but what really matters is time in the market, not timing the market. you want to put money in every month and let it compound over time. and if you do the speck la tu bets, you're almost guaranteed to lose, and you're not going to be able to compound. it's just a horrible mistake.

jack: that said, you have been a professional trader, so you don't think it's crazy to buy individual securities and so forth. 9 give us some ground rules for somebody who wants to do that. >> it's one of those things where if you want to trade, you need to set aside a certain amount of money that you know the you can afford to lose and use that as your trading money. and you want to be methodical about it, keep track of what you make and what you lose and what works and what doesn't and try to treat it as you would anything else that you're putting your money into. it's not really a game. but it can be done. you justed need to do it very carefully, not with a lot of money. jack: and i think it's important to be honest with yourself, you've got to do the math. you kind of forget about the losers, but if you keep careful track, you can compare yourself to the s&p 500 and see if you can really beat it. jack, keep those frictional costs from low to zero. tell us how that is. >> yeah. if you're wondering how much to

pay in your 401(k) account on fees, i think you should aim for zero. you can't quite get there, but you can come close. a good s&p 500 fund will cost, you know, maybe a tenth of a percent or less in fees. and an s&p 500 fund gives you kind of a lot. you get every different industry in there, you get some real estate, you get some gold miners, you get some international diversification because u.s. companies do business overseas. i saw this analysis by vanguard, and they say if you're paying 2% in your fees of your retirement over 25 years, that can cost you 40% of the money you otherwise would have had at theowned of that 25 years. i would end hope no one is paying close to 2%, personally, a fund manager would have to walk on water to get me to pay even 1%. but if you have a fund manager that you really love and that you want to pay up for, i would just say keep a core of cheap

index funds to try to average those fees lower and is have a little bit with those money managers. jack, thrift is sexy, okay? [laughter] if warren buffett hasn't said that yet, he should have. jack: hey, jack howe said it. that is all that i need. carlton, let's talk about, wow, i am scared the market goes up, it goes down, i want to put all my money in cash. whew shouldn't i do that? >> well, you know, cash is also sexes city, but i think people who hoard cash, it's almost the other side of the coin. at lot of times people system at the bottom, they think they'll know the right moment to be in the markets and, of course, they miss that. understandably, you know, when you go through a time in march, a lot of people will reevaluate their portfolios, and it might make sense to hold a little bit more cash, what do i need over the next suggestion months, and in -- six months, but what you don't want to do is really radically change your portfolio

allocation where you're taking, like, you know, 0, 20% or more cash holding that's not earning anything on the upside. jack: people tend to be scared about headlines of the market plummeting, and it does happen. you're going to have paper losses. but what they don't understand is that holding cash for all of your retirement savings, you are guaranteed to lose purchasing power. a dollar today is going to be worth a lot less 10, 20 years from now. up next, round table members up next, round table members you work hard for your money. up next, round table members stretched days for it. juggled life for it. took charge for it. so care for it. look after it. invest with the expertise of j.p. morgan, either with an advisor or online, through chase. after all, it's yours. chase. make more of what's yours.

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get two back that afternoon. but, in fact, it's a way for companies to raise money, and they left a lot of money on the table this week. >> you're not really supposed to get these big, you know, first-day pops in the share price. and people are paying attention to this. in the first half of this year,en companies that did u e po -- ipos underpriced their deals by an average of 30%. here comes doordash, airbnb, they needed a special type of ipo designed to get investors to say how much they're willing to pay. they walked away with about half the money they could have. i was talking with a colleague earlier, it rhymes with ben. he i thinks companies might do something like this on purpose because they keep a lot of shares, they want to see that enthusiasm for the shares they might want to sell later. i think it might be difficult to tell in a frothy market, you've got to hold your finger up. i the those -- i think they

thought or people were about this nuts right now. [laughter] jack: i think ben is really on to something here, so much so, i'm going to give him first crack. >> qualcomm. it lost 7% on friday after apple said it would build its own cellular modem. we knew this was coming. qualcomm has other things going for it including 5g and increases in smartphone volumes, so it's looking pretty interesting here. jack: yeah, it's really interesting, i think qualcomm will have some customers in the future. carlton, what are you looking at? >> i'm looking at ralph lauren. now, i've got to admit, i don't know if i'm looking at the clothes or the stock. retail is under pressure now, but it's a company that got two analyst upgrades this week. basically, they're saying, you know, a strong balance sheet, strong brand identity, strong move to online, so it's one that could be interesting as the i economy recovers we start dressing up again.

[laughter] jack: jack, carlton, ben, thanks very much. to rad more, check out this week's edition at barron's.com. don't forget to follow us on twitter@barron's online. we will see you next week. david: good evening, everybody i am david asman sitting in for lou dobbs we begin this evening with a bottle for the white house, the republican party in arizona announced plans to bring forward a case before thehe supreme court in support of president trump. arizona republican said they will appeal an election integrity case dismissed earlier this week by the state supreme court. is that case drama president trump at his legal team are awaiting order