from within. i think you shut them down and replace them with new ones built if scratch. it's just the nature of a bureaucracy, once it's ossified, it can't be changed from the top. it has to be leveled and started with something anew to actually fit the needs of the president. i think that's what it's actually going to talk e -- gerry: i think there's increasing support or for a look at the way -- sadly, that's it for this week. my great thanks to charlie hurt and vivek ramaswamy. i'll be back next week, in the meantime, have a great >> "barron's roundtable" sponsored by global x etfs.

jack otter: welcome to "barron's roundtable" where we get behind the headlines and prepare you for the week ahead. coming up, increasing tensions with china have us tech companies in the crosshairs. constellation research founder ray wong on which companies are at risk and later warren buffett's berkshire hathaway making big money moves ahead of his annual letter to shareholders. our experts say it may not be buffett doing those trades. we begin with three things investors ought to be thinking about. markets ended the week mixed on a rate hike fears and rising bond yields. investors fear rates could go higher and stay there longer. ford and haslett hit some bumps in the road but the industry is still moving forward and we've been hearing about a hard landing at a soft landing but are we heading for no landing. on "barron's roundtable," ben levisohn, kristin health term and jack hough. good news is bad news for

stocks, nice economic numbers coming up but the stock market not so happy. jack hough: the stock market is realizing they are wrong about the fed. and investors, we had two have this week, the stock market rally, a strong cpi number, by the end of the week they gave back most of the gains because we got a strong ppi which has more impact on corporate earnings and a lot of fed governors saying 50 basis point rate hikes, the market started to reflect that in places like the fed funds future project. jack otter: the bond market seems to have sniffed this out, bonds have gotten hit hard, is this who investors think are the smarter ones than the stock jocks predicting this was going to happen? >> they were aware this was starting to happen.

they dropped 2.3% in february. that is anticipation of what is going on now, that there is no risk than there was before. than the 2-year, only 0.1 percentage point away from the high of the cycle so we are starting to see, we have to take the fed more seriously. >> we always say you shouldn't look at one or 2 data points. that's more true than ever in recent years. this week you have more data points coming out. what are you looking at? >> a couple things. earnings retailers, the past week we had retail sales numbers come out and now retailers like walmart and home depot and companies like that. and a pce reading, the fed's favorite inflation metric and we see how much inflation is slowing. is it slowing enough to keep inflation going through the year? jack otter: the road to an electric vehicle future turned bumpy this past week.

kristin:it is bumpy especially ford who has to pause production of their f 150 electric truck. this is because they had battery problems, fire in one of the batteries which is not great news. this is a company that lost $2 billion last year so they can't afford these issues. it is good news if you are ford's competitor, they are head to head in the electric truckmaker industry and their stock went up 8% when the news came up so good if you're up and good if you are down. >> pretty good trucks. one of the hot evmakers, tesla, a rough week for elon musk. >> does latter recall, 360,000 cars. it was related to their self driving, so the self driving has been a problem throughout. they were finding these cars

were doing things like not navigating an intersection very well, had to shift speeds so tesla is saying this is no big deal, we will push an update to these cars and fix it but safety issues around this technology raises more questions. >> but good news for tesla on trucker front. >> tesla announced they made an agreement with the biden administration to open their charging network, they have a big reliable network so this moves the future of evs forward in the us. this is more revenue, other cars using their charging stations although one thing for them is this has been something tesla owners are excited that they have this network to pay the premium for the cars to use it and now they have to share it. jack otter: optimist set a

smart landing but then there's a hard landing and optimists say no landing. jack hough: i have started wearing aviator glasses. ubs says a soft landing for the us economy very much on the table, but we could have a hard landing recession induced by two or more additional fed rate hikes. a no landing scenario is where inflation remains hot and stocks are vulnerable. wells fargo sees market turbulence, northern trust, don't now anyone plays these things, northern trust, evaluation head wind and inflationary and deflationary crosscurrents. i have a windshield when i do this much, you got to be careful. i want to break it down for you in simple aeronautical terms, some parts of the economy are cooling down but -- is this upside down? not services, rate hikes are taking a toll but 95% of us

mortgages have fixed interest rates. a lot of us customers are okay right now. basically you have to keep your flaps down and trade tables that. be of a recommends four etfs for proper diversification. invesco s&p, equal weight, vanguard small-cap value and the cow dividend, callsign on the last one, grover, cuckoo in fake pilot language. >> is that a chinese spy plane? >> i can't show you that, we will talk after the show. >> tom cruise is calling it he does want to talk to you. coming up next, speaking of the chinese, we don't know what intelligence the chinese were trying to collect from

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>> americans were shocked to find out a chinese spy balloon, chinese espionage is targeting a wide range of other sectors too. constellation research chairman and principal analyst ray wong. thank you for coming on the show. >> thanks for having me. jack otter: let's start with tech which have been big risks if tensions did. none more than apple, that company shifted a small fraction of manufacturing to india and vietnam but places 3 million workers in china. >> there's a lot of risk. the market in china is 20 to 23% of their business. it is also building high scale manufacturing, all the iphones being produced and it is also

about the technology infrastructure, the ability to manufacture cases and chips and iphones and other gadgets. >> could that go away or slip away or -- what would happen if tensions got worse? >> i have to dim -- give tim cook credit. he sent a good job managing the relationships given the constraints he has, but he's looking at making iphones in india and vietnam and indonesia and thailand and other places, decoupling the supply-chain is real and that is just electronics and high end electronics. other industries are doing that as well but they don't do it overnight. it is a 5 to 10 year transition. jack otter: we are reliant on china for semi conductors. what is the path to independence, can we outsource,

that is the taiwan issue. >> a lot of issues with manufacturing but you see that with the chips act and that will take 3 to 5 years. intel is going back, once again, we are at risk in terms of chips we have, companies like tesla and apple that are in china, they try to navigate that bad -- jack otter: this is a tech war with china but give us a sense, where is china hit? >> there's a war on all fronts and certain categories, take the ones in computing, slightly ahead of that. companies that are able to do that and this new era of computing allows you to forecast things in a different way. artificial intelligence, we are slightly ahead but china has more data because the government can access data. data privacy is a foreign concept, all that data blocks the country. biotech is an area where we

kind of had a lead but we have restrictions for moral or ethical reasons around gene editing that get in the way. say they protect us. clean tech, an interesting one. we are ahead in that area but what we've done is lost power supply chains, rare earth metals required to build batteries, solar panels mostly invented in germany ended up in china for manufacturing. by the time it becomes mainstream it will be cheap for china to deploy in their own country. aerospace and defense is another area where airplanes and manufacturing, we haven't put our supply chains there but europeans have. china has their own see 109 jet that will be popping up in production areas. jack otter: it will be a long road. i want to ask about recent

news, and it raises issues. is it safe to put your money in that country? what is a guy like tim cook thinking when something like that happens? >> there's a lot of risk. tim has been diplomatic in his approach to doing that. if you become more famous than xi xinping or people in the party or the country, you put yourself at risk. if you speak out, you put yourself at risk. you saw when taiwan actually spilled their semiconductor, complex manufacturing in china. everyone thought it would be a great relationship. the result was people's plans were taken from them, getting money out of china.

ben: christopher ray, the fbi director, said china aims to ransack the intellectual property, is that overstating or do you agree? >> the challenge is our technology and intellectual property is so valuable i agree with that statement. it is a concerted effort targeting university professors, targeting people that retired from industries, providing academic missions, they come over and share their ideas and come to it, it is by theft and blackmail. your cousin works here and maybe he can help us if you don't want to see something missing. jack: thank you for letting us know about this. see you soon

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jack otter: warren buffet is known for having a patient investing style but there's more movement in the portfolio. what happened to purchase and hold? please welcome andrew bary to the panel, great to see you as always. warren buffett is about to release his much-anticipated letter. he will finish by 9:00 a.m. saturday morning. before we get to what you are looking for how has berkshire stock been doing? andrew: it is high in the market. it marched up 6% last year. it is a defensive stock, does better in weaker markets and worse in stronger ones. jack otter: his favorite holding period is forever. berkshire hathaway has been doing some buying and selling recently. what do you make of that?

andrew: he sold most of taiwan semiconductor which was only purchased in the third quarter. turnover in verizon stock, bank stocks. his investment -- they manage 10% of the portfolio, they trade more actively than he does and they may be behind these moves. jack otter: paramount mobile out-of-favor, berkshire is doubling down. free cash flow is negative at the moment. is it valuation, takeover potential? buffett might be a huge evis and butthead fan? andrew: it is a $2 billion holding for berkshire, traffic in the bigger stock. i think they see this is a turnaround story that will get more rational and cut costs. the 10 year low is a good value now. kristin:berkshire has done well in energy investments. what the latest in that sector?

andrew: berkshire has not bought much but $40 billion of occidental petroleum and chevron, 10% holding, i estimate buffett is up $10 billion on this right now. ben: i love the geico gecko commercials but you don't see them anymore. andrew: the gecko has disappeared from the air because geico has not been making money in their auto insurance business and they don't feel it is important to advertise when they can't add policies to their profit. geico is a turnaround story. buffett installed one of his top people, it lagged in technology. they are playing catch up, using real-time driving information with policies. jack otter: people read buffett's letter, what are you looking for?

andrew: buffett is 92. what happened in the post buffett era, the designated successor is greg able, berkshire executive. we would like to know more about what buffett sees for the future of the company. jack otter: people got excited when berkshire started buying back stock but it turned a little bit. andrew: for the first three quarters of 2022 they brought back $5 billion in stock, 25 billion in the prior two years. it suggested buffett is less enamored of the stock at the current valuation and seize opportunities elsewhere, buying stocks and businesses like allegheny which they closed on in the fourth quarter. jack otter: we have to ask about charlie munger who got name checked in a call with him. andrew: he was at the daily journal annual meeting that was live streams, he was asked a question about what i wrote, that berkshire could benefit by breaking up into post buffett

era. he doesn't think it will happen but i think there's a good chance it may. people anticipate a breakup of the company, some of the parts could be worth more than the whole. jack hough: there piling in, why aren't they going after berkshire? >> buffett is untouchable but when he is gone, they could come out from where the new ceo is. carleton: we have stock pick from him. andrew: he says the company keeps the culture and his low prices and there is no stopping it. jack otter: you have to show your card at costco, they have virtually no shoplifting. andrew: almost no shoplifting. members don't steal. there's only one exit, one entrance, hard to steal giant rolls of toilet paper

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etfs. visit foxbusiness.com/"barron's roundtable". jack otter: bob iger has an interesting decision to make. what to do now that they own two thirds of hulu, do they want it all? jack hough: a platform no one seemed to need but someone will overpay for. it is a streaming platform the doesn't have a lot of content. the content flows from outside studios, comcast owns a third. it says it is an interested buyer. i'm calling peak poppycock

because comcast already has a platform it is spending a lot of money on content. it can force disney to purchase its hulu steak for a minimum of $27 million. b of a says that the likeliest option but since hulu doesn't come to content disney would have to pay extra for that. why not make a deal to purchase that early? i will not call it a $30 billion content money pinned -- it is not as exciting as fat. maybe they bring back chatec, but i'm not a management genius. jack otter: you have actual ideas, kristin? kristin:a company called walmart, maybe you have heard of it. the retail sales number came in stronger than anybody thought. walmart is reporting earnings on tuesday. they have been outperforming. we expect that to happen again. we learned about holiday sales,

stronger than anyone thought. as people start to worry about inflation, walmart is positioned for people doing the trading. jack otter: what is your pick? ben: palmolive. the consumer staples, strong brands, no private-label penetration, good emerging markets and a good chance that it gets better this year. looks pretty interesting. jack otter: check out this edition of baron's.com, rethinking plastics. follow u the following is an important paid program about humana medicare advantage prescription drug plans, sponsored by humana. there are many reasons why you may be eligible to enroll in a medicare advantage plan right now; call to see if you qualify. if you are losing benefits, moving, or new to medicare, call a licen