Investor Jesse Felder, publisher of The Felder Report, joins host Daryl Jones in this installment of "In The Arena."

Topics include:

  • Current investable themes and Felder's favorite stock ideas
  • The Big Tech backlash and how it’s broadened to target US-style capitalism
  • Deglobalization and the risk of inflation
  • The "Trade War" masking a global tech arms race

Jesse began his professional career at Bear, Stearns & Co. and later co-founded a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund firm headquartered in Santa Monica, California. He has over 20 year of experience managing money. Jesse founded The Felder Report in 2005. His writing is featured in many major finance publications. He also hosts and produces the Superinvestors and the Art of Worldly Wisdom podcast.

Here's a sneak peak into Jesse's thoughts on one of his current long ideas Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY):

"It was trading at like two times free cash flow, which is just insanely ridiculous. The company does close to a billion dollars a year in free cash flow, has a $3 billion market cap. So it's still extremely cheap today. And it's up 70% or something this year because activists have no come in and said, you know, we need to shake things up and kind of help you guys realize some value here. But it still trades three and a half times free cashflow, which is just way too cheap. And there's a massive short balance. Some of the best opportunities I've found in my career, were things where short sellers really jump on top of something cause they think it's going to go out of business."

Jesse also shared some of his top book recommendations: 

"I've re-read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator probably every year since I first read it. There's so much brilliance in there about how the markets work that are still true today. Human nature and all these things. The Jesse Livermore biography, Boy Plunger (The Man Who Sold America Short in 1929) that came out a year or two ago was also terrific. But I think the book I recommend the most to people is the Market Wizard series, the original. I really believe it's really, really important for people to not try and emulate somebody else's investment process. You have to find your own way in the markets. And so what I love about market wizards, this is just profiles, all of these different guys who are very, very successful in the markets and all did it in a unique way."

Jesse shares his thoughts on Big Tech and which companies are most at risk:

"The Fang stocks are definitely all at risk. Netflix is probably less at risk than the others. I mean, Netflix has other challenges, you know, like Disney coming in. But in terms of these political risks and risks to the user base, I think it's especially Facebook, Amazon and alphabet or Google because the case to break up a company like Google or Amazon is huge. You look at the market share that Google has in search and in browse and these types of things... it's the new Microsoft. There's just a terrific case to be made that it should be broken up. I think Amazon, you know, there's a very, very similar case for that too, which is why Jeff Bezos probably moved to Washington DC and has opened up the second headquarters there. He recognizes that this is a massive risk to his platform and he needs to do everything in his power to lobby congress to not implement some of these things that people like Lina Khan who wrote the fabulous Rethinking of The Antitrust Framework in regards to Amazon, people like this are talking about."