in Alexandria, Virginia. I'm Chris Hill, here with senior analyst, Jason Moser and Ben Ra.

Guys, thanks for being here. Jason Moser: Thank you.

Ben Ra: Thank you. Hill: We're going to be talking about what's

happening in the market this week, which if you're in an investor, you've already known

that there's a lot of red out there. We're going to be taking your questions.

Some of you have already asked about where to put your cash, if you've got a little cash

on the sidelines. Good news, we've got a free investing starter kit that comes with five

stock ideas from our investing team. You can find it at fool.com/start. That's fool.com/start.

Check that out, we'll email you the report. Jason, let me start with you, as of this live

YouTube, you look at the S&P 500 the Dow Jones Industrial Average, both down about 9% so

far this week. We are long-term investors, we think in decades, not in quarters.

I'm not going to lie to you, this is a painful week.

Moser: [laughs] Painful. I don't know. I guess that depends on perspective. I was kind of

happy to see this pullback. Now, I'm not happy for the reason behind the pullback, of course,

because I think a lot of this is based on concerns over the coronavirus and how that's

playing out on economies over the world. If we think about the global economy today is

truly a global economy, right? Technology has made the world much smaller, it’s far

more connected, more intricate, more connected supply and consumer chains. So, you see a

lot of questions regarding growth coming into play. And it's not even March yet.

I think we had a Goldman Sachs report out here earlier today that essentially whittled

down earnings growth to zero. That's zero. And that's coming from a pretty heady optimistic

time here, just a couple of months ago. So, this is one of those Black Swan events,

nothing we could have totally predicted or really foreseen. We know that these types of events

are going to happen, we don't know what it's going to be, when it's going to be and how

long it's going to last, but here we are. Hill: Ben, when you think about the impact

of the coronavirus, to Jason's point, the supply chain issues that it's causing,

whatgoes through your mind as an investor, because one thought that I've had and that I've seen

out there in sort of the financial media is, some businesses out there are going to have

an easier time of getting their supply chains and therefore their businesses up and running,

others are already, probably, looking at maybe the last quarter of 2020 and into 2021 before

it's business as usual? Ra: Yeah. Generally speaking, I think it's

going to be very difficult to predict, but when I look at the market, I focus on what's

going on in China a lot. And if you look at the supply chain disruptions there,

one of the risks that have been reported, but is somewhat underreported, I think is the level

of debt that's in China. So, there is this risk that you can have this chain-reaction,

where you have business disruption, you have a lot of companies that are highly indebted.

And China is, in general, if you look at total household, government, corporate debt is 300% of GDP.

A lot of it is corporate debt. So, if you've been looking at a lot of

Chinese companies, as I have, you would have noticed that there's a lot of short-term debt out there.

So, when you have this kind of disruption

then you have situations where companies are saying, “Well, when's the money coming in,

I have to pay my fixed costs?” There's debt maturities, there's interest. I would say

there's going to be a lot of missed interests and principal payments, and then you have

the possibility that the government will have to inject funds, which they’re already doing now.

I think it's likely there's a risk that they'll have to do more. And then you have

“other risks,” like, what's going to happen to the currency and what's going to happen

to the offshore debt? So, there's all of these different chain-reactions

that can take place from the coronavirus. Hill: Jason, you think about what we've seen

in the United States in terms of the IPO market over the last -- call it -- six- to ten months,

where for a couple of years, Wall Street and everyday investors like us were willing to

jump in on companies that weren't profitable, that maybe didn't have the greatest sketched

out business plan. And that kind of came to a stop, sort of the midpoint of 2019,

the patience ran out. To Ben's point about debt, how concerned are

you about monetary policy, which is something we don't really focus on in terms of being

business-focused investors? But to Ben’s point, there are a lot of companies out there

that are not profitable, that maybe we were willing to give a greater amount of leash to,

that maybe as investors we should scale that back a little bit?

Moser: Yeah, I absolutely think that it's a good time to take a look at your portfolio,

look at the businesses in there and determine which ones are profitable versus which ones are not.

And that may sound a little funny, but the fact of the matter is, like you said,

a lot of these businesses out here today these high-flying businesses that have been doing

so well, they are doing very well based on the promise of a very great future, they are

not bringing in that profitability today. And we've had a very accommodative Fed to

this point, right. It seems like whenever there's even a hint of headwind or challenging

times on the horizon, the Fed is very quick to get in there and ease that monetary policy.

It does feel like I've heard more about the Fed responding to the coronavirus as opposed

to perhaps the companies that are out there developing a potential vaccine.

So, for me, definitely, I was looking through my portfolio just yesterday and doing a little

bit of an inventory and looking at some of these businesses and saying, you know what,

this business is profitable, this one isn't, how long do I think this company is going

to take to get to a clear and sustainable path of profitability? And if it's one where

you can't really paint that picture so clearly, you need to keep that in mind, because this

could last for a little while. I mean, I don't think this is one of those situations that's

going to last indefinitely. I mean it's a temporary situation, but it is difficult to

actually figure out how long it may take. One of the data points, I noticed here earlier,

in regard to market corrections; which I think, technically, we're now in a market correction.

There have been 26 market corrections, not including this one, since World War II.

These corrections last around four months on average. So, depending on the situation, it could take

a little bit longer, this could end a little bit sooner, we don't know yet, but it's worth

knowing what you own. Hill: And, Ben, to the point you made earlier,

I mean this is one of those situations, it's going to be incredibly hard to predict.

And I'm not trying to downplay what's happening with the coronavirus, it's a very serious

health situation. That said, I think, as investors, it's worth taking a step back and realizing

what we're seeing in the market, even just the amount of red that we're seeing this week,

this comes against the backdrop of a ten-year bull market. So, at least some of what we're

seeing is investors -- whether it's institutional investors on Wall Street or everyday investors

like you and me -- saying, “You know what, I've done well to this point, if you've been

investing over the last five-, ten years. I'm taking a little money off the table,” so to speak.

But to go to Jason's point, how are you personally

going through your stocks, what are you looking at to sort of determine, okay, maybe it's

not from the standpoint of transacting, like, “I'm selling a bunch of stocks that I've

done well in,” but maybe it is from the standpoint of, “I've got a watchlist and

some of the stocks that were on my watchlist, I'm now removing them from my watchlist.”

What are the couple of things that you're looking at?

Ra: Well, so, if you focus on the American stock market, the U.S. stock market,

it's a bit unique, I would say, because over the last ten years, it's been a great ten years

for stock investors here in the U.S. And the U.S. market really has outperformed versus

the global indexes. So, I think the unique thing about the U.S. stock market is how top-heavy it is.

So, you have these four trillion-dollar companies. So, you're talking about a total

market cap of $4 trillion, 20% of GDP, that's really -- if you go back to 2000, the top

four companies in the S&P 500 were like 14% of GDP. If you go back 120 years, it was less

than probably 1%. So, the big position that these kinds of companies have.

If you say, “Well, I'm going to own Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet.”

The big four trillion-dollar companies. You say, “Well, I'm hoping for a 15% return over

the next four years,” which is pretty reasonable I think for tech companies. That wouldn't

mean that their market caps will double over the next four years, so they’ll be a total

market cap of $8 trillion or about 35% of GDP. So, is that likely to happen? I would

take the under on that. So, I would say diversification is important,

so make sure you don't have all your funds into these big FANG trillion-dollar companies.

There's a lot of great companies out there. And I would definitely say, a significant

amount of diversification as well as cash balance. If you're planning on, you know,

buying a depreciating asset like a car, it’s probably not the best time, because there

may be better opportunities for your funds in the future.

Hill: Jason, you talked about, looking at your own portfolio, sort of, doing an inventory.

Probably a good time for every investor to do an inventory of their temperament,

because this is one of those times where, as we are reminded, investing in the stock market,

we love doing it, we think it's the best way to grow your wealth over time, because that's

what the math has demonstrated for the past 100 years, but it's not for everybody.

Moser: No. And it's very easy to talk about what you would love to do in the midst of

a market sell-off. We talk about how we'd love to see the market pullback, because then

it's a fire sale and we go buy whatever we want and however much of it we want.

But then you find yourself in the throes of it, it's a little bit more difficult to act. You find

yourself second-guessing your investment strategy, the companies that you've been looking at,

you find yourself wondering, “Do I really … could perhaps the market go lower?”

Of course, it could go lower. I live by the lesson my father taught me years ago,

you'll never buy at the bottom, you'll never sell at the top. So, you get used to that and move on.

It really does boil down to just finding good businesses.

And I think that really is one point of emphasis in times like these. And you and I were talking

about this on an episode of MarketFoolery recently. One of the simple checkpoints

I have as an investor is to look at these companies that I'm interested in buying or owning and

just asking myself the very basic, obvious question, “Is this a good business?”

And that can really dictate a lot of what you do from that point forward. Because if the

answer is, “Yes, it's a good business.” Well, then you can start taking that question

to the next level, but if your answer is, “No,” then that's basically it, done,

move on, right. And that, of course, can be a little bit subjective. But I do think there

are some pretty objective answers when it comes to figuring out what is a good business

and what is not a good business. And just answering that one simple question alone,

I think, can help put people's minds at ease. Hill: Alright. We're going to get to your

questions in just a couple of minutes. The guys have a couple of stock ideas,

if you're looking to build a watchlist. In terms of categories though, Ben, I saw

one thing on Twitter today, one analyst firm came out with essentially a basket of stocks

that they're calling a “stay at home” basket. Not the worst idea in the world,

if you think that the impact of the coronavirus in China, around the world, here in the U.S.,

is going to mean more people are staying home. And so, it's got some names like, you would

probably expect in terms of entertainment, Netflix, video games Activision Blizzard,

Tencent, Zynga, Facebook, that sort of thing, food delivery companies. Is that an area,

at least, investors should be looking? And follow-up question, before you've even

had the chance to answer that one. Are there areas that you're looking at, where you're like,

“This is not the time to look at this?” Ra: So, I read something very similar about

how if you had invested in these stay-at-home companies and shorted something, like,

say you know the cruise ship companies, you would have made, like, 60% just this year, which

is very possible and it's a great return, of course, for just one year. So, I mean it's

definitely a possibility. A lot of those names actually are stocks that we have looked at,

a lot of them they tend to be tech companies like Netflix. So, just the fact that they're

not so connected to the physical world, I think that's sort of a long-term trend.

We do live in more of a virtual world these days. So, maybe the coronavirus, sort of, highlights that fact.

And, yeah, I would say in general those are good names to look at.

Moser: I would say, within our little cube here at work, and earlier today, I was talking

with Aaron Busch and Emily Flippen, and Matty Argersinger -- you're going to love this,

Chris -- we came up with the “Fool on! and chill” basket, okay, much like the Netflix

and chill, this is the Fool on! and chill. This is the basket of stocks that we're going

to invest in that follow right into this trend of these stay-at-home companies, and a couple

of them that have been performing really well. And maybe a little bit of it is a knee-jerk

reaction because we're seeing the world moving more towards less human interaction and more

human interaction via tech. Zoom Video and of course you got to give a shout-out to Teladoc

today, which is having just a banner day, we're seeing the merits of telemedicine particularly