Stance reflects how each is framed in this interview; the speaker (Bill = US book / Cole = international book) is named in each cell. Research legend: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis.
| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What was said | At |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QCOM | Qualcomm | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Cole — owned (US tech). One of only two "tech" names they own: good capital structure, produces good returns, cheap. Not caught in the SaaS destruction or the hyperscaler capex. | 16:34 |
| EBAY | eBay | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Cole — owned. "The redheaded stepchild of tech" — never Amazon, but good capital structure and returns; has actually outperformed PayPal, once the "more exciting" part of the business. | 16:55 |
| MRK | Merck & Co. | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bill — owned, featured at $83 (now ~$110). Owns the immuno-oncology market; the most conservative income statement anywhere because it expenses 18–20% of revenue on research up front (funding institutions like Fred Hutch, then commercializing the discoveries). ~12x earnings; the whole healthcare space is cheap on policy fear. | 36:57 |
| AMGN | Amgen | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bill — owned since the fund's inception. Same expensed-R&D distribution-platform model as Merck; "about as popular as it's gotten and still not even to a market multiple." | 38:39 |
| UNH | UnitedHealth Group | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bill — new, ~2% bought in Q4 (at 300, then 271). The formerly most-admired healthcare name, now with a president "breathing down their neck" — policy-headwind pattern that got them into Bank of America / JPMorgan. Fits the eight criteria; "Hemsley bought" (insider buying) is what got them involved. Earns less than before, but a 7% compounded return would be great if the S&P loses money. | 39:36 |
| FITB | Fifth Third Bancorp | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bill — pro pick, owned (1% since Nov 2023). Bought after the SVB/First Republic aftershock, screening for strong-balance-sheet, "boring" regionals. Now buying Comerica — "a really good price" (activist HoldCo screamed it was too cheap for Comerica holders); the ~15-person exec team and duplicate tech stack are instant synergy. Regionals starting to outperform. | 52:48 |
| WAL | Western Alliance Bancorp | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bill — owned (1% since Nov 2023). One of the three "boring," strong-balance-sheet regionals bought in the November-2023 regional-bank work; "doing a lot of great things," operates across the country. Has done great. | 54:46 |
| MTB | M&T Bank | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bill — owned (1% since Nov 2023). The third boring regional (Buffalo) — "what could be more boring than being in Buffalo?" Strong balance sheet, meritorious, cheap when bought. | 55:05 |
| BCS | Barclays | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Cole — owned (European bank). Part of the European-bank trade that started ~2022: cheap, scarred by years of losses, sitting on excess capital the ECB blocked from being returned during COVID — now being released via buybacks that lift book value per share faster than the return on equity. | 32:53 |
| UCG.MI | UniCredit | SA · STK | Positive | Cole — owned. The cleanest example: Andrea Orcel ("a savant") took the helm with huge excess capital, said the bank is too cheap and will run more efficiently. Europe's negotiated deposit market lets banks earn better spreads. "We like to buy stocks that don't have to have a lot of things go right." | 33:48 |
| BG.VI | BAWAG Group | SA · STK | Positive | Cole — owned (Austrian bank). The third European-bank holding, same thesis: cheap, well-run, releasing excess capital via buybacks that compound book value per share >10%. | 32:53 |
| DHI | D.R. Horton | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bill — owned. With Lennar, "the Costco and Walmart of home building" — together ~40% of US homebuilding revenue. Horton is the lowest-cost new home in 36 states; a land-light (opex, not capex) model with a spectacular balance sheet, so the next good cycle "cuts a fat hog." Most under-built US housing ever + record 20–40-year-olds. | 42:47 |
| LEN | Lennar | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bill — owned. The other half of the homebuilder duopoly; sat through the last year's correction because the US is the most under-built ever. Land-light balance sheet takes the pain the smaller builders can't; wins big when the cycle turns. | 42:47 |
| WFG | West Fraser Timber | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Cole — owned a decade (since 2017 softwood-lumber dispute). Ran from the $60s to ~$140, back to ~$96 — good money to okay money. Two setups make it great: supply being curtailed (bullish), and an insider open-market buy from Jim Pattison (who bought counter-cyclically in COVID). The homebuilders' swing supplier is US builders; lumber's cheap. | 1:01:23 |
| CVE | Cenovus Energy | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Cole — #1 in the X-US book AND the biggest energy holding in the US portfolio. Resilient even as the commodity moved sideways because the old Canadian discount has gone away. "The Canadians have better dinosaurs" (Bill) — the wells last 25+ years. SAGD oil sands with high reserve life. | 44:40 |
| SCR.TO | Strathcona Resources | SA · STK · FA | Positive | Cole — owned. After the $10 special (high ~$42, ~$26 today) it's "very attractive." Waterous "has done exactly what he told people." Growing production below $30k/flowing-barrel (Canadian) while the stock trades ~$60k/flowing-barrel; "stole" the related-party Saskatchewan asset from Cenovus (worth a lot). | 59:48 |
| TVE.TO | Tamarack Valley Energy | SA · STK · FA | Positive | Cole — owned, governance-critical (poison-pill reprise). Waterflood returns are great (CEO Brian Schmidt, CFO doing "a great job"), but the December poison pill makes no sense here (no pre-operable asset to protect) — shareholders should reject it. "Appalled that more people in Toronto don't care." As liquidity rises, the valuation rises. | 47:38 |
| APA | APA Corporation (Apache) | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Cole — owned (US); a consolidation target. ~$350M of SG&A to wipe (they capped zero SG&A on the Callon deal); offshore + Permian. "They should be" bought as US oil consolidates like the banks (an SG&A/scale game); run the saved SG&A at 5–10x. | 55:44 |
| COP | ConocoPhillips | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Cole — owned (US). Named alongside APA as the US side of the book; more attractively priced than the Canadian oil-sands names after their two-year "asset-life" re-rate. | 46:17 |
| GLEN | Glencore | SA · STK | Positive | Owned — the commodity expression. "We own Glencore in the copper market" (copper, zinc, nickel, coal). Their way to participate in the 20-year rotational commodity bull without owning the gold miners ("a terrible place to get wealthy — even when gold's good they don't make money"). | 31:25 |
| SPG | Simon Property Group | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bill — a "no-brainer" value (mall-REIT thesis). Pitched Simon at $102 with a 7% dividend at the London Value Conference (after Ben Inker's value case) — "if I was ever going to break my rule and buy an individual stock, that was a no-brainer." He owns only the two funds' holdings, but the fund's mall-REIT sleeve (cf. Nov-2025 "7–8% implied cap rates") reflects the view. | 12:57 |
| PYPL | PayPal | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Cole — reference. The formerly "more exciting" spin-out that eBay (which they own) has actually outperformed — an example of the boring, better-capital-structure name beating the glamour one. | 17:11 |
| CMA | Comerica | QT · SA · STK | Neutral | Bill — the Fifth Third acquisition target. FITB is buying Comerica; activist HoldCo argued Comerica holders were being underpaid — so Smead reads it as a good price for Fifth Third. Reference within the FITB thesis. | 55:25 |
| T | AT&T | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Bill — reference. A telecom-bust survivor (with Verizon) that made only ~5% compounded for 20 years — the cautionary template for the hyperscaler "winners." | 18:15 |
| VZ | Verizon Communications | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Bill — reference. The other telecom survivor; ~5% compounded despite winning. History repeated as caution for the AI hyperscalers. | 18:15 |
| CSCO | Cisco Systems | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Bill — dot-com analogy. Hit a ~$600B cap in early 2000; only "recently" passed that number while being 12x the company it was then — the point isn't whether the business survives, it's that too many fools chased the price. | 24:57 |
| OXY | Occidental Petroleum | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Bill — cheap reference. Chevron tried to buy Anadarko in 2019; Oxy outbid. At ~$40 with Buffett owning ~28%, "you're getting Anadarko and Oxy for about what they offered to buy Anadarko" — a cheap way to frame it amid the coming US-oil consolidation. | 56:33 |
| XOM | ExxonMobil | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Bill — reference. Exxon and Chevron told President Trump it's hard to justify investing in a country (Venezuela) that "fleeced us out of tens of billions." At ~$70 oil there'll be "a lot of consolidation" among the US majors. | 57:17 |
| CVX | Chevron | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Bill — reference. Attempted Anadarko in 2019 (outbid by Oxy); with Exxon, cautious on Venezuela after being "fleeced." Illustrates the US-major consolidation backdrop. | 57:17 |
| BAC | Bank of America | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Bill — method reference. Bought in the '08–09 crisis / Occupy Wall Street policy-headwind pressure — the "petri dish" for the same play now on UnitedHealth. Not framed as a current buy. | 34:40 |
| JPM | JPMorgan Chase | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Bill — method reference. Bought after the 2012 "whale trade" ~$6B loss knocked the stock — the same buy-the-policy/headwind-scare discipline applied to UnitedHealth today. | 34:40 |
| GOOGL | Alphabet (Google) | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Bill/Cole — the concentration & hyperscaler-capex critique. The biggest holding in the Russell 1000 Value index ("even value doesn't know what it is"). One of the hyperscalers going from asset-light to capital-intensive — returns on capital declining even as revenue grows. | 16:14 |
| META | Meta Platforms | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Cole/Bill — "this generation's Nortel." Used an extra ~$45B to run the business last year and earned only ~3% on it on net income (negative on free cash). "Terrible year-over-year returns on incremental invested capital" — revenue growth doesn't matter in the long run; the return on capital does. | 23:37 |
| NVDA | NVIDIA | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Bill/Cole — hyperscaler-mania member. Profitable and spitting out cash (Amber's pushback), but the paradigm shift is that the whole group's returns on capital are declining; the top-10 "turns over every decade," and this cohort is the crowded, over-owned one. | 23:06 |
| MSFT | Microsoft | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Cole/Bill — same as Meta. Grew its capital base a lot on AI investment; because revenue growth wasn't as much as hoped, the market "tore them apart" that day. Bad returns on incremental invested capital — the hyperscaler-capex problem. | 24:22 |
| AMZN | Amazon | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Bill — Mag-7 / concentration reference. Named in the FANG → Magnificent-Seven group whose top-10 dominance "is not going to get rearranged for the benefit of these investors." The over-owned cohort due to turn over. | 21:16 |
| TSLA | Tesla | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Bill — "nothing but air." If Musk is getting out of making cars and pitching robots, "that sounds like air to me." People "have that much faith in the guy." A momentum/faith stock, not a value one. | 51:13 |
| COST | Costco Wholesale | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Bill — valuation. "It mortifies me to watch people justify 52x earnings at Costco." A wonderful company, but "there's never been a company that big able to grow enough to justify" that multiple. | 14:33 |
| WY | Weyerhaeuser | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Bill — not owned ("trust-fund stock"). One of the two worst performers of his Seattle years (with Puget Sound Energy). ~120–160 heirs live off the dividend, so it's "run like a trust fund." Prefers West Fraser; "if Jim Pattison ran Weyerhaeuser, we'd probably buy it." | 1:03:21 |
| WDAY | Workday | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Cole — "SaaS destruction" group. A former darling growth SaaS name in the cohort "getting crushed" — the software-as-a-service world unwinding (only the big-cap hyperscalers haven't underperformed). | 17:28 |
| CRM | Salesforce | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Cole — "SaaS destruction" group. Named in the SaaS cohort getting crushed as former quality-growth darlings. | 17:28 |
| NOW | ServiceNow | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Cole — "SaaS destruction" group. Another SaaS name in the crushed cohort. | 17:28 |
| APP | AppLovin | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Cole — "SaaS destruction" group. Named among the software names in the crushed cohort. | 17:28 |
| CNSWF | Constellation Software | SA · STK | Negative | Cole — "SaaS destruction" group (Canada). Cited as the Canadian example — "watch the SaaS destruction of the Constellation Softwares" — the same unwind visible in the US and Canadian markets. | 17:28 |
| OTEX | Open Text | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | Cole — "SaaS destruction" group (Canada). Named alongside Constellation as a Canadian SaaS name "out there" in the crushed cohort. | 17:28 |
Stance = how each name is framed in this interview, not a price rating; the speaker is named in each cell. Macro substance feeds the master macro viewpoints: S&P concentration (40% in the top 10–15), the ending 15-year momentum stretch, the hyperscalers-as-Nortel incremental-ROIC math, the vicious-circle mechanics, the 20-year commodity rotation, and the European-bank / regional-bank / healthcare value rotations.
A jargon-free summary of the thesis behind the argued names. (Plain-language companion to the table; renders on the consolidated ticker page.)
Smead's headline warning is that the giant tech companies are "this generation's Nortel." In the late-1990s boom, the companies that had to spend enormous money building the network (like Nortel) were the losers, while the asset-light software winners thrived. Today it's flipped: Meta and its peers were asset-light, and are now becoming the most capital-hungry businesses in the world to build AI. Meta spent an extra ~$45 billion last year and earned only about 3% on it (and lost money on it by the stricter free-cash measure). Revenue is still growing, but Smead argues what matters long-term is the return on all that capital — and it's falling fast.
UnitedHealth is the once-beloved health-insurance giant now under intense political pressure, with its stock cut down hard. Smead bought about a 2% position late last year (around $300, then $271) precisely because of that policy headwind — it's the same setup that led him to buy Bank of America and JPMorgan during past bank crises. The clincher was insider buying by chairman Stephen Hemsley. He expects it to earn less than before, but if the overall market goes nowhere for a decade, a steady ~7% annual return here would be a big win.
Merck is a long-time holding Smead's team featured at $83 (now around $110). It dominates immuno-oncology (cancer drugs that harness the immune system), and it runs unusually conservative accounting: it expenses 18–20% of revenue on research every year, funding top institutions and then commercializing what they discover, rather than capitalizing those costs. That makes reported earnings look understated. At about 12x earnings in a healthcare sector beaten down on political fear, Smead sees a cheap, high-quality compounder.
Fifth Third is a "boring" regional bank Smead bought after the 2023 regional-bank scare, screening for a strong balance sheet and low drama. Its acquisition of Comerica is the thesis in action: it's paying what Smead considers a good price (an activist even complained Comerica holders were being underpaid), and a bank takeover instantly removes a duplicate ~15-person executive team and overlapping technology — pure cost savings. As rates ease, these steady regionals are starting to outperform.
Barclays is one of three European banks Smead owns (with UniCredit and BAWAG). The whole trade rests on one idea: European regulators forced banks to hoard capital during COVID instead of returning it, so they're now sitting on excess capital that's finally being paid out through big buybacks. Those buybacks shrink the share count and push book value per share up faster than the bank's return on equity — a mechanical tailwind. The stocks are cheap and scarred by years of losses, exactly the unloved setup he wants.
D.R. Horton and Lennar are, in Smead's words, "the Costco and Walmart of home building" — together about 40% of US homebuilding revenue, with Horton offering the lowest-cost new home across 36 states. The US is the most under-built for housing in memory, with a record number of 20-to-40-year-olds coming into their buying years. Crucially, the big builders now use a "land-light" model (they option land rather than owning it), so they carry less capital and stronger balance sheets — letting them survive downturns that crush smaller builders and "cut a fat hog" when the cycle turns.
West Fraser is a lumber producer Smead has owned for a decade, since the 2017 softwood-lumber tariff dispute. It ran from the $60s to about $140 and back to ~$96, so the easy money's been made — but two things could make it great again: lumber supply is being cut (which historically pushes prices up), and he'd love to see legendary Canadian investor Jim Pattison buy shares in the open market, as he did counter-cyclically during COVID. It's tied to housing, since US homebuilders are the swing buyers of lumber. He specifically avoids Weyerhaeuser, which he calls a sleepy "trust-fund stock."
Smead has nothing against Costco the business — he calls it wonderful — but he's mortified that investors paid 52 times earnings for it. His point is simple math: no company that large has ever grown fast enough to justify such a price, so paying it is a setup for poor future returns regardless of how good the company is. It's his example of quality-at-any-price gone too far.
Weyerhaeuser owns one of the best tree-farming operations in the world, but Smead won't own it — he calls it a "trust-fund stock." Roughly 120–160 family heirs live off its dividend, so it's run to feed that income rather than to maximize value, and it was one of the worst performers of his 40 years in Seattle. He prefers West Fraser, and says only a great capital allocator like Jim Pattison at the helm would change his mind.
Summary & timestamps derived from the public YouTube video (transcript in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © In the Money with Amber Kanwar & Bill / Cole Smead — Smead Capital Management for source material.