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Jim Gillies: Sure. I'm probably going to give some conflicting stories this week, but they are what they are. Whenever I hear the word pessimist, I'm always reminded of my favorite science fiction author Robert A Henlan who said a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun and neither can stop the march of events. I understand the pessimism, but I choose to be an optimist. This concept of underweight US stocks versus overweight, I hope most individual investors aren't bothering with that type of thinking. I am a fan of hedging with cash in your portfolio. I'm a fan of moving slow, acting slow. I'm a fan of long-term thinking and of not getting terribly specific with allocations, which this seems to be, I understand the pessimism regarding economic prospects. I believe we'll talk more about that. But the overarching reality, I like to remind myself to be the optimist in pessimistic times, what I like to remember is the quote from Shelby Davis, which is, you make most of your money in bear markets. You just don't realize it at the time. Time and again, that has proven beneficial for me, I'll put it that way.

Ricky Mulvey: Well, I think when I started working at the Fool, we got into the 2022 bear market, and one of the things you told me is basically, the more disgust I feel when I hit a buy button, it usually ends up being a much better decision three to five years from now. There's a couple of companies I want to talk about in a bit where I'm feeling some disgust at the idea of buying them.

Jim Gillies: Good.

Ricky Mulvey: Within this survey, the one thing that's a little interesting is how this is playing out in cash allocations, which currently stands for these fund managers at about 5% of assets. Is that number meaningful? That doesn't seem very fearful.

Jim Gillies: I don't view it as fearful. I usually am around 5% in most market conditions, and I have been so for nigh on 30 years. I guess if I've been peak fear for three decades, I don't know, I don't feel that way. I will say that I was a little concerned, so I'm going to go with the negative economic prospects here. I was a little concerned about market valuation, about bluster coming from the direction of that White House you all have in Washington, DC. But more than that, the tariff nonsense Canadians got a sneak peek of, of course, Canadian. We got a sneak peek at the tariff nonsense, we were the first ones to get targeted.

Maybe that's what had me a little bit, I'll say ahead of the curve in terms of temporary repositioning myself, 50 for state nonsense, valuation, frankly, for a lot of, especially the MAG7, was generous, shall we say. I actually took my cash position temporarily up to close to 25%. But all through that, I didn't feel particularly fearful. I felt particularly opportunistic, saying I think I'm going to get better prices. Now, I am no longer 25% cash or 25% ish cash. Probably deployed a third to half of that cash back into shares as well as indexes at lower prices. I think that's fine. And that's actually, I think, a hidden benefit of things like index funds, particularly in tax-sheltered accounts, where you can get in, get out quickly based on the whims of the market. I'm typically a pretty slow mover anyway. But in this case, it seemed reasonable to do, but I don't know. Maybe I'm hard-wired against fear, I think, because, 25% cash, even 5% cash, that ain't peak fear. I like to call it peak opportunism, because if I'm correct at elevated cash levels, I'm going to get better prices.

I have no idea where the S&P 500 say is going to be or the TSX composite. I have no idea where it's going to be in three months, six months, a year from now. I just know that during times of pessimism, historically, it's been a good idea to be deploying money. I'm not going to, you know, insult anyone's intelligence by doing the whole buffet, buy when there's blood in the streets. We're nowhere near blood in the streets level. It's been an interesting few months, and I always like how people seem to forget that markets fall, too. When you've had, like, 2023 and 2024 were pretty good markets,2021 was a pretty good market in the second half of 2020 and so 2022 shouldn't be feared. It was opportunistic. I think, even with the nonsense that's been battering the news stories for the past three, four months, it's not a time to be pessimistic. It's a time to be how can I improve my station three, five and 10 years from now?

Ricky Mulvey: Well, one area of the market where investors are really pessimistic, one I know you follow closely is the retail landscape. State Street's S&P retail ETF, which has gobs of different types of retailers from some food retailers, clothing retailers, specialty retailers. That's down about 16% from January, and that is 2X, the decline of the total S&P 500 down about 8% from the start of the year. Seems like it would be a lot more given the point of the news cycle that we're in we're coming up on earnings season, and before we get into specific companies, do you think more retailers should be getting in front of tariff news, talking to investors about their supply chain, pricing scenarios, what they're going to do? Like before this recording, I went to the Investor Relations page of one of your favorite retailers, Academy Sports and Outdoors. There's not a whole lot of chatter on there about how they're going to handle these potential supply chain challenges as the stock has been battered this year.

Jim Gillies: I think retailers should get ahead of it, and I think we should all pay attention to the fact that it probably doesn't matter because, you know, they will be reacting. Let's call this what this is. This is mainly the China problem. We buy a lot of stuff from China, and that is where a lot of the back and forth tariff, I'll hit you with reciprocal tariffs. Well, I'll hit you. That's where a lot of it has been recently landing. It's very confusing, frankly. Like, I don't know anyone's really keeping track of it, the whole thing. I think you have to be in front of the tariff thing, but I think you're not going to really be able to say, specifics with great detail. Even if you do, I'm not sure it's really going to do much in the here and now, which is why I buy with a 3-5 year expected time horizon as a minimum, because I don't know how the world's gonna look in five years. I know it's going to look different because, I think back five years ago now and we're in month number 1 of COVID and well, that was a party, and no one saw that coming five years before that. It's not a retailer, but it is a restaurant company, restaurant franchisor, which I've talked about before here, but they just reported this company called MTY Food Group out of Canada.

Not that the ticker really matters at this point, or the name, but they in their most recent earnings release, which was last week, they said tariffs were in front of mind, and they got in front of it like you're talking and they noted that in both the US and Canada, where they operate, most of their input costs are sourced domestically. There's some mitigation there. And then there was always, you know, what they said was potential impacts through our strong supply chain and procurement capabilities, or that they would mitigate, sorry, these potential impacts through the strong supply chain, procurement capabilities, strategic menu adjustments, and when necessary, pricing actions. They had raising prices for customers, which of course is the problem with tariffs. It amounts to an inflationary tax on the end consumer if an American, that's on goods brought into America. You're going to be paying more, that they had pricing at the very end. We're going to try to mitigate as much as possible on the way in, but we might have to resort to price hikes. And I suspect that that will be the stance of pretty much everyone in the space. The other issue, I think, is, I'm not sure the market really believes these tariffs are here for the long term. I think they look at the first Trump administration where tariffs were on, tariffs were offs.Tariffs were on, tariffs were offs. Oh, we've got ourselves a brand new North American free trade deal. I think that, there's probably a lot of people saying, yeah, this is of the deal. Style stuff coming out of the president's office. This is probably going to ultimately look a lot like the first administration, because the other thing that I am reasonably confident in saying is that while all presidents, I think, look to the stock market as one of the indicators of the job they've done, I think the current president has a particular love of the stock market and going up.

I saw a clip of him yesterday or day before talking about, don't worry about short-term pain because, you know, look at my first term, where the markets were up. I think he said 87% or whatever. We all have a tendency to hew toward recency bias and to look at everything that's happening right now and extend that, forever thing. I think, you know, look, watch retailers, by all means, retailer management team should talk about this, but I'm not sure they're going to really be able to do much about it in the immediate term. It's going to take a few quarters, maybe years to restructure, and by then, we could have a whole different set of challenges.

Ricky Mulvey: We'll see. One day, people are upset about tariffs. The next day, we'll see if people are really excited about tax cuts getting extended. One retailer that's on my radar. I'm working out a thesis for it, so we'll see if we can do this on air, is Abercrombie and Fitch. I don't have a position in the company, but it's one that is on my watch list, and I'm thinking about picking up some shares. If you're listening to this, depending on when I may or may not have a position, I truly don't know if I'm going to buy. Basically, Abercrombie over the past few years has been able to grow earnings, grow sales. Right now, its investors are putting the stock in the dumpster. It trades at about seven times earnings and cash flow. When we look at the prior year, comp sales are up about 14% year on year. The vast majority of sales are in North America. When you look at the manufacturing supply chain, which they give to you in an Excel format, which I then have to run through an LLM to pull out the information, only about 5% of their workers are in China, where the real trade war is brewing, and the majority are in India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. This is also the exact kind of manufacturing that I do not expect to move back to the United States in a meaningful capacity. I think it's going to be they're trying to get the high level. Yeah, I don't think you're going to retrain Americans to sew jeans together. I just I simply don't.

For $5 a day. At the same time, management's meaningfully buying back shares. They have about 1.3 billion dollar share repurchase authorization for a 3.5 billion dollar market cap. They're doing that when the stock is way off all time highs, which I like to see. I think that they have good clothes. I've been to their stores. I think they have a good selection. People who are much smarter about fashion than me, shout out Mary Long, says that her friends and her are like an Abercrombie Fitch. I think maybe the stock's at a discount. That's the pitch I'm working on. What would you press me on if I were pitching this company to you at a Motley Fool Investor meeting?

Jim Gillies: Well, I'll hit that. I will say a couple of other little notes about this company. I've not looked at it in a long time. I looked at it back in the day, like 20 years ago. I mean, I'm someone who thinks a black T shirt is the height of fashion. So I mean, let's be honest, you know, this is not exactly my Bailewick I like that it looks like the last five years, they produced about the $1.34 billion in cumulative free cash flow. Love that. Fiscal 2022, that was rough, probably tied to the post-COVID supply chain nonsense we got to live through that I guess people have sort of forgotten. That was a cash-burning year. That five years 1.34 billion free cash flow includes a cash negative year, kind of like that. I like that they paid off all of their debt. I don't count operating leases as debt because it's not. So they paid off all of their debt before they really geared up their buybacks in fiscal 2024. I like that. They appear to be buying back their own stock at any price, however, most of their Q4 prices came at a price double that of today.

I wonder if they've got a model we got a number of companies I like to follow where they ramp buybacks because they have a good appreciation for their own valuation. I'm not sure Abercrombie's behavior, behavior is a language. I'm not sure that their behavior would indicate that they are running from a valuation model. Of course, they can't help what shares do. I guess my first question would be, how certain are you that they can maintain their fingers on the pulsive fashion, which is the problem for every clothing retailer, including Abercrombie? Will fickle customers migrate away? Will customers in a recessionary world migrate away from a higher-cost provider like Abercrombie? You can also throw in any number of other retailers in there. In other words, if they're trading for about seven times earnings and cash flow right now, is that because we are at peak earnings and cash flow, and they're trading at, say, 20 times forward peak earnings and cash flow? Are they going to cower and conserve cash now versus the buybacks they've been doing? This is a company that has about 900 million to shy, 900 million cash on the balance sheet. Are they going to deploy that or are they going to sit and cower? Are they committed to continuing to buy back stock? Are they willing to borrow to buy back stock?

Like, have they made that? Because that is usually something I've seen a few retailers, estimating where they are in their own cycle, say, oh, our stock is such a bargain. We're not going to exhaust our cash hoard. We're going to put it on the credit line that tends to not work out too well. Then probably the next question I would have for you is, again, looking back at 2022, which was the post-COVID supply chain mess for again, far beyond Abercrombie, was many other companies in this space.

But if we are worried about a supply chain issue, and it wasn't just China that was hit with tariffs, of course, as you mentioned, India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam, those countries also got, slapped with a strange percentage of tariffs before it was walked back for 90 days. Are we going to see in early July? Are those going to come back, and what is going to happen? I would say, are we going to have a repeat of 2022, cash flow-wise, because the supply chain just gets tossed into a meat grinder? There's a lot of questions there, and probably ones you can't answer in this format at this moment. But that's what I would look at.

Ricky Mulvey: I'll address a few of them, and then we'll wrap up. One, I'm really bad at identifying fashion trends. One of my goals this year is to learn how to match clothing. In fact, when I got out of college, I went to Ohio State, Abercrombie's in Columbus. I interviewed for two jobs there. I didn't get them either time. One, because I was bad at identifying fashion trends, I think, and probably my personality. Another time, because they did that, like, dinner where everyone goes, and you have the job applicants meet with people who work there, and you try to socialize with them. One of the people who works there said, I see no reason to ever see stand-up comedy live in person when I can watch it on Netflix and I may have implied that I thought that that was an idiotic take. Anyway, all of that is to say, my trend vibe is not as good. Look, I understand the risk involved, but maybe the supply chain stuff is not like COVID because this time it's completely self-inflicted, which can also be undone. I would say that I think they've done a pretty good job so far, selling clothing in North America and expanding their supply chain outside of China to prepare for these disruptions, and maybe, just maybe, it's an OK 3-5 year bet.

Jim Gillies: First off, I feel you in the job interview. I once interviewed at Fidelity back 20 years ago, and I knew I wasn't getting the job when I got into an argument with the portfolio manager who I was interviewing with, in fairness, he was wrong. [laughs] Sorry. I guess my thing is, what would they do? Another question I would have here is what are they going to do in terms of their growth plans? Because I would agree with you. I think they have done from very brief look at this company, and like I said, I gave a bunch of things. I really like what they've done. How much of their CapEx is going to new store growth? In this moment in time, would they slide back their new store growth development in order to husband a bit of cash, focus on the buybacks, because if you like it at 140, you should like it at 70. Again, are they actively holding down the amount of inventory they're holding in anticipation of some of the problems yet to come? Agree completely with you, self-inflicted problems could be fixed with the stroke of a pen, also self-inflicted, so we'll see.

Ricky Mulvey: Let's leave it there. I feel our engineer, Rick Engdahl, saying, Please let me edit this show. We will let him do just that. Jim Gillies, thank you for being here. Appreciate your time and your insight.

Jim Gillies: Thank you very much.

Ricky Mulvey: Up next, Robert Brokamp joins me to discuss what to look for in your tax return and what that information says about your financial future.

The finale of tax season is here. If you're listening to this show, well, there's a good chance you've already done your financial scavenger hunt and confirmed that you paid the taxes that the IRS already knows you owe them, or that you're getting back an interest-free loan from the federal government. Bro, since the first thing people are going to look for is how much money they're getting back, let's start there as we're looking at your tax return tarot card, what it says about your financial situation. What's a good strike zone for this return? What's a good benchmark to know if maybe you owe too much or if you're getting too much back?

Robert Brokamp: Well, everyone does love a refund, but as you suggest, every time you get a refund, you're essentially gave Uncle Sam an interest-free loan. According to the IRS, as of April 5 of this year, more than two-thirds of the returns that have been processed have resulted in refunds, with the average amount being $3,116. If you instead had that earning, say, 4% in a savings account over the past 15 months, you'd have earned around 150 bucks or so. Not a major amount, but not necessarily chump change either. Ideally, you'd owe money, so you had use of that money for 15 months. But you don't want to owe too much because then you'll owe a penalty as well. To avoid a penalty, you have to satisfy one of three criteria. Your tax bill has to be less than $1,000, or you paid at least 90% of what you owed on this year's return, or you paid 100% of what you owed on last year's return, though, if your adjusted gross income is 150,000 or higher, you'd have had to have paid at least 110% of what you paid last year. The sweet spot is owing several hundred dollars, and I know that sounds counterintuitive. Everyone loves a refund. But as long as you're earning a return on that money that you eventually paid Uncle Sam, you'll actually come out ahead.

Ricky Mulvey: Let's say you're off, and let's say you're getting a lot of money back from the federal government or your state government. After you celebrate, maybe go on Amazon, you could go to the casino, if you want, with that tax return. What should you do immediately after?

Robert Brokamp: Well, first of all, I don't recommend any of those. [laughs] I'll just say this. Whether you get a refund or you owe money, you should always first start thinking about whether anything is going to change this year. It could be a change in your family makeup. You're getting married, getting divorced, you're having an extra kid, or a change in your income, up or down one way or the other. Then, you have to factor that into how much you should have withheld this year, and you do that by submitting a new W-4 with your employer, if you're working for another company. Just keep in mind, though, that we're already 3.5 months into 2025. If you got a big refund, you've already had a lot withheld more than you probably should, to figure out how much to have withheld from your paycheck. IRS does have a withholding estimator at irs.gov. Also, most of the online tax prep companies have W-4 calculators. Even your payroll provider might have one. If you're self-employed, you have to pay estimated taxes four times a year. If you do that and you pay too much, just don't pay as much, so basically, you just want to change it so that you're paying less throughout the year. But then set up some automatic savings plan with the extra money. You don't want that extra money just sitting there in your checking account; do something smart with it, get it to a high-yield savings account, or get it into a retirement account.

Ricky Mulvey: Sounds a lot better than taking a trip downtown. What are your options, then? That's if you're getting too much back and you've celebrated, you make some adjustments. What are your options if you owe too much, if you're not owing several hundred dollars, but several thousand dollars back to Uncle Sam?

Robert Brokamp: Well, so again, you would first of all, want to immediately change your withholding right now so that you can have more withheld this year, so you're not in the same situation come next April 15. But if you sit there at your computer and you do your taxes and you see that you owe several thousand dollars, the first thing you want to make sure you do is still file the return, even if you don't have the money to pay it, because if you don't file the return, you're going to pay two types of penalties, failure to file penalties and underpayment penalties so you definitely want to still file the return. ow, if you don't have enough money to pay the bill, the IRS does have a payment plan, and you can apply for it online. You still are going to pay the underpayment penalties until you can pay it off, and they can be steep. It's charged on a monthly basis. If you can, it might be better to borrow that money somewhere else at a lower rate to pay the bill, maybe friends and family, if they're kind enough, rather than let the penalties accrue with the IRS. There are a few circumstances in which the IRS will waive underpayment penalties, such as someone experiencing maybe a major casualty event or a disaster, or the taxpayer retired after reaching age 62 before the current or preceding tax year. Do some research to see if any of those waivers will apply to you. In some circumstances, you can actually get your bill reduced by applying for something that's called an offer in compromise, but you really have to experienced some significant hardship for that to get approved.

Ricky Mulvey: I consider all of our listeners friends, Bro. Do you have a good email for anyone who may be owing a lot in taxes, looking for a personal loan to reach out to you?

Robert Brokamp: Yeah, it's rickym@, no, I'm just kidding.

Ricky Mulvey: For those who have filed their taxes, we'll go to the financial planning side. You've paid. Maybe you're in the good strike zone, or you've taken care of it if you owe too much, or you're getting too much back. What would the financial advisor look for if I were to bring them my tax return this year?

Robert Brokamp: I think one of the most important things they're going to look at is your adjusted gross income, which is on line 11 of your return. This is your total income minus some special tax breaks such as educator expenses, student loan interest, pre-tax contributions to IRAs, and HSAs. Knowing your AGI is crucial to determine your eligibility for all kinds of other tax breaks and things. For example, your AGI plays a part in determining your ability to contribute to a Roth IRA or a Coverdell education savings account. It determines your eligibility for many tax credits related to having kids and paying for their dependent care, and paying for their education. Your AGA plays a role in how much you'll pay for Medicare premiums and your eligibility for premium subsidies through the Affordable Care Act, even your ability to deduct medical expenses, especially in new years where you have a lot of medical expenses, and plenty of other things, really. It's an important number to know.

Something else on your tax return to look for might be how much you're paying in taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains. If these are coming from investments that are for retirement and you're not close to retirement, it might be better to have those investments in your IRAs and 401(k)s, and then you use your taxable brokerage account for more tax efficient investments like stocks that don't pay dividends, maybe municipal bonds, if you're in a high tax bracket or a high tax state. If a financial planner is looking at your return, they're going to look at your current tax bracket and then estimate where it will be in the future. If you're in a lower bracket today, especially compared to where you'll be in retirement, they'll likely recommend that you consider contributing to a Roth account or maybe doing some Roth conversions where you turn traditional money into Roth money. Finally, if you're below a certain threshold, your long-term capital gains on stocks held in a regular old taxable brokerage account may be tax-free. Those thresholds for 2025 are if you're single, so not your gross, your taxable income, a little over $48,000, if you're married filing jointly, almost $97,000. Basically, you sell the stock. You do have to enter the capital gain on your tax return, but because you're below in a certain tax bracket, it's going to be tax-free. Then you can buy the stock back immediately. You don't have to wait 30 days like you do with tax loss harvesting. Just know that before you do this, make sure you understand how much in gains you can harvest before they become taxable.

Ricky Mulvey: One thing I want to underline is where your stocks are placed. I think many of our listeners are reviewing their stocks on a more regular basis with everything going on with the tariff chaos. But one thing you can do that's productive that you mentioned, is making sure those dividend-paying stocks and ETFs are within your Roth accounts. Then if you have maybe a stock that really likes to buy back its shares or the company likes to buy back its shares or a higher growth idea that you're buying on sale, that you have a lot of conviction for in the next 3-5 years, that makes a little bit more sense in your taxable account. One thing you can also think about is what to do to save on taxes next year. We usually think about this at the end of the year, but we're already talking about it in the segment. You're already reviewing your tax filing. Bro, what can you do right now to save on taxes for your 2025 bill?

Robert Brokamp: Well, the most obvious things to do are to make the most of pre-tax accounts. Traditional retirement accounts, flexible savings accounts, health savings accounts. One thing that I think people don't appreciate is with pre-tax retirement accounts, you save on your income taxes this year, but you still have to pay FICA taxes. That's Medicare and Social Security taxes. But with FSAs and HSAs, they're actually exempt from both income taxes and FICA taxes. They're actually provide even more tax benefits. If you're self-employed, man, there are so many opportunities to write off legitimate expenses. Just make sure that you know which ones are legitimate and you keep good records. A lot of great retirement plans for self-employed folks. Consider maybe taking the home office deduction.

If you are charitably inclined and you have stock in a brokerage account that has appreciated, I think in almost every circumstance, it makes more sense to donate appreciated stock than to donate cash because basically you're passing the capital gain on to the charity, charity doesn't care because they're tax exempt. Again, you can buy that stock back immediately with the cash that you did not donate, and you don't have to wait 30 days. Also, if you're over 70.5 and you're charitably inclined, you can do what's called a qualified charitable distribution from your traditional IRA to a charity. That way, the distribution is not taxable to you, plus it can reduce your required minimum distributions in subsequent years. I think just in general, whenever you're thinking about decisions that affect your taxes, I would say, use a tool to estimate the impacts of various decisions. Most of the online tax prep companies, TurboTax, TaxAct H&R Block. They have tax estimators. Just make sure that when you use it, you choose 2025 and not 2024. But they're really handy for making decisions like, Okay, what if I do this? What if I realize this capital gain? What if I make this type of a contribution to an HSA? How does that affect my taxes?

Finally, I'll just say, if tax time was hectic this year because you were always scrambling to try to find all your documents and things like that, save yourself some time next year by coming with a system now that tracks and collects all the important documents throughout the year. It could be an actual folder that you keep in your office. It could be a folder in your inbox that you email, important tax information to yourself. It's all in one place. That way, you have it ready for next year's taxes and keep track of anything that you need to carry forward, such as capital loss carryforward. You make sure you don't forget about them when you do your turn next year.

Ricky Mulvey: As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and are not approved by advertisers. The Motley Fool only picks products that it would personally recommend to friends like you. I'm Ricky Mulvey. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

Bank of America is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Jim Gillies has positions in Academy Sports And Outdoors, Amazon, and MTY Food Group. Ricky Mulvey has positions in Academy Sports And Outdoors and Netflix. Robert Brokamp has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Bank of America, Intuit, MTY Food Group, and Netflix. The Motley Fool recommends Academy Sports And Outdoors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Are Retail Stocks a Bargain? was originally published by The Motley Fool