Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.

From full global headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money.

It's a Motley Fool Money radio show. I'm Chris Hill joining me in studio this week for

Million Dollar Portfolio Jason Moser for Motley Fool income investor James Early

Motley Fool Deep Value Ron Gross. Good to see you, Jens. It is our mid-year review.

We're going to hit some of the big stories of 2015 so far and look at which companies need a strong second half of the year.

We'll talk about the business of extreme sports with CNBC's Carl Kintinea.

And as always, we're giving inside look at the stocks on our radar.

But Ron, let's get a jump on the competition by not actually waiting for you.

That's what we do here.

But no, we're not going to wait for the actual middle of the calendar year.

But so far, your headline for 2015 when it comes to business and investing?

For me, it's that the economy, I got to go big macro again.

It's that the economy hasn't shown the promise or the growth that I think was widely expected at the end of 2014.

We've had several factors that have been going on to contribute to this underwhelming performance.

We've had week spending in the energy sector.

The problems in the West Coast ports that we've talked about quite a bit.

And we've had a very strong US dollar.

And I think those three things combined have really constrained growth.

In fact, GDP contracted in the first quarter of this year.

We have seen unemployment come down nicely.

I'm a big fan of that.

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