Review by Duane Strickland, January 28, 2009

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I have been a subscriber to MF Stock Advisor for almost 2 years. There is a montly newsletter and occasional updates. There are recommendations for where to put new money as well as recommendations each month on new stock to purchase. The service costs around $200 per year, with specials advertised quite often for discounts up to about 50%. There are advertisements each week attempting to get the subscriber to join other services. A person can try a service for 30 days free. I believe they are spreading their resources too much and it is annoying to get these get rich quick advertisements. Some of their discussion groups can be quite helpful. They take little responsibility in my opinion for their recommendations. They always say to research and make make your own decisions. I don’t need their service to do that. I will be dropping this service at the end of my subscription in March.

Review by Lucca 27, January 31, 2009

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I subscribe to PRO, Stock Advisor, Million Dollar Portfolio, Global Gains, Hidden Gems and Rule Breakers and will post this review on all the sites. In general I found the letters useful for ideas in an up market, but not terribly helpful in our current down market. I found some excellent companies like DWSN, EDU & CTRP that I would not otherwise have looked at. Sell recommendations usually come too late and analysts tend to fall in love with stocks and catch “falling knives”. For example the repeated recommendations of Select Comfort, Irwin Financial, First Marblehead all the way down and then the final sell recommendation at much lower prices that had been recommended a few months earlier. There seems to be a reluctance to say do nothing and wait. Recent recommendation after recommendation is substantially under water.

In general Fool is an excellent source of information on a wide variety of financial subjects and the authors seem to be competent and professional. “The Boards” can be a useful source of information and opinion, however slogging through them is tedious because there are a lot of junk postings wherein people tell the reader what they are buying (not why) and criticizing other posters, a situation that breaks into a brushfire that overwhelms a posting site for a day or two.

Unfortunately the web sites for each of the portfolios, while consistent on a stand alone basis, are a total mess when one subscribes to several newsletters. Each letter ranks performance differently. No letter as far as I can ascertain includes dividends in calculation returns, a substantial flaw in assessing the performance of a stock.

The “cafertia” approach of the newsletters is also annoying – the same stock may be recommended in two different newsletters and checking the boards requires going to three different boards to get updates. The non-subscriber board and then each of the two different subscriber boards.

All in all I do not believe that the price of any individual newsletter, each of which is a niche letter, is worth it unless one is a substantial investor, as am I, although far less substantial than a year ago. I am not going to renew any of my newsletters, except PRO which I like because it discusses options.

All in all Fool is pretty good, but it presents a conundrum. The service is intended to educate unsophisticated investors, at which it does a good job, but it is so expensive as a percentage of assets that unless a subscriber has several hundred thousand of dollars to invest they would do better in a basket of index funds. I would recommend that a new investor without a substantial portfolio subscribe to one of the services for a year or two to get some education and then go on to one of the many free sites that provide all sorts of ideas and their own boards.

Review by Mark, February 7, 2009

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Customer Service	Not Rated
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This is for the Motley Fool. I am posting this only to warn you against what just happened to me this morning. They sucked $149 from my credit card, renewing me for another year. Right now I am rating their customer service at zero, because they should warn you before doing this. I can only hope they will refund my money at this point.

Ah yes, the product. I’m tired of hearing about Marvel. Yes, yes, yes, a ten bagger, but OLD news. To be fair, I like the CAPS reviews by their members, and their Novartis recommendation was pretty good. It’s down from what I paid a year ago, but has weathered this downturn better than most.

I only subscribed to their regular membership, so can’t say much for the spin-offs. Overall I rate them Average, and their subscription overpriced…

Hope this was useful. Thanks, Mark

Review by hank, February 16, 2009

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furious at them, because they continued to say buy the market even as it sank. now,i am new at investing (or losing) so naturally i followed their advice just to see my portfolio sink. they are experienced, so why didn’t they start advising shorts etc. however it is an interesting site with lots of member feedback.

Review by Ron, February 25, 2009

As with most every other newsletter out there, the gains they represent are all a matter of buying the stock reco’s when they are 1st announced. The fact that they continue to reco the stock months and months after the original announcement dilutes the return dramatically when you purchase at 20% premium to the original announcement date.

Review by Tom, February 25, 2009

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I lost more money following their recommendations over the last few years. Got sucked into their CAPS ratings reports and found that even if 95% of their most successful investors rated a stock 5-stars for outperforming, I could lose 80% of my money in short order. I unsubscribed after one year. Loved the idea, but hated the result.

Review by L.L, February 25, 2009

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Too much hype and chest thumping. Maybe they were good in the beginning, but their recommendations and performance were mediocre during my subscriptions.

Review by Mike, February 25, 2009

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I subscribed to MF Stock Advisor for 1 year at a price of $99. After the one year I canceled. They were consistent in giving you 2 stocks each month, 1 from Tom and 1 from Dave, but the picks would always end up in the red. If you were good at placing trailing stops, I’m sure you might have been able to eek out a few % points here and there. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend.

Review by ttindxb, March 16, 2009

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Stock Advisor was my 1st newsletter, and I agree, a very interesting read, BUT their recommendations weren’t my cup of tea, and enuf with MVL and ACTI already! Love the Caps site, and am thinking of Global Gains, we’ll see if they put it on special! I enjoyed their throw in energy newsletter, some good pick sI have bought on the cheap now waiting for oil and gas to rally!

Review by NoFool, March 21, 2009

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They offer too many services. Their attempt at cross selling is almost annoying as their performance. I subscribed for two years and did not habve enough money left to renew for a third year!

Review by MichaelC, March 27, 2009

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They first started this service right after the last bottom in 2002 so they showed fabulous results based on their early picks (the 10-bagger in MVL being one of their loudest trumpets). Most of their later picks have been mediocre to poor. They fall in love with their picks and only sell after it is blatantly obvious (and you’ve lost a good percentage). Their overall results are still propped up by their early picks. After I ran the numbers on their picks over the last two years, I dropped the service.

Review by JCams, April 27, 2009

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As far as I can tell, The Gardner brothers and their team have the most integrity of anyone who writes financial advice of this sort. They always tell their readers to buy for the long term and not get caught up in short term market movements. Of course, their returns on their monthly picks were down in 2008, but I don’t know whose weren’t. I’ve received Stock Advisor for a while and I’ve learned some great information about companies with a ton of potential once the market gets turned around. True, their marketing is aggressive, but they always make it fair and treat people candidly and sincerely. I think Motley Fool subscribers will be among the happiest and prosperous investors anywhere within a couple years!

Review by MasM, April 28, 2009

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I was new to the investing arena and wanted to learn all I could before taking charge of my own portfolio. I signed up for the MF because I thought they had good information on the site. I did not invest on their recommendations, instead I did my own research on each rec they offered…I found the information and education part of the site to be great, but then, I found a number of other sites that offer the same benefits (i.e research, blogs, opinions etc…) at substantially lower annual fees. I will not renew, I hope they reconsider the annual memebership fees soon.

Review by Sarah, May 3, 2009

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I have subscribed to the Motley Fool Stock Advisor for several years now. I enjoyed reading the newletters in the begining but that quickly became frustrating as the performance of almost every stock pick showed dismal results. Additionally, I haven’t seen the least bit of what I would call intellectual honesty from them. They could have come out and said at some point that this is a different climate as far as investment options go and appologize for their bad performance. They could acknowledge the changing landscape and adjust accordingly (like say…”hold onto your money for now”…as the market was in freefall) but they just stated the same old “foolish” commentary that was obviously quite risky given the substantial uncertaintly in the global economy. Example: Since they pride themselves on assessing the “fundamentals” of a business, why does one recommend Fed Ex as the price of oil doubles and then the global economy tanks?? Isn’t that bad for the fundamentals of that business?Genius!!! I certainly plan to cancel my subscription as this last one runs out.

Review by Sushiman, May 23, 2009

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I subscribed to SA for about a week. I took the subscription and then about five days later they announced that they had been (ironically enough) fooled by Satyam and lost a bunch of money in that whole debacle. To be fair, lots of others were fooled as well, but it made me take a fresh look at the whole place over there and I suddenly realized that they had been saying it was a great time to buy for years when the market was going up and now they were saying it as the market was going down. It can’t ALWAYS be a great time to buy, even for buy-and-hold types.

I do like the CAPS part of their website, and I have learned some things from various of their articles. One thing I have learned to do is check to see what the CAPS rating is for any company I’m thinking of investing in, before I start any other research. A rating of 1 (the lowest) will save me a lot of time because it’s a sure sign something is wrong with the company. (Might be a good candidate for a short, though.)

I find it *v*e*r*y* odd that in the PRO ads they point out that according to their own data the most accurate forecaster of results is a CAPS rating of 1…yet among all their newsletters only PRO incorporates shorts, and apparently not many at that. Someone’s got some ’splainin’ to do….

Review by Sarah G., May 24, 2009

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I think Stock Advisor is a great newsletter. I don’t love it so much for its stock picks, as for its educational value.
As a member of Stock Advisor, I have access to articles from all of their newsletters, as they just come up in my searches. It is true that these articles are followed by pitches to subscribe to the other newsletters, but that doesn’t make the information in them any less valuable.
As a novice investor, it is great to have access to simple instruction about things like how to read financial statements, how to trade simple options, etc. And, while the wealth of information can be overwhelming, I am getting better at at learning to sift through it. I too find the caps ratings useful, as well as the discussion boards.
I got my subscription for $79/year. Most of the stocks I have bought have not been formal recs, but their recs have done quite well, overall. I wish I had bought them all, and sold them.
I plan to keep my subscription, as long as i can renew at a bargain rate. I have found that I can enter just about anything into their search window and get a hit, even if it is just the name of a product, game or idea. Someone has discussed it, and there is a record of that discussion that i can find. That’s a great value.
Also, for all the chatting that goes on, there are some really smart people on those boards. I have gotten great and detailed answers to serious questions. That is worth a lot.
Customer service is excellent!!
Sarah G.

Review by Axell, June 8, 2009

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These guys seemingly at odds Nasdaq/Buffet investing styles often leave me perplexed! Spotlighted & Turned me on to mavericks Netflix & Marvel!! But some of the other choices! They seem to try too hard! Should have just kept featuring the two Champions above, clear faves of theirs!! When You’re right…..Hindsight being 20/20! Smart,Humurous, Honest!

Review by JulieBengal, July 2, 2009

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I subscibed to the ‘free trial’, and then was unable to contact the fool before the 30 days were over, and got stuck for the entire year. As a begining investor, I get much more out of mad money, and I get to watch Cramer bite the heads off of plastic bulls and bears, rant, and throw chairs.
It seems to me that what counts in stock picking isn’t how well you stack up against the S&P500, but whether you actually make money on your picks. It’s hard to tell with SA if anyone ever actually makes a single penny following all the picks- but you sure know which fool did better than the other. Pretty frustrating over the last year when buying and holding stocks seems like a good way to get broke in a big hurry. And it is really sad that they didn’t recomend a sell on Satyam computer far earlier than they did. I take their picks as good ones to avoid.
I kind of felt the same way I did when I hired a roofer who named his company Quickbuild, and it took darn near forever to finish the roof. I should have know better.
JB

Review by Jeff M, July 9, 2009

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Subscribed a few years ago - found their chest-thumping annoying at best and fraudelent at worst. One of them claimed a 13% return for the year - sure, only because one pick did well. Of the twelve picks (one per month), 10 went down and 2 went up, one very well. They should make it very clear that for at least one of the brothers, you must buy every stock recommended or risk picking just the losers (since he, at that time, “tried to hit home runs” and there were sure to be losers).
The final straw was recommending Krazy Kreme doughnuts at $42 and continuing to recommend it all the way down to $5 - at which time it just never got mentioned again.
Anyone who trumpets the great gains of Marvel (which I did buy due to them and continue to own) should have the integrity to memtion the Krispy Kreme’s as well.

Review by Alex, July 25, 2009

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I have been a subscriber for a while now and will cancel when the time runs out. I like the format of the Newsletter and the two monthly picks, however, their picks are at best mediocre. Mostly their picks are pretty bad. They go on and on in the newsletter about the picks they like and why - sometimes 4-5 pages and usually have a couple of paragraphs on the risks. They seem to always buy at the right time and while they do admit their losses on their scorecard the prices they supposedly buy in or recommend at are usually right near or at the low for that time period. To get a more accurate score I would subract 10% from thier claimed results. They also compare all their picks to the S&P which is kind of silly depending on the stock. The best thing they do though is that they are a marketing machine. The 20 page marketing e-mails touting the next big thing are pretty comical and kind of sad at the same time. Two bozo’s who I would consider really good marketing managers and not so good advisors.

Review by Lee, July 29, 2009

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Subscribed last year and bought Exel which was heavily touted as the next great biopharma company. It tanked worse than the market and remains in the toilet. Most of the recs did worse than the market, and I feel really lucky that I only lost my shirt and not my pants and underwear. Needless to say I did not renew my subscription after one year.
Subscription was reasonable at $99.
Overall the “fool” site is one of the best for reading and learning from others.

Review by Portfolio Man, July 30, 2009

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All,

I subscribed to this newsletter and found it an interesting read but they give you 2 stock suggestions each month. Plus they had an open list of trades going back more than 5 years. If you just want stock ideas and you want to do your own homework, this is a good source for $99 per year. However, I found I was kicking myself as I kept chosing the wrong one. The downside to this subscription is that to many positions are open and you get 2 more a month. Plus in the downturn, they really didn’t say much (meaning sell). Also, you can’t track their performance (ie 35% returns a year) because they have more than 50 open position which is impossible for an individual investor to hold. I cancelled my subscription because it was to broad a scope for me. I like things more focused but that is just me.
Good luck

Review by Levi, September 11, 2009

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The brothers provide interesting analysis and background on their recommendations, although nothing you cannot find on your own using any number of free online services, if you know where to look. A very conservative letter, nothing out of the box in terms of recommendations, and most all are quite pricey in terms EPS.

Review by HFJ, October 5, 2009

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Sincerely, not very much to say about it on a positive side.

Very “amateurish”.

Review by John B, October 9, 2009

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I subscribed to the Stock Advisor 4 years ago because I was working 40+ per week and didn’t have the time or energy to do a lot of research on my own. I cancelled my subscription last month. I agree with all the negative comments made here by other reviewers and don’t want to repeat all that has been said, but would like to underscore a few points.
1)They take no responsibility for their picks. If the stock does well, that just proves what geniuses they are; if it tanks, then it’s my responsibility for picking it.
2)Their success rate is based on about 100 stocks. If I can’t afford to buy all 100, then I am to blame for “cherry picking” the 15 or 20 that I can afford. So when 13 of their 15 picks go down the drain, it is my fault for not buying 85 more stocks.
3)If I am responsible for all my own research, fact gathering, analysis, and decision-making, what do I need SA for? I worked in a field that has nothing to do with finance, investing or the stock market. I subscribed because I expected Motley Fool employees to have some sort of expertise in the products they sell and in the field in which they earn their paycheck. I didn’t have time to read all of the financial and business news that is out there, so I expected SA to tip me off when one of their recommendations was a subject for the rumor mill. Is there speculation on the street that the XYZ Company is ripe for a takeover, is possibly under SEC scrutiny, is having merger talks with another company, etc? I don’t expect illegal or insider info, but I am certain that investment professionals know what’s going on far in advance of my finding out about it. Is SA a professional publication or just the results of a bunch of monkeys throwing darts at a list of stocks? My $200+ subscription to SA should have gotten me a little more basic info. It didn’t.
In June 2005, David Gardner’s top pick was Seven-Eleven. I bought 300 shares, but within 5 months, I had to sell them back to the company because the Japanese owners decided to take the company private. Didn’t SA have any hint that this was coming? I had invested for the long run, but had to sell at about $4/share profit, which was then taxed as short-term capital gain (same as ordinary income). Sure, it was profit rather than loss, but all the bookkeeping and tax reporting hassle wasn’t worth it; I could have ended up with the same amount in my pocket by working a few hours overtime and the tax reporting would have been simpler (I always do my own tax returns).
I bought Corporate Executive Board on their glowing recommendation @ about $72/share. It’s now around $25 after being as low as about $9 while SA has disavowed it and suggested that investors’ money could be better invested elsewhere. What money? I’ve lost about $10K.
It’s been pretty much the same with many of their other recommendations such as Cemex, Double-Take Software, Starbucks, eBay, the list goes on. Not only do many of their picks fall into the toilet, but they often do it very soon after SA gives them a glowing write-up or features them as a monthly pick. Hey, fella, that’s your problem.
And what about Marvel? They recommend, recommend and recommend, then the next thing you hear is that Disney is gobbling it up with what impact on your investment? They don’t know. That’s your problem, lady, nobody made you buy it. Don’t whine to us.
So I give them 5 stars for consistency–that is, being consistently poor.
But what drove me over the edge was Omniture. The July 2009 issue of SA featured Omniture (OMTR) as one of it two monthly picks, while a pull-out insert “Take-Away Report Card” listed OMTR at the top of its Best Buys Now listing. So I bought 300 more shares to go with the 100 I already had bought a while back. Then comes the Sept issue with Company Updates listing stock Hits and Misses. Under Misses, one finds OMTR with the following commentary, “Without doing any deep analytics, you might come away impressed by Omniture . . . But when you drill down into the data. . . . the news wasn’t all that cheery. The company lost $4.9 million . . .” And they sum it up thus: “.”OUR TAKE: We’re still big fans of Omniture’s long-term potential, but the path to profitability remains uncertain at best.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. The Best Buy in July is uncertain at best in Sept? What gives? Did Nancy pick it for July while Sluggo trashed it in Sept. Doesn’t the right hand know what the left hand is writing? “If you drill down . . “?!! Isn’t that what the salaried Fools at SA were supposed to be doing in June before they recommended it in July?
I immediately wrote a literate, polite, pointedly critical snail-mail letter to the MF headquarters (no cuss-words, although that took great self-restraint),pointing out that I was appalled at their conflicting recommendations and advising them that I was not going to pay for information that cancelled itself out. I asked for a refund of my subscription. Their customer service is top-notch—I received an email confirmation and credit card pro-rated refund of the balance of my subscription within a week of mailing the letter. No argument, no defense of their publication, and no apology. Just money. Fine with me.
Although I reviewed all of the comments on this Gumshoe site prior to asking for my refund and decided that I was not alone in my harsh appraisal of SA, I initially decided not to add my condemnation to the reviews here. I was happy to get the balance of my foolish (in small letters) expenditure refunded. They gave me my money back, why trash them?
Then this week, insult was added to injury. OMTR is now being bought out by a subsidiary of Adobe Systems and my shares are subject to involuntary sale. They call it a “Tender Offer” in stock market jargon, but what it really does it force me to sell all my OMTR shares for $21.50/share. Basically, no choice in the matter. I will lose money on the first 100 shares I bought, and make money on the additional 300. However the latter will result in another short-term or ordinary income capital gain. Sweet. Déjà-vu all over again. Just like Seven-Eleven. And the jerks at SA didn’t know this was possibly coming when they recommended it in July?
I hate these Foolish bastards. And since I hold about 15 of their recommendations, all but 2 losing money, I will probably be hating them for a long time to come—at least until some of the stocks turn around or until I decide to dump them at a loss to cover some other investment gains.
Lessons learned: Stay away from stock picking newsletters. If you are like I was, too busy to do research, invest in no-load mutual funds. Buy stocks when you have the time to do your own research. I’m retired now and that is what I am doing, while avoiding all the self-proclaimed Super Stock Pickers. I’m my own Superman now and Motley Fool SA can kiss my “S”.

Review by Milby, December 8, 2009

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After reading most of the comments I decided to opine a little. As a novice investor of a couple of years I too found SA to be helpful in explaining stocks in general and investing stratigies, however I too ended up investing money Foolishly based on there recommedations, until I started losing money. I am amazed that as unexperienced as I am at investing I seem to be kicking the crap out of SA performance? I have bought some of thier recommendations (some good, some bad) but have found that by and large they seem to to be more interested in selling there services to guys like me than providing an insightful service for there subscribers. I do like the CAPs boards and have benefited from some very intelligent investors. Now when I’m offered the 30 day free trial for HG or GG I end up canceling before the 30 trial period is over. This helps me with research on investments I may not otherwise be privy too. I believe most of the services they provide are overpriced, recommendations not throughly vetted and stock performance poor at best. Thank goodness I can look at my portfolio’s performance and smile I didn’t buy the SA pic of the month.

Review by trillium, December 20, 2009

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I was new to investment and I found Fool to be the best site for financial education. How many other newsletter out there measure their performance accurately and share it with their subscribers ? I have been a subscriber for 2 yrs and just renewed for another year. Agreed that $200/yr subscription + trading cost is expensive when you don’t have large sum of money. However I use zecco which eliminates trading costs and allows me to buy stock in small amounts. The boards are excellent source of information and one of the post actually calculated how many of their recs. you need to buy to get 99% probability of beating S&P 500. Trying to pick and choose amongst their recommendation is obviously dangerous. Since one of the brothers (David) has outpaced the other (Tom) I just buy 1 stock (David’s recommendation) every month. I have not become rich following their recommendation but i have recovered the subscription cost and educated myself in the process. I have not tried their other newsletters but SA had the best returns when I joined 2yrs ago. If anyone is considering subscription sign up for the free content and use one of the promotion emails to get around 50% discount on subscription.

Review by Dale, January 29, 2010

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I agree with the majority of the reviews here. This service is pretty bad anyway you cut it. I agree with the fact that they are pretty much just a marketing machine and know how to sell. Since I joined their selections have been mostly losers even when the market has bounced back some recently. They go on and on about a particular stock and why you should buy it then once you but it the bottom falls out and it tanks. I do not know what is worse buying a bad stock or buying a bad stock after reading pages of mindless endorsements about the future loser. I will not renew once my subscription ends. This service was a waste of money!

Review by Mac, February 5, 2010

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In my opinion the most important considerations to ask your self when subscribing to an investment newsletter are
1.How many picks on average are they invested in Do I have the money to equaly invest in thier picks? If I have to cherry pick from thier selections Will I be able to perform close to thier results
2. What is the tax status of my account is it an (IRA)
tax advantaged or will I pay taxes on gains both short and long term capital gains thus impacting my returns
3. Forget about the biggest winners that EVERY newsletter touts - WHAT is thier AVERAGE return amongst all thier picks
4. Does the newsletter follow technical analysis for overall market trends
5.when should you be selling and increasing your cash psoition
6, Do they openly admit mistakes?
7. Remember the money back guarantees aren’t worth much if you have lost thousands of dollars investing in bad picks
Ask yoursekf Do I have the confidence to invest my money in thier picks ?
only do this if they have a proven track record otherwise
you may as well invest in your neighbors advice and at least that is free

I subscribed to several Motley Fool Newsletters and to this day they have produced some of my bigest winners
Motley Fool Stock Advisor had the best overall performing picks- I liked the balance between the two very different styles of investing - founder David Gardner - more risk oriented looking for the next big thing -co founder and brother Tom Gardner more value oriented looking for solid growing companies capitalizing on major trends
Some of Davids winners - Pixar + 247% - for me
Marvel + 302 my return both bought

out by Disney in both cases the returns were far larger if purchased upon original MF reccomendation
What I liked about the newsletter was the integrity I believe they always worked at maintaining.
Weaknesses they were buy and hold investors sometimes failing to recognize thier miscalculations until it was too late
example I bought Select Comfort at $ 29 it was thrice recommended by Tom Gardner unfortunately I held it until it went as low as .29. I paid any where from $ 99 to $ 149 per year during the 3-4 year period I was a subscriber.

Review by wayne, March 11, 2010

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I was not impressed with their picks and I found it EXPENSIVE.I did not renew subscription. Wayne