Author/Editor
Dave Gardner, Tom Gardner
Publisher
Motley Fool
Description
Launched by the Gardner brothers, with one stock pick from each per issue, but now Tom and David Gardner have largely stepped back from stock picking and the picks are made by “Rule Breaker” and “Everlasting Stock” teams.
Overall Rating
Rating: 3.6/5. From 286 votes.
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3.8
Rating from 1253 votes
If you’ve subscribed to Motley Fool Stock Advisor, please click the stars below to indicate your rating for this newsletter, and please share any other feedback about your experience using the comment box below.
Investment Performance
Rating from 362 votes
Rating: 3.8/5. From 362 votes.
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- 5 Stars 135 Votes
- 4 Stars 101 Votes
- 3 Stars 60 Votes
- 2 Stars 35 Votes
- 1 Stars 31 Votes
Quality Of Writing/Analysis
Rating from 300 votes
Rating: 3.8/5. From 300 votes.
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- 5 Stars 83 Votes
- 4 Stars 127 Votes
- 3 Stars 48 Votes
- 2 Stars 20 Votes
- 1 Stars 22 Votes
Value For Price
Rating from 305 votes
Rating: 3.8/5. From 305 votes.
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- 5 Stars 126 Votes
- 4 Stars 76 Votes
- 3 Stars 37 Votes
- 2 Stars 35 Votes
- 1 Stars 31 Votes
Customer Service
Rating from 286 votes
Rating: 3.6/5. From 286 votes.
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- 5 Stars 83 Votes
- 4 Stars 93 Votes
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- 2 Stars 28 Votes
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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.
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
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.
Sincerely, not very much to say about it on a positive side.
Very “amateurish”.
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”.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I was not impressed with their picks and I found it EXPENSIVE.I did not renew subscription. Wayne
I bought the Stock Advisor membership a month ago at a discount price 50% Im told. I read the picks for now, the history and of course the monthly new recommendations (two).
I have invested and day traded for a very long time and am just coming out of a two year retirement from trading due in part to missing the rush.
I see where other reviewers have suffered losses from some of the picks and am sorry that they weren’t aware of stop loss strategies ie. trtailing stops etc.
I admit to picking and choosing some of the recommendations and putting the rest on a watch list that they provide at Motley Fool. I like the community forums.
My first “Fool” buy was Netflix and was more dumb luck than anything else, but I would not have seen an eighteen point gain on 500 shares without their recommendation. Paid for the $149.00 subscription for a long time.
I love those guys.
Jerry
Very informative
I’ve been a Motley Fool Stock Advisor subscriber for the past year, and my portfolio has been doing well following the advice in SA. Two of Stock Advisors picks that I’ve benefitted from are YUM and Medco, up 45% and 26% since I bought in, respectively, neither of which I would have picked without SA’s input. Definately worth the $39 that I paid for a year’s subscription. Not everything that they’ve picked has been positive, as Ativision Blizzard has just treaded water since I purchased it. But all and all great picks that have my and my wife’s Roth IRAs surging.
I don’t know whether I got in at the right time, or whether I just made lucky choices in the stocks I purchased, but Stock Advisor has been a winner for me. I’m perplexed by a lot of the above comments I read, often because they don’t have anything to do with the picks and discussion, but about Motley Fool in general (like “They offer too many services”). What does that have to do with Stock Advisor??? So, I guess I’m partially turned off by the rating system here since it’s not all that accurate.
OK, going back to Stock Advisor, I should say that I’m fairly small-time. I started in May of 2009. I buy about $1K of each stock I choose, and mostly let it ride. I’ve bought all of the Core Stocks listed by the newsletter, as well as several of their other picks, and they are all performing very well. A few recent ones like Priceline and Netflix have been amazing.
I don’t have a lot of time to do research, so this is a perfect service for me. If I have some extra cash, I’ll buy one of their picks or boost an existing position. That’s really the extent of my investing. Unless they take an ugly turn or get too bloated, I’ll let them ride until I retire in 25 years.
As to their marketing, yeah it’s annoying. Their ridiculous 20-minute long audio message and hyped-up e-mails drive me crazy. Apparently they work though, or they’d try something different. I just try to ignore them.
In summary, all I can say is that the service has been very profitable for me, and it’s well-worth the $200/yr I pay for it. The stock market is just a legal gamble anyhow (and a rigged one at that), so be realistic about your outcomes. If want low risk, just go buy some bonds or an S&P index fund.
Timing is everything. I have been following the Motley Fool since 1994. I had a brief subscription a few years ago, but lost money on the recommendations and canceled (they cheerfully refunded the prorated portion of my subscription fee, which I appreciated). Then last year, after a disastrous run on my own in 2008 and early 2009, I subscribed to Stock Advisor. I have been thrilled and have far, far exceeded the indexs using mostly SA recommendations over the last year-and-a-half.
Like most, I have to cherry pick since I have limited funds to work with, so I’ve been lucky to get into some of the right stocks as the market has been running up. I try to buy at least one of the new recommendations each month, even if it means dumping an underperformer from my portfolio. I seldom do any individual research on the stocks I buy this way. I suspect that most of these stocks are high beta, i.e., they rise fast when the market goes up and fall hard when it drops, but they do tend to be good companies that have better than average prospects. And if you don’t believe the market will go up more than it goes down, you shouldn’t be in stocks. I have been impatient and dumped some of the inevitable losers after a month or two of bad performance. Sometimes I regret these sells, but not often.
I have an MBA and consider myself relatively sophisticated as an investor. Nevertheless, I don’t trust my own stock-picking. Any research you do from publicly available sources is already factored into stock prices. If you have inside information, go with God. Beyond that, you have to imagine you are smarter than the thousands of highly-paid, highly-trained stock pickers at investment firms around the world who are working the same universe of stocks, but studying the companies full-time (like the people at MF). If you can consistently beat them, my hat’s off to you. I’ve tried and it turned out I couldn’t.
I became a new subscriber about 9 months ago. Guess I made the wrong choice as this newsletter does not meet my needs at all. Their picks are far too long term for me & rarely do they recommend anything that provides current income. When I wrote them saying I apparently selected the wrong newsletter from their rather ext extensive list & could I change the reply indicated that was possible but would cost (far more than I thought reasonable) additional money. I am also turned off by their constant promotion of new services. I will not renew; don’t want to throw good money after bad.
Currently, at the bottom of this page is an advertisement for Hulbert Interactive. Get it. The is “the” objective analysis of what happens if you follow any famous investment newsletter. Following either Motley Fool Stock Advisor or Motley Fool Rule Breaker would have averaged you about 10% growth annualized over 2002-2011. And drawdowns of 40-45% in the 2008 crash. Very, very mediocre performance. In spite of this, Motley Fool churns out incredibly over-wordy advertisements and video presentations, in which they desperately attempt to imply regular returns of over 50% annually–and that the “worst” mistake anyone can make is to reduce your risk and stop following their flawless advice. How can they make this claim, except by cherry-picking? To be fair, many investment gurus with equally huge egos did much worse than 10% annually in this decade. No investment newsletter is much better except perhaps Forbes SSS. However Motley Fool wins the prize for shameless hucksterism, while somehow managing to convince people they are oh-so-sincere. Only the name should be taken seriously. “Motley Fool.”
You called it on #2 company recommended by Motley Fools. They have been pushing National Oilwell Varco for months.
But in your entire article, you missed a company that is paying me extremely well: LUFK. Lufkin Industries Inc. Like all stocks, it has its up and down days, but LUFK has been averaging about $2.00 plus per share per day. Not even SLB and BHI have done that!
One thing to be aware of with Motley Fool is that they always have stock recommendation(s).
I could be wrong, but if they do recommend a sell, it’s usually with a recommendation about what else to buy. They never say maybe you should hold the cash and wait for awhile. They also never say to buy anything but stocks. I don’t recall that they knew very much about resource stocks, especially precious metals mining, when they were the best thing to buy. Maybe they cover that in another newsletter.
I think their company analysis is good, but they fall short on macro-economics. For the type of letter they advertise themselves to be, they were very late in recognizing the affect of the out of control currency printing of most of the world’s fiat money.
After today’s article on Petroleum drilling/equipment companies, I thought the following info would be helpful to your readers. It’s a breakdown on the companies listed in the article:
SeaDrill (SDRL) RV and RS ratios are low. The company has a (negative)-3.00 growth ratio, but sales growth is 35%, and they pay the best dividend in their industry — $2.60. Price to Earnings ratio is 13.84%.
RIG, PDE, ESV, NE, DO, DRSY and WFI either have poor ratios, poor sales or company growth, and pay no dividends or a very small dividend. I would not recommend any of these stocks. Actually, DRYS is a recommended SELL.
SLB — good ratios, with a 13% company growth and 57% sales growth. Dividend is $1.00.
NOV — good ratios, but only 6% company growth with 11% sales growth. Dividend is $.44.
HAL — good ratios, 18% company growth with 40% sales growth. They pay a pathetic $.36 dividend.
BHI — solid ratios, 18% growth with 82% sales and a $.60 dividend.
LUFK — which I own — has solid ratios, 21% company growth and 53% sales growth. It, too, pays a lousy dividend: $.60
Hope the above saves you some work and time researching.
Opinion on Motley Fool: I’ve seen a few good recomendations,(like WFMI), but with the stock they claim they are holding, I don’t believe David and Tom Gardner, and associates, could make the percentage in profits they claim. Too many newsletters to buy into, beyond the “Advisor” which I receive. And I personally think they have taken on too much with all the investment programs they have recently added.
Another point: Fool does not like to SELL any stocks once they recommend them, and some of their core stocks are off the wall — like Dolby and Hasbro. These may be good companies, but the market appeal is slim, thus little, if any, profitability. When Tom recommended Rosetta Stone, I thought he surely was desperate for a recommendation.
Happy trading!