Motley Fool Rising Stars feedback
by Dgvolin | April 25, 2021 11:23 am
Hi
Does anyone have any experience with the Rising Stars service from Motley Fool[1]? I don’t see any mention in the newsletter rankings and a colleague sent me an e-mail that they are doing a presentation on Wednesday for Rising Stars focusing on micro caps and 12X potential so I’m curious if it’s a worthy investment.
Thank you.
Endnotes:
- Motley Fool: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/motley-fool/
Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2021/04/microblog-motley-fool-rising-stars-feedback/
The rising Stars portfolio from Motley Fool is very worthwhile
I’d like to know what stocks they are recommending.
It’s a tough call. I saw the presentation. As a former Hidden Gems subscriber, it’s a tough sell to get me to pay 10X for a new version of a not very successful at the time service. It’s an area I care about and I do respect their expertise but laying down somewhere between $1-2K for the privilege of seeing their picks without understanding the annual (Rising Stars 19, Rising Stars 20 etc) concept means I’m passing for now.
(I get SA and RB already. I wound up with RB because Hidden Gems folded.)
I think three of them are Coupa Software, Appian and Fulgent.
or at least they were part of their 2020 portolio. And they mention another, FIVN which was part of rising starts 2017 and 2020 but is now too big to be part of rising stars.
My thesis is that the current market has lifted all stocks higher in an accelerated way. I don’t think you can consider any stock the suggested in 2020 portfolio as a good gauge.
What I would be interested in are how the stocks from there 2017 portfolio did up until the end of 2019. Were they 2x, 3x, 4x in those years or did they just putter along like the rest of the market. This way I can get an idea if the 2021 portfolio will be any good.
My overall average from the 2017 was 169%. You really have to buy most of the recommendations to get the full impact. of the 20 stocks I purchased in Dec 2017 (6 months after the original recommendations) 4 exceeded 400%, 6 exceeded 50%, 4 exceeded 20% and 6 either languished or lost 10-30%. However by diversifying the way they recommend, the losses were insignificant to the overall portfolio.
Their methodology has worked very well for me for the past 5 years. It takes a lot of willpower to hold on through the volatile swings, however, because they are risky ventures.
None of those are in the first 10 released for 2021, although they were prior recommendations. Only one stock in the 2021 portfolio is a re-recommendation from a prior Rising Stars. Only one of the stocks in the first 10 has been picked by another service, and it wasn’t Stock Advisors or Rule Breakers but another premium service I subscribe to (other 30 will be released weekly over the next month).
Do you know why they feel the need to be re-recommending a stock from a prior Rising Stars portfolio? Does that mean the others from that portfolio are no longer recommended or is it simply a way to pump up an under performing recommendation they made before to make it look better on paper for them since people will be buying it now.
I can’t say for sure, because I did not subscribe to 2017 or 2020, but there are market-cap criteria to be included that some of the other stocks may have just grown too large to qualify. I would consider that to be a good thing, if you got those picks early on. Either that or they still expect a longer runway with one vs the others. It could be a pump, I suppose, but it’s not like they’re recommending a large position for it and it’s already performed very well Y-o-Y so it’s not exactly a struggling stock.
Did you subscribe to Rising Stars 2017? If so are you able to give me an idea of how those picks did as a whole at the end of 2019. To me this is the better indicator of performance since it was before the pandemic hyper-market performance. Thanks, and I understand if it’s too much of a hassle to do.
would certainly be interested to know more about MF “rising stars” I consider paying $2000 for it
I subscribed to both 2017 and 2020 and based on different timing then MF used for the picks, have still done very well with 2017 up 169% and 2020 up 87% (even with the current pullback) I did purchase most of the stocks recommended and with the allocations recommended. Some stocks that I didint but based on general principles (TSLA- because I dont like Elon Musk) I regret losing out on the huge gains from that. Others have been great! I do think the investment is well worth it as long as you keep the cost to ~2% of your total investment available to that portfolio. Also, frequently they have offered a 6 month version of the service for 1/2 he price, so you get the picks, but lose the followup after the 6 months. Since I am buying for 5+ years anyway, I dont mind that.
No new money to invest in the 2021 list now unless I sell others, which I hesitate to do, but would love to know the new 10 stocks for the 2021 list. I did hear Tom Gardner provide one of them: Docebo/DCBO
Can someone share others?
Tom put that last recommendation up a couple days after the initial presentation because I believe a lot of people were very disappointed with the bonus one they gave out at the start.
I personally stick to the equal money allocation style with the stocks they recommended and add to my winners when I can so I get that better total average return.
I appreciate your supplying the percentages on returns but 169% and 87% isn’t anything outstanding by today’s numbers as an overall. It makes their promoting the one company going up 880% seem so much less impressive and so much more a misdirection.
I know the first stock recommended was DCBO and I am assuming that was the one people were disappointed in. What was the second stock?
I’m curious that you don’t find an annualized 56% return satisfying. 2 of the stocks we’re over 800%, but you never know which on the stocks in the group will achieve that, so buying all or most of them is the recipe for success. How is Turning 50k into $173 k in 3 years anything less than outstanding?
Please do not misunderstand I think those are really great returns. 2.5X on the 2017 portfolio is just great, but over that time both the S&P and all impotent Russell 2000 are both up over 2X as well and if you look at the RB and SA picks, as a group they are doing just as well or better. So the question is can it deliver 12X returns in the timeframe the other services can and is it worth the extra cost.
I think all of their claims for 10x, 12x, 638x…… are all predicated on their statements of over 5,10,15,20 years…… They only ever claimed 2-3x in a 3-5 yr period for Rising Stars.
Well he also said he chose not to buy the TSLA pick, which that alone would have been a 10-15X depending on when he bought and driven the rest of the averages higher. The whole philosophy is to buy the whole basket, so if you intentionally leave some out your percentages can get skewed vs what they report.
So true, I kick myself when I think of lost profits, but even now, I don’t want to know that the CEO of a multi-billion company responsible for space transportation is smoking marijuana while working……. sometimes principles do get in the way of making money. 🙂 Does anyone know haow the MF Marijuana Masters is doing?
I bought a lot of shares around $300 and sold pre-split for $900 range. While I made out nicely, split-adjusted they would be about $3,400 / share now, so yeah I feel your pain on that one.
I’m in the MJ Masters as well, it’s up 123% since they launched it early 2020. My personal performance is all over the map on that since I bought at wildly differing times than their allocations. I’m still up about 80% on it which is pretty good Y-o-Y. The 2020 election was by far the biggest catalyst for the pure-play valuations.
I am confused about these new picks. Have they already been released? I just got another sales pitch from MF as I am a member of a few of their services. “Rising Stars 2021 will unveil a new slate of ten stocks to current members” . Does anyone know if these 2021 10 picks have been released yet and what they are? I invested in all the 40 Discovery 10x picks and they have not done too well as a whole. I am still down on those a good 15% overall. Thanks.
I believe they have released they released the first 10 of Rising Stars last week and this is for the second 10 of the 40 in total that are coming soon. Some of the Discovery picks were posted, I didn’t see them before they were removed but I believe Rising Stars is mostly unique to that service.
The 2nd round of 10 picks was just released today. So they have released 20 of the 40 picks thus far. The Discovery 10X came out at an unfortunate time, just before most of the market pooped the bed in March. You shouldn’t expect big returns in a one-month timeframe on any of their portfolios, since that’s not the type of investing they recommend.
Havent seen the new picks yet, but curious about the first round, with the inclusion of UPST. That is definietly not in the small or micro cap category and I thought they were limiting to $6B market cap? IT s around $7.8B at this point.
Thoughts?
How do you know UPST is part of the first group? Did you change your mind and get into this service or saw the list posted somewhere?
The list was posted on Reddit
I would have to say that I doubt MF would break their market cap rule for picks and that it’s not a legit member of the group. Anyone who is subscribed able to confirm.
I can confirm that it is included. Its valuation basically doubled around March 20th after they announced acquisition of that auto lender, so it’s possible MF had already targeted it during their research and then still chose to include it based on the remaining addressable market.
If it is included, it is not unique to the Rising Stars 2021 service. It’s in another portfolio for sure. If you look at the disclaimers on the MF articles and Earnings transcripts you’ll see that on March 18 MF both owned and recommended Upstart. So another re-rec making the rounds.
Yes, it’s in another portfolio of theirs that I have as well. They never claimed there would be no re-recommendations, just that you wouldn’t likely see SA / RB picks here. Although one of their picks in the 2nd round actually was a SA pick previously.
First let me say I truly appreciate the give and take we are having and I fully respect your position.
My recollection from their pitch is that they are really playing up the “never before recommended” line and the $6B market cap as selling points, so when a stock from their first group breaks both those parameters I begin to question things.
I also did a quick look at redditt and found someone listing 10 stocks in the first group. I looked all of them up and from the free public articles that MF has published I found that 5 were recommended and owned by MF from as early as January 2020 up through April 4th 2021, 3 had no current position mentioned (but one of the companies had multiple write-ups in May and so it should have been noted if they did recommend it), 1 was owned as early as March 10th and one company was listed as Bitcoin. Motley Fool was very public in their announcement of buying into bitcoin and if this was purported to be part of the Rising Stars 2021 portfolio, with over a $1T cap, I truly do not believe this list to be accurate. Maybe it’s a Discovery list or some other service but certainly not RS2021 if their pitch is to be believed.
Their ongoing pitch really only points out to 3-4 companies never before recommended. ( not sure if that is for the 10 or the 40…… I’m currently subscribed to: SA/RB/MP/MM/AI/AR/NGS/NHRS/RS17/RS20/RYR/630x/5G. I’m quite happy with the overall returns, but having joined several of these in the past 3-4 months, am definitley buting my nails due to the significant downturn in most of those companies currently, regardless of the rest of the market performance overall. Ive only been with MF since 2016, so am hoping the next 5 years are at least equal or better than the last 5.
I do see significant overlap between portfolios as you mention above, and have even been told by MF sales agents that I should NOT purchase an offering (X) because I had already bought into (Y) and they were 90% the same recs.
Let’s face it, they have an incredible marketing department, which is aptly supported by very good analysts and communications. If they weren’t successful in their picks, they wouldn’t be so popular.
That’s an impressive amount of services to be in. I wish I had the $$$ to invest to make it worth being in that many.
I agree they have a strong marketing department and you can see the power they wield when they make a recommendation and at that moment the stock pops 10%. But as they say it’s a marathon and not a sprint so it’s the hunt for long term payoffs.
We have all been stung by the volatility and even a well diversified portfolio can take a hit these days. I hope things turn to the upside for you in the coming weeks. It’s going to be near impossible to mimic the returns from March 2020 to January 2021, but there are some gems to be had.
Switching gears, just for fun what’s your favorite sector? I love the tech area (‘natch) but got into bio a few months back. Started following Baker Brothers and had some big winners….until they all pulled back. I think I’ll be trimming out of that space. I mean the tech area is a roller coaster but bio is like the parachute drop ride and I’m not sure I have the stomach for it.
I’m in 14 services with them currently, and yes there’s often overlap. Some will typically pitch one first, and then others may pick it up later, and then you may see it in SA / RB way down the line. I was definitely surprised to see one RS2021 be a previous SA pick from several months ago, but I guess based on their very loose definition it could still fit. I don’t know if they set any hard/fast rules around specific caps, although maybe they alluded to some, but here’s what they have listed directly in the member section:
“For our Rising Stars 2021 portfolio, we’re looking for companies that are capable of generating 6x returns over the next 10 years, or about 20% annualized. These companies should help us double our portfolio’s overall value in the next five years.
You won’t find these among the largest, most liquid, most popular companies inside the S&P 500. You won’t find them in the financial headlines or on your news feeds.
To find those multibagger opportunities, we have to hunt where others don’t or can’t.”
Oh, and yes one of the “picks” is BTC which they recommended a 5% allocation (other picks at 2%). They also mention one other non-stock vehicle that will come in the later picks. I’ve been buying into BTC for a long time (and ETH), so it’s kind of a throw-away pick for me, but I can see how it may be useful for people who only opt in to one or two services to have a thorough breakdown on what the upside may be.
That’s an interesting quote because the bulk of the marketing for RS2021 that I have seen talks about “a time-sensitive opportunity to lock in a “12x trade” opportunity” and on and on about multi-baggers, so for the true reveal to say 6X over 10 years…ugh. Not what I was expecting. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still a great ROI but just not what I was expecting. Discovery 10X seemed a little more on the nose of what they were offering. Plus what happened to that $6B market cap limit? Was that a hard stop or just a basis for the majority.
Most of them are way below $6B so maybe just a soft-cap reference point for viewers. I think the 12X they mentioned was dependent upon overall market conditions being unique post-recession, and the 6X more for these specific companies. So they hope they will 6X, but if you’re buying them at a recession discount maybe 12X? Just speculation, I think a lot of multibagger guessing is just pointless lol.
So out of curiosity, I went back through the first 19 recommendations (not including BTC, which they publicly praised prior to RS21) and counted that 14 of those 19 are not recommended by any of the other fourteen TMF services that I personally subscribe to. So while yes, there are some overlaps, that’s a pretty good percentage to justify the purchase for me, assuming they pan out 5-10 years down the road.
On Redditt, tbert1991 posted 9 stocks and bitcoin which were noted to be part of the first 10. I looked up the 9 stocks on the public articles MF published and from the disclaimers was able deduce that 5 were owned and recommended by MF as early as January 2020 and as late as March 2021. Plus 1 was listed as owned in a March 10 write-up. So if your numbers are correct I would surmise none of the second batch of 10 were ever recommended by MF ever before.
I guess my point is more that if you have someone like me, who has access to literally half the services TMF has, only saw duplicate picks in 5 out of 19 stocks, then the odds the random investor who maybe only signs up for 1 or 2 services seeing duplicates is very low. From an individual “is this service worth it or not” perspective I think that would be more valuable information than “has TMF ever recommended this anywhere”.
My position was about the claims that I felt MF was making, not just about duplicate picks. I received another e-mail today offering the service and again they talk about locking in “12X Trades” and how previously they touted the fact that these picks are found on no other MF service. So it’s truly about the claims they make that I find disingenuous. It’s a pattern that I have seen and am coming to accept. Fact is they are not guru’s with any great vision of the future and the stocks they pick are recommendations and in the end we each have to be responsible for our own buys and sells.
I thank you again for going down this rabbit hole with me and Fool on!
For RS2021, I paid $50 for the first batch and the write ups…. I also shared the batch (10 picks) on the MF Premium on Reddit and got banned in less than 2 hours… some people are making good money reselling services…
confirmed: BTC, CMPS, CSTL, CURI, DCBO, GSHD, LOB, OM, UPST and WD…
None of my business but maybe you guys should look at True Trading Group YouTube videos instead of paying for all those subscriptions; do a 7 days trial for $3.00 and listen to the head trader.
Do you have a subscription to True Trading Group? I have watched a few of their videos and was intrigued would love your thoughts?
Yes, I have subscribed to TTG platform since I want to learn to trade on my own and not pay for what is termed “secret” symbols. I was captivated just looking at their YouTube live stream videos, did a 7-days trial and joined right after. I am presently going through their courses. The education is priceless. They trade everything; every day the market is open – you watch them trade live – you can trade with them as you get alerts on their website before the market opens. A look at the live stream videos will show you all the platforms members have access to (which will cost about 3600.00 yearly) if you were to get them on your own. I was totally amazed at the way the head-trader picked the stocks for the day – he won an Award for trading in 2008 in the stock market crash. Check out TTG reviews on Trust Pilot! You have access to their platform when you do the 7-day trial as well. TTG has over 6,000 members and a lot of their members have been paying hefty subscription elsewhere before they found TTG. Sorry for the late response as I just saw your question!!
BTC – Bitcoin? I thought RS is focused on small caps.
That’s a very valid point that I am confused about as well. While Bitcoin may be a Rising Star, it’s certainly not under their $6B cap, but if folks are to be believed as to what the stocks are that are selected there is also a $9B cap stock listed in that first round. I am curious to see how this group rounds out and if there are more breaks with the parameters they set in their sales pitch.
Yeah I can only assume it’s based on their belief in the ability to rise. As I posted above, there’s nothing in their literature about a limit to market-cap, just that it’s focused on micro and small caps with the ability to 6x over 10 years. What they include in their sales pitch emails may be very different, can’t speak to that. BTC was the only recommendation that I felt kinda WTF about, and another in the 2nd round that was a previous Stock Advisor pitch that they keep pushing. Everything else I felt truly fit pretty closely within the scope of what they pitched.
I’m a member of both MF Rising Stars and Discovery: 10x, and I’m really disappointed by Rising Stars so far because 11 out of 20 Rising Star picks overlap with Discovery 10x so far.
I’m also really disappointed because the Rising Star pitch kept talking about “12x”, but after I purchased it they’re really only talking about 6x. I think I saw later that by “12x” they mean “12x over market” or something. With 12x I thought they would focus Rising Stars on companies with even greater potential than Discovery 10x – not literally 11 out of 20 of the *exact* same picks so far! Incredibly misleading all around.
I’m probably going to take them up on their 30-day guarantee and switch my credit to another service. Any suggestions? I’ve been eyeing one of the Supernovas – anyone own those and can provide thoughts?
The picks (1st batch): BTC, CMPS, CSTL, CURI, DCBO, GSHD, LOB, OM, UPST and WD…. can anyone who actually have the service confirm this?
I think MF came out with an additional 3 picks for Discovery x 10 in the last week. Can anyone confirm these picks? Thanks.
I use two basic Motley Fool services, Stock Advisor and Rules Breakers, and following their recommendations I have over a ten year period made 780% on my investments plus taken out cash from time to time to make vacation trips plus keeping a nest egg in case everything goes south so I trust them and consider these two inexpensive subscriptions to be a winner. They pepper me with all kinds of new more expensive services regularly that I haven’t tried because given the minimal expensive I believe I’m doing damn well.
Awesome Lawrence! Love good pumped up news like this!
Can anybody share the 2nd and 3rd batches?