The Motley Fool in recent years has done just fine with its Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers picks many of which have been in that sweet spot of technology growth stocks, but much of the marketing has shifted to their newer, higher-end services. Like most publishers, the Motley Fool seems to be focused on that “marketing funnel” — bring in free or low-cost subscribers (Stock Advisor is often available at $49/yr, refunds are easy to get), and then work to upgrade them to high-end services that offer model portfolios or more focused sector targeting (today’s teased service, Extreme Opportunities: Trend-Spotter is being offered at $1,799/yr, with no refunds).
And a few readers chimed in to ask about this latest Trend-Spotter offering publicized this morning, so I’ll give it a look today in the interest of timeliness. The general spiel is that the service is launching with a focus on five different “trends,” with two stock picks for each trend, but they only hinted at two of those picks today… so that’s about where our guessing is going to have to focus.
They say, also, that the goal is to identify stocks that are NOT in other Motley Fool services… which is going to be a challenge, and will probably mean that they’re going to have a lot of smaller and newly public companies in this grouping. Which should mean much higher risk and, they hope, higher potential for big returns.
The ads are mostly signed by Eric Bleeker, who has pitched a lot of these Fool “special opportunities” upgrade services over the years, but the people who are running the portfolio, and presumably selecting the stocks, will be Fool analysts Emily Flippen and Seth Jayson — I’ve never noticed Flippen’s name before, but she was apparently a Rule Breakers staffer, and Jayson has been a Fool writer and analyst for a very long time.
The way they’re trying to distinguish this service is with their concept of “Genesis Trends” — here’s a bit from the ad:
“I believe 2020 could be the beginning of the next era of technology and investing trendsโฆ
“Generating a wave of powerful new ‘Genesis Trends’ that today are only at their beginning.
“Because history has shown there have been past years when investors could suddenly discover the emergence of MANY powerful trends that appeared in a narrow window of time.
“The moment the Internet came about โ wasnโt everyone in technology drooling about their next potential billion-dollar idea?
“And we saw when the Internet went mainstream in 1995, a MASSIVE wave of new trends emerged!
“In just a narrow window of time, e-commerce rose, search engines grew, and massive data centers began dotting the American landscape.”
The other examples given of these kinds of “genesis trends” are the mobile revolution, which was really fueled by the introduction of the iPhone, and they say we’re at the beginning of another big wave now…
“13 years later we could be at the beginning of a similar moment where a series of massive trends suddenly rise at once. I call it the DIGITAL WAVE.
“Now, coming into 2020, the reality is no one could have predicted this momentโฆ Itโs the result of perhaps millions of businesses and hundreds of industries all embracing a rapid digital shift at once in response to the coronavirus.”
And they sum up this idea of “genesis trends” here:
“… hereโs whatโs important about ‘Genesis Trends.’
“Theyโre moments when technologies or growth markets suddenly hit a point of rapid acceleration that effectively creates the beginning โ or ‘genesis’ — of a new trend.
“During the emergence of ‘Genesis Trends’โฆ
“Growth rates can suddenly reach new and often much higher levels
“Winners and losers of industries can be rapidly reset
“Companies that establish EARLY leadership positions become difficult to disrupt”
That actually calls to mind many of David Gardner’s oft-cited criteria for “Rule Breakers,” with particularly the focus on buying high-growth and buying “first mover” companies that Wall Street routinely calls “too expensive.”
"reveal" emails? If not,
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And, of course, it’s objectively true that we’ve seen a massive shift in the economy and consumer behavior during this pandemic shutdown, with widespread theories that this six-month period has effectively accelerated several trends toward e-commerce and digital work and entertainment in a major way — those things were already happening, but in many cases somewhat slowly (like telehealth, for example, where adoption was painstakingly slow pre-COVID), and our global stay-at-home orders moved that growth ahead by anywhere from a few years to a decade.
It has indeed been shocking, and the hottest stocks have certainly reflected that shock — Amazon posted 100% revenue growth in a quarter, for crying out loud, and that shouldn’t be possible for one of the largest companies in the world (OK, I’m rounding up, it was 97%… but still), and that led to the equally crazy move in the shares, with the company’s market capitalization increasing by $600 billion just since January 1 (to accentuate that craziness, there are only seven publicly traded companies with a total market cap above $600 billion in the world).
Will those trends persist? Nobody knows for sure, but technological change does have a way of sticking once it has been adopted… which doesn’t mean that every e-commerce company will do fantastically well, but it does mean that they’ll probably have strong tailwinds because e-commerce has, probably permanently, taken a bigger chunk of consumer buying than was previously expected (as the Fool cites in their pitch, e-commerce went from about 16% of sales last year to over 27% so far this year). The three trends that they specifically highlight in the ad are e-commerce acceleration (Wayfair (W), Shopify (SHOP), Amazon (AMZN), etc.), work from home (Zoom (ZM), Fastly (FSLY), etc.) and remote healthcare (Teladoc (TDOC), Livongo (LVGO), etc.), but they also do mention a few others — streaming video, the “race for a vaccine,” and the “death of cash.”
So with that conceptual backdrop in hand, what is it that the Fool is actually teasing to get you to pull out your credit card? After all, publishers know that they usually have to at least hint at some of what’s behind the curtain in order to inspire a nonrefundable purchase… and that means we’ve got some clues to work with, so we can perhaps find some stock ideas and give you a little to think over before you consider plunking down your $1,799. That is, after all, real money. Even for those of us living behind the gilded gates at Gumshoe Castle.
Here are the very limited hints that they drop in the ad for the first stock:
“… with Trend-Spotter focused on being the solution for emerging trends, the advisors in the service are focused on bringing all-new recommendations into it.
“Here are a couple of examples that new members will find among the first 10 stocks inside Trend-Spotter:
“An online retailer thatโs seen e-commerce orders accelerate at a tremendous rate in recent months. This is a stock our analysts have been researching, and itโs riding massive e-commerce tailwinds that recently emerged. But hereโs the kicker โ itโs presently NOT found in any other Motley Fool services.
I don’t think we’d be able to come up with an e-commerce company whose orders have NOT accelerated in recent months, so for that one we’ll definitely have to guess — and after musing on this for several minutes (in a row, I might add), I’ll guess that this is a pitch for Chewy (CHWY), the pet-focused e-commerce retailer.
Why Chewy? Well, it’s certainly a fast grower, and it has a strong niche business with better than 40% growth in the last quarter… but it’s also on an odd fiscal year with the last quarter ending in April, so although that incorporates six weeks of the pandemic shutdowns and did show some big acceleration, from 20% and 33% in the previous two quarters, I think it’s likely that their next quarter will provide accelerating growth beyond that. They report that next quarter in mid-September.
And as a little kicker for my guess, it’s also true that the Motley Fool did not disclose Chewy as a recommendation of any of their services in articles they published over the past few weeks… but they did disclose it as a recommendation in their “3 Hot Stocks Beating Amazon at its Own Game” article today, which means it was either recently recommended, or someone in the Fool’s disclosures department messed up. That’s no guarantee that it was recommended in this particular service, but it reinforces CHWY as my best guess.
Chewy looks downright cheap compared to some of the hot cloud computing growth stocks that have given everyone sweaty palms over the past few months, it trades at a price/sales ratio of only about 4, a lower valuation than even Amazon, but we should remember, of course, that it’s still a retailer… which means it has fairly tight gross margins (they have to pay for the pet food they sell, and shipping big bags of dog food is expensive).
The business should be pretty scalable if e-commerce continues to grow market share, so it’s possible that they’ll begin to turn a profit in the next few years — though with this ramp-up in sales, we’re all really guessing. Right now, analysts expect CHWY’s revenue to accelerate further to nearly 50% in the next quarter, but then de-accelerate and grow by roughly 50% over the next two years to a total of almost $10 billion a year… and that they’ll begin to post a profit sometime in 2022 (which will mostly be their fiscal 2023). They still have a pretty small market share, so there’s certainly potential for growth — they had about $4.3 billion in revenue last year, and estimates are that US spending on just pet food and treats (which is presumably most of they sell, though they also handle pet prescription medications) was a little under $40 billion that year.
With people treating their pets like family, a trend that has been in place for a long time, and focusing even more on them in this pandemic (including a big boom in “pandemic puppies” being adopted by folks who suddenly have time for training and socializing a pup), I can see how this might be a compelling “trend” pick… and their spending per customer is pretty strong, at $357/year as of their last shareholder letter, so it’s worthwhile for them to spend heavily on marketing to acquire those customers and tempt them with “subscription” plans for pet food that make it easy to lock those “pet parents” in to a long relationship (according to that Fool article today, Chewy gets 2/3 of its revenue from those subscription/autoship sales — which could be hugely important as they grow). I’ve certainly seen plenty of Chewy boxes on porches around my neighborhood, though I confess that I’ve never yet been a customer (and yes, Gumshoe Castle is practically bursting with pets).
Not a bad idea, but, of course, it’s also a company that has to compete directly with giants like Amazon and Walmart, so you never know when a competition might further pressure their margins. I haven’t bought Chewy, but I’d color myself somewhat tempted. If they can inspire loyalty in their customers, it might be worth looking at — they seem to also have some leverage with manufacturers, because it looks like they’re selling a lot of their products to consumers before they’ve even paid their wholesalers (payables are very high, receivables almost nonexistent, and that autoship/renewal feature probably means they don’t need to hold a ton of unnecessary inventory), which certainly helps with cash flow in the short term. That’s somewhat reminiscent of what Amazon did in the 1990s when they were getting started, selling books and essentially having them shipped directly from the publisher, without holding a lot of inventory… and probably paying the publishers several weeks after the consumers had paid them, giving an unprofitable retailer some room to breathe.
And a reason for patience? Well, if I were Chewy management I would be raising a lot of money right now, to build a war chest at a strong valuation and let them further build the business without worrying about near-term profitability — so although they don’t technically need cash right now, I’d be a little surprised if they don’t do a substantial secondary offering at some point in the next few months. Of course, they could post a huge beat and raise quarter in September and pop the shares up another 40% before that happens, I certainly don’t have any certainty about what the near future holds for Chewy (or anyone else, for that matter).
And, of course, there will always be at least a little bit of reluctance among the old guard… if only because they still have the image of the pets.com mascot branded into their brains as a reminder of the most well-known dot-com wipeout company of the 1990s.
And here are the clues for the second stock:
“Thereโs also a tiny stock worth a little more than a billion dollars thatโs finally unifying the way companies manage social media into one simple package. Itโs a massive market opportunity, but yet again, this company has never been recommended by a single Motley Fool service. Starting today, this recommendation can be found only inside Trend-Spotter!”
That “unify social media” goal has been the focus of a bunch of software startups in the past decade (Agorapulse, Social Report, Hopper HQ, socialoomph, Meet Edgar, Hootsuite, Buffer, just to name a few), though I guess probably nobody has done a great enough job at it to become dominant… so who might this be among public companies?
The best guess here is Sprout Social (SPT), which has roughly doubled in its short life as a public company but is not too far above a billion dollars in valuation (it’s rising today, currently at $1.6 billion). They went public in late December, and just priced a follow-on offering at $27.50, so the fact that the shares are well above $30 shows a certain enthusiasm among investors.
What’s to like? Well, it is a software subscription business, and investors love those… and it’s growing pretty nicely, with roughly 27% revenue growth last quarter… that’s not the blistering growth we’re seeing out of the big coronavirus winners, but is also trading at a fairly low valuation relative to other “cloud software” stocks, with a price/sales valuation of only 13. SPT hasn’t yet gotten any news coverage at Fool.com, nor have there been any disclosures as of yet of the shares being recommended by a Fool service.
Here’s how the company describes itself:
“Sprout empowers businesses around the globe to tap into the power and opportunity of social media. Our cloud software brings together social content and messaging, data and workflows in a unified system of record, intelligence and action. Operating across major social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn Google and YouTube, we provide organizations with a centralized platform to effectively manage social media efforts across stakeholders and business functions.”
I can see how that’s important, and it’s quite possible that their resources as a public company will let them stand out from the pack of software providers in this space… but it is a crowded space, and I don’t really know much about the relative appeal of the competing services (as you might have noticed, Stock Gumshoe is not particularly well tuned-in to social media platforms).
Sprout reported last week, and said that their “key metrics accelerated through the quarter” as they raised their guidance for the year. They grew their customer count by less than 10% year over year, which I would say sounds pretty disappointing, but they did manage to grow their big customers faster — the customers who spend over $10,000 a year on Sprout Social grew by 54% over last year, which is impressive. Their software is not terribly expensive, at $249/seat/month for the top tier product, so $10,000 would mean at least three or four users at that company.
Their guidance was for more of the same, with revenue growth in the next quarter of roughly 25%, and total revenue growth for 2020 of about 26%, to $129 million. They are selling some additional shares, but only about 1.5 million of them will be new shares (most of the offering is for existing shareholders to get out, as is common in the year following an IPO), so the “dilution” from this sale is only about 3% — so you’re still getting revenue growth of about 25-30%, and a valuation of about 13X revenue. The analysts are understandably optimistic about the shares, since the first wave of analyst reports about a new company tend to come from the investment banks that did the underwriting, but even they don’t see SPT turning a profit for several years… though they do think revenue will steady grow at this 25-30% pace for at least the next couple years.
Sprout Social isn’t a company I know anything about, so I’m a little reluctant to get excited about it here — that level of growth is not quite up to the “blistering” level, and given the huge variety of software packages available for social media management the only obvious advantage I see for Sprout is that they’re the only pure-play publicly traded company in this niche (at least, that I know of — maybe there’s another one hiding out there somewhere). I’d think that this would be a critical technology to eventually be built in to customer, sales, public relations and advertising software packages, so if I were digging into Sprout Social I’d start by looking into what kind of integrations or partnerships they might have (if any).
I’m willing to stipulate that better-managed social media is a “genesis trend” idea that could have some legs, but I’d have to know more to bet on little Sprout being the eventual winner… maybe that’s just me being too cautious, we’ll see. I’d be curious to hear what you think
As, indeed, I’d like to know what you think about this whole idea — do you see big and permanent “genesis trends” emerging here? Do you agree that Chewy or Sprout Social might be key players in those tends? Have other ideas that you think are stronger, or better guesses to match those limited Fool clues? Let us know with a comment below.
Disclosure: Of the stocks mentioned above I own shares of and/or call options on Teladoc, Amazon, Shopify, Google parent Alphabet, Twitter, Fastly, and Apple. I will not trade in any covered stock for at least three days after publication, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.
I wasn’t able to finish the meeting but there was a discussion about Square and Stoneco the link expired before i finished it.. ugh
Twist Elastic and StoneCo were the 3 freebies that arenโt in the portfolio.
Chewy versus Freshpet?
Freshpet is a manufacturer, with its own food brands… Chewy more of an online pet store. At least, that’s my 30-second differentiation, have never looked deeply at Freshpet, though it is also getting a sales growth burst.
I actually bought some CHEWY in March and it was in the mid to high $30s and now it’s seeing 55. I actually purchase from them and they are pretty terrific. And very customer service oriented. I’ve been reading show much recently but over the last couple of days one of the report mentioned CHEWY … But I can’t remember if it was Motley Fool or someone else.
hello
can u please answer my question I know it is out of the blue question.
CRNC
That’s not a question. I’ve never looked at Cerence, if that’s what you’re asking. Interesting idea, software for cars (largely for driver interface, including voice commands), but I don’t know anything else about it or who their customers or competitors are.
I own some. MF put it in the Next Gen Super Cycle portfolio. Its doing pretty well for me, up over 30% in a couple months
I have a pretty large position in CRNC, mainly because it offered such good value. My rough understanding of their business is that they have two services. First, they have a large engineering staff to offer services to auto manufacturers to help them build their infotainment systems. The second piece is the soft products they sell themselves, mainly voice recognition. The really interesting piece is that they’re starting to get into payments – think ordering a coffee by voice in your car on your way to work. I think they get licensing fees for use of their software.
Outside of Tesla I think they have relationships with every auto manufacturer from Germany to China. Given the complexity of the software they make I’d say they’re in a pretty strong position. Stock shot up after earnings this month and CEO said work backlog is growing.
Hi Jeremyjohn always enjoy your comments.. curious as to what u see from the 5g portfolio with the most high growth potential. I opened small positions in all of them but want to go in strong on a few but there is just so much speculation with 5g hard to get through it all and figure it out…
Hi mar90,
Kudos to you for diving into the MF 5G portfolio. Was a bit too expensive for me but I did get a glimpse of what I think are the original 19 stocks. Things may have changed, consider that I might be missing critical information.
If I remember right there were a lot of hardware and IP plays in the portfolio. I think Ceva, Lumentum and Skyworks were there. I think those companies will benefit from 5G, but I didn’t see the larger vision with those companies so if you invest in those small hardware plays my advice would be to spread your money out.
Looking on a 5 year horizon the only chip(ish) companies I like that would fit in this space are NVDA, , ASML, QCOM and CDNS. If you haven’t heard, Intel is talking like they want out of the fab business. And in my mind we’re really reaching the point where we should all start wondering why we’re still using CISC (eg x86) vs RISC (eg ARM) processors. Even Microsoft has moved past Windows RT and released Windows 10 to run on an ARM processor.
And guess who’s in negotiations to buy ARM Holdings? Yup, NVDA. Given NVDA’s growing prevalence in datacenters, their recent AI purchase in China and the potential that they might purchase ARM….I regret not having a larger position.
QCOM has been a dog because of court battles and Apple trying to build their own radio hardware. Now that AAPL and QCOM are friends again, and QCOM can sell to Huawei, too, that looks like a promising stock. …for two years until Huawei copies all of their IP.
ASML is king of machines that make the chips, so should be a good one to own. CDNS is the best in the biz for layout software, as well as a host of other engineering tidbits. That’s a good stock to have. I wish Altium (Australian) was traded in the US as I’d recommend that, too.
Stay away from XLNX. FPGAs make less and less sense at scale today with the rise of system on a chip architectures – note the benefit of a FPGA is that it’s a programmable piece of hardware. I read that Nokia or one of the European RAN manufacturers that competes with Huawei made a big mistake of putting FPGAs in their hardware early on. Then 5G standards became formalized earlier than expected and they couldn’t compete with Huawei on cost. FPGAs will continue in niche applications, but no huge future that I see.
And then AAPL. Recently met a 10-year AAPL vet who works on the iPhone radio. He says inside AAPL Tim Cook speaks about creating a 1000 year company. Hard to bet against that kind of ambition.
Thank you
Thank you!
I like both and buy both, the FP is not a bargain ?
The only constant is that you should call those people what they are. Bur you donโt…
Huh?
If you are talking about Motley Fool I think they are honest and provide a good service. Their premium services are targeted for people that have 200K or more to available to invest. They are pretty open in mentioning this. They are also open about not all of their picks are going to be winners. Motley Fool is about long term holding of stocks, not quick profits. They only give you sell recommendations when something has fundamentally changed with the company.
Could the e-commerce stock being teased be farfetch (FTCH). I don’t think it was teased before by them and the company is the leader of luxury online shopping. Still pretty bellow everyone’s radar.
Sure, another reasonable guess.
Or perhaps RVLV?
I guessed the other one was SPT
Actually FTCH WAS recommended as part of their AI portfolio in Feb ’20. I got in right away @ 10.6o. It’s up $2.75 after hours today after Q2 earning and sits at 29.20.
What do you think of stne they touted
I listened to their advertisement video and they revealed (STNE) StoneCo, TWST (Twist Bioscience Corp) and (ESTC) Elastic
Elastic they’ve teased before, that was one of the “FAZER” stocks — somewhat appealing, and a cheaper valuation versus its growth rate than a lot of the cloud stocks offer right now (53% revenue growth, price/sales of 16, though that growth burst might be an outlier), but not as obvious a long-term growth business as Roku or Fastly, at least for me.
I’ve never looked in detail at the Brazil fintech/payments firm StoneCo (STNE), though having Berkshire Hathaway buy in is a nice endorsement and they’ve got a nice revenue base built up in Brazil if that economy/currency can avoid tanking too badly… and Twist Bioscience (TWST) sounds cool, but I’m not sure I’m smart enough to understand their potential.
I’ve never been as impressed with Elastic as other software developers. More specifically we’re talking about ELK – Elastic search engine (which really just searches flat log files), Kibana (the front end to that search engine) and Logstash (the part that fetches log data across applications). I’ve never seen a situation where something was caught in logs in a timely manner because of ELK. And to me is seems….very complicated. Most software people don’t even understand all the components.
But is it useful? Well I understand Elastic can build notification tools on top of their cloud installs that are useful.
I haven’t pulled the trigger on this stock because it doesn’t seem to solve the core problem it seeks to solve – poor logging. It’s just as easy to build a terrible logging system with Elastic as it is without. Though admittedly you’d probably be able to do searches faster through of a terrible Elastic log DB than searching log files….or not. Maybe this makes more sense if you’re triaging the logs on a site like Amazon that’s getting bombed 24/7?
My other issue with Elastic is that it seems to be going against the grain of a trend towards microservices that use lower level languages and are not as ‘exception prone’ as old enterprise applications. What does this mean? It means that from an engineering standpoint in the future you should have a better idea what service or subsystem is causing problems and be able to target your search. Maybe the idea of dumping your log files into one massive repository is going away?
My two cents. Probably won’t be buying, but still open to new information…
Those 3 stocks they gave for free but they are not in the actual service they are selling.
Thanks for the insights I have a feeling youโre spot on again.
i got suckered in to blastoff 2020 and next gen services over 3000 as a new investor- willing to trade for info on a couple other services?? I asked to switch 2020 blast off since I had most already and they would not let me- I feel ripped off
I have rule breakers and advisor service. Want to trade?
Aloha I also bought those, and do feel a little slighted. I have been happy with rising stars 2020, and will be renewing that service. I made the subscription fee alone on FSLY at $23.
Question for you, and this is somewhat rhetorical:
What were you attempting to accomplish spending $3k for investment advice?
My take on those services is that they’re designed for people who have $1 million + invested with a lot of strong positions in companies they like and maybe $200k sitting in a low performing index or bond fund. In that case $3k or $10k or whatever isn’t a lot to pay for new investment ideas to bring growth to a strong portfolio and an investor with high risk tolerance.
It sounds to me like you’re expecting information on some unicorn stock that doesn’t exist.
I listen to the MF podcasts and read a lot of the articles on their site. If you just spend some time looking around you’ll find that most of the most promising stocks they offer are hidden in plain sight in their daily feed of articles. For example I got keyed into Chewy a long time ago simply by listening to Motley Fool Money. And companies like Roku and The Trade Desk could easily be 10x companies from where they are at today – these are recommendations across numerous services. I wouldn’t feel bad at all about adding more to TTD today even if it did make my portfolio lopsided.
I just think if you’re spending that much money on investment advice you have to go in with a clear vision as to what you’re expecting. I wouldn’t doubt their service – if there is overlap with what you already own I’d suggest you double down and follow their advice.
Not long ago (and using information from Gumshoe’s website, if I remember correctly, I added up the sum subscription costs of all service inventions from Motley after Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers, arriving (could this really be ?) at a figure close to $19,000 (if one enrolled for them all
from time immemorial. Whether or not my details are accurate, I am taking this opportunity to voice my disgust with Motley Fool’s avaricious and shameless aggression. No sooner did I subscribe to Rule Breakers, then MF was littering my email box with multiple urges to buy more, as though
saying, “Well, Rule Breakers is just “ok” as a teaser for dummies, but if you are a true investor
it isn’t good enough; you need to spend more to get our real ideas. Although Rule Breakers
recommends only two stocks per month, officially, in reality they pepper subscribers with many
more, including all back month listings. So, while MF boasts a good return if one buys each and
every stock, who on earth can buy each one, which is what one would have to do to obtain their
puffed up results. I mean really — who builds large holdings in 24 to 30 stocks at a time these days?
I don’t like their marketing, and find their performance acumen to be little better than Barron’s,
which is pretty meager.
They dont tell you to buy ALL their services. Each is tailored to specific investors. They specifically tell you to stick to SA and RB their flagships which you can get for as low as $49 a year. They are a business and they are in the business of doing analysis and selling it. It is not free. Seeing people bash MF kept me from joining for years till I finally did last year and they are the best thing that has happened to my portfolio!
The web page I landed on (from a URL in an actual paper mailer!) included a short video where she mentioned CHWY as one of the 10 stocks in the collection. So either they were double-dipping and you were correct in identifying the first teaser; or they did give one away, tease two others, and it’s something else.
Thanks, seems some folks saw a lot more promo material for this one than I have seen so far.
After 5 years of Stock advisor and rule breakers, I decided to let my subscriptions expire. They are constantly flooding you with offers to try their services, including a 75% reduction of what I had been paying for my subscription. Many of the stocks they recommend are way too pricey for me and I don’t believe there is too much to gain if you can only afford 10-25 shares of their recommendation. The service that Travis provides has provided me with far greater profits than Motley Fool. Travis, please keep up your great service to your Gumshoe members.
I hear people say that all the time. The emails are like all marketing emails they go to a folder away from my main email folder. I choose to read or not read their marketing material. They come up with more winners than most of the newsletters revealed on this site. In fact since finding them and the reti=urns from their picks I no longer bother with other newsletters and the mindset they preach , I have adapted as my investing mindset.
This is 2020 if their emails bother you, there’s an app for that!
I listened to the entire sales pitch. At first they implied that the Genesis stocks would not be part of the Stock Advisor or Rule Breaker selections, but later in the presentation they said something along the lines of “…some of them will be unique, but others will also be part of other Motley Fool services.”
So please don’t let the presence of a stock in Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers stop you from guessing that it is also part of the more expensive new program.
I have a question for this community. I am very new to this site and to investing in general, so I am wandering, if there is a “newsletter” or subscription service out there that is for guys like me. I don’t have 10K sitting around to throw at these expensive stocks that are being marketed by the Jeff Browns of the world, so I am looking at less pricey opportunities and most of what I have been reading on various sites all point to stocks like Amazon, Apple, NVDA and other pricey stuff.
I am very grateful that I came across this site when I did, and I really enjoy reading the articles and comments. So thank you for that Travis and everybody else who is active on here. I’m just looking for some direction. I don’t have time to sit and watch hour long presentations on stocks that I can’t afford, so I’m hoping there is a “beginner” service out there for folks like me….blue collar, middle class types.
Thanks in advance for any feedback.
I have two inexpensive services (same annual cost as Gumshoe) that I subscribe to and would recommend for a new investor in addition to Gumshoe. Contrarian Income report for dividends and Fry’s investment services for speculation/investment. These two have provided me with profits way in excess of their cost (including losses)
I have other much more expensive services that I would not recommend for the beginner.
For some stocks that you believe in, there are brokerages that will let you get “slices” or fractional ownership. So you can spend say $5 to get a little slice of Apple. That way smaller investors have the opportunity to invest in stocks with a heftier pricetag.
I’m new to all this too and I started watching this guy on TikTok and now he has a Youtube channel. If you watch some of his first TikTok videos, he explains the basics and he does a pretty good job at it. He also has the experience and credentials to back it up. His TikTok is ‘acouplecents’ and Youtube channel is ‘A Couple Cents’. His name is Justin Oh. He’s started to get more and more followers because he offers his opinions for free, very similar to Travis, who does a fantastic job as well. Hope this helps!
thank you so much for the feedback guys, I will check out all of these suggestions and I will definitely keep following Gumshoe!
Some brokers now offer fractional shares. Say you want to buy Amazon stock but don’t have the 3K plus to buy one share. You can put in how much you want to invest in it and they will give you a partial share. So if you wanted to only invest $500 you would get around .16 of a share.
They other way is to buy ETF’s that have the stocks you want exposure to in them. Look for ones that have low expense ratios. Something like SCHX has a lot of the big stocks in it and a very low expense ratio.
A little long, but here is my strategy and newsletter recommendation for a fellow newcomer like myself.
I don’t have that kind of cash either. Fractional shares will be a game changer for guys like us. In Robinhood, every day I invest $2 in MELI, TSLA, SQ, LVGO. Option to do that daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly. That adds up over time. Since implementing this on 5/22/20 for MELI, it’s returned 40% for me. A full share now costs $1157 but I don’t have that kind of money for one share. Hell, Iprobably only have 6 companies with over 1k invested. I have dozens with $300-700 though. But I get the same % return as the rich guy with multiple shares. Gotta start somewhere in your wheelhouse.
18 months into Motley Fool Stock Advisor, $100/year. I’m up 68%. Great value. People complain about all the marketing for their new expensive services, but all you have to do is unsubscribe from their emails in your profile settings. I don’t buy into those but I’ll watch their promo to get a free pick or two, so i don’t mind.
Bought one share of Tesla for $230. Now up to $1635 and paid for my subscription for over a decade in one share. I buy every single rec no matter what. I usually put around $200-300 in each one, even if it’s only a fraction of a share. If they re-rec same stock down the line, double down. If it’s one of their biweekly best buys, throw a few bucks in fractional shares.
Did I loose $500 on Luckin Coffee? Yep. Did it suck? Yep. But I’ve made thousands many times over in short amount of time. That’s the game we play.
Good luck!
Hi There, For instance in my case. I was a former member of the MF as well. But after subscribingย into stockgumshoe(SGS) as irregular i cancelled MF never looked back. The reasons i can list as..1. I’m working full time, need time to spend with familyย still interested in investing and happened to be in the right place.2. Travis’ writingย is very intriguing and entertaining,relentless (He writes so much at a given period lol!!,Love this guy. i read every wordย ofย his writing including great SGS members comments) 3. I getย lots ofย financialย knowledge and can feel what companyย I’mย investing into and not just a ticker.. 3. Apparently Travis is building a healthy investing community with business ethics by helping charity causes etc.. 4. Stockgumshoe covers almost all ideas of other publishers(One stop shop!!). Hope this helps.
As a new investor,I’d advice you to stick to MotleyFools Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers. I have each for $98/ 2 years. I buy most of their picks even if fractions.
Tune in to their podcasts and FoolsLive is awesome. They have replays on their site. I find them superior to 99% of newsletters.
I have stock advisor. Do rule breakers have a lot of different stocks han stock advisor?
That’s a very thought provoking question.
Are you looking for a “beginner” service; or you looking for a “blue collar, middle class” service? It is about figuring out your goals and mindset.
Is it that you are young/broke and just getting started, but you someday hope to be a Wall street big shot. Or is it that you really never expect to justify spending your time and money on stock-picking at any point in your future?
I think the real key to “beginning” investing is to recognize that for most people if investing is something you are really passionate about it becomes a career. A service to others and your primary job function. Regardless of your background, or how much money is currently in your account, you can become a stockbroker or analyst or write advise articles or start a fund and beg people to let you manage *their* money. You can start a company and borrow and leverage with limited personal liability. But this would be your new career. Even if you haven’t quit your old job yet you have to have the mindset that you will become a professional investor.
If you are looking for a “blue collar, middle class” service, then what I am hearing is that you already have a job, you like it, and you are happy with the level of income it provides. And there is nothing wrong with that. Put your excess money in a 401K, HSA, etc. where you will have limited investment options anyways. Or put it into a direct business opportunity or training for yourself.
Could the eCommerce category may include Revolve Group RVLV? billion dollar m-cap
Revolve is in their small/micro cap service. If they are stocks that are not in other services, it canโt be revolve.
For those considering using Chewy for delivered pet food, be careful with their auto-ship. I suggest being sure of your frequency of need before signing up. I used them for awhile and in the beginning they sent emails reminding you of the next shipment date so that you could change it beforehand if needed. Later, they stopped the email warnings and stuff started showing up on my doorstep unexpectedly. I also found a lot of dust in the dry kibble sacks, which may have been due to poor handling in shipping. As I found no particular price advantage vs. the local stores that began carrying what I normally buy, I cancelled out and don’t use Chewy any more. I do know other people that use them often, so they won’t suffer from losing my business. It’s a good service for the pandemic if you don’t want to go out shopping.
There are soo many competitors and I always think Pets.com
“These first two teased picks from the pricey Fool upgrade service Trend-Spotter are not certain matches, the clues were quite light so theyโre at least partially guesses.”
But as almost always spot on.
I listen to the Fool podcasts everyday and Emily Flippin began as a guest commentator ~2 years ago. She now hosts one of the shows 1x/week and does a great job. Sheโs been occasionally talking about what she likes about Chewy for over a year in the podcasts so I suspect Travis is correct in his identification.
I have been a subscriber to Rule Breakers and Stock Advisor for 2 years- at a reasonable cost While not all recommendations work out, my aggregate returns exceed 50% per year.
CHEWY is now at 54 dollars, that’s a long way above 30 dollars!
How do the Fool’s get away with selling these mind-blowing marketing pitches, that end up being a stock already at its highest point since becoming available, and it’s something they had already recommended? Will admit — I was “Fooled” in the past — but never again. Next will be some campaign with an outer space name, cost $3000 to join, and the recommendation will be APPL!