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Are the Fool’s “FAZER” stocks “The Next FAANG?”

What are the "if you missed Netflix, better buy this" stocks teased for the Motley Fool's presentation tomorrow?

We’ve had a lot of questions pop up over the past couple days about the Motley Fool’s “FAZER” stocks, which will apparently be the focus of a “special presentation” they’re making tomorrow morning.

The gist of the email, which comes from Eric Bleeker, is pure FOMO — it triggers all the feelings of angst in those who missed out on buying Netflix when the Motley Fool was recommending it 10-15 years ago by hinting at the next crop of stocks that could create similar 20,000% returns. Here’s how they put it:

“If you’re hurting from having missed out on the incredible stock run-ups of even ONE of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, or Google, and are ready to make up for it with the “FAZER” stocks… then this event is for you.”

That’s certainly a feeling that I get from time to time — we all do. You can’t pick every great stock, and even when you do pick great ones you sometimes sell at just the worst time. (Yes, I’ve held Google and Facebook since the beginning, but missed Netflix and Amazon early on and, worse, I’m still kicking myself for selling Tencent in 2007.)

We all know that this kind of backward-looking jealousy is not terribly helpful, but we can’t help it… and sometimes the only real salve is to pick the next winner. So that’s the urge being picked at by the Motley Fool copywriters as they hint at this net group of (possible) future leaders… shall we try to name them before the presentation?

We don’t actually know what service the Fool will be selling at 9am tomorrow morning, but I’m quite sure they’ll be selling something and holding back on some of their ideas until you pay. I’m listing this under Rule Breakers until we get some clarification about what they’re pitching, but most likely it will be one of their higher-end nice services like Discovery or Extreme Opportunities. [Update: The presentation turned out to be pitching Motley Fool IPO Trailblazers, at $1,300/yr]

And the odds are pretty good that these stocks will not really be “new” to us — the Fool tends to stick with ideas for a considerable period of time, and to really latch on to their favorites, so I imagine we’ll have some repeats here who have been teased before… which is helpful, because the clues are a little limited.

Here’s what we get in the email ad:

“Which is why when I heard the other day that some of my fellow analysts at the Fool had just identified five technology companies they consider “The Next FAANG stocks,” I dropped everything I was working on to find out more.

“Turns out, they’re calling them the ‘FAZER’ stocks.”

And then we’ll go through them one at a time…

“F — the just-$2B market cap edge computing pioneer that enables internet data to travel between different countries — and even continents — at warp speed.”

This is almost certainly Fastly (FSLY), which is leading the surge for independent edge computing (independent of things like Google or Amazon cloud services, at least).

I haven’t seen Fastly pitched by the Fool before, though it is the kind of small growth stock that they tend to like… and it’s one that I started building a position in earlier this year in the Real Money Portfolio (it’s still a very small position, since I think it’s a very high-risk stock).

My rationale was that Fastly could have a “first mover” advantage in edge computing, as the one real “pure play” company that’s focused on this trend — edge computing is not really about faster transmission of internet data, though, that part of the pitch is a bit odd, it’s really about making the user experience better by moving the processing work closer to that user. What Fastly does is take the next step beyond the content delivery network (CDN) that was most popularly implemented by Akamai over a decade ago — the CDN takes content to the edge of the internet so you can access big files more quickly, like storing that hot Netflix movie in the local telecom facility in your town instead of sending that data from a central data center each time someone in your area wants to view it. That saves distance, which saves time.

Fastly goes beyond that — instead of moving a file to the edge of the internet, closer to end users, it moves the logic and the processing to the edge. That means the “thinking” that you’re demanding from a website is done closer to you, which means the “answers” will be fed back to you faster… and it also means the data you enter is more localized and silo’d, and therefore there’s a good chance that it will improve security.

Here’s a little bit of what I wrote to the Irregulars in their Friday File a couple weeks ago, following Fastly’s earnings report (you can see their shareholder letter from February 20 here):

“What really appeals to me about Fastly is the increased adoption of their network by large customers — they have been continuously adding enterprise-size customers (those that spend at least $100,000 a year), and they’ve also been getting more spend from those customers (on average now $607,000, up by more than 5% in just the last quarter). The promise is that Fastly has a huge potential growth runway, with only about 1,700 customers now and a vast potential user base as the interest grows in edge computing, moving not just content but logic and computing power to the edge of the network to enhance speed and security… and they already work with a lot of the more interesting companies who are pushing the envelope now, including Taboola and Shopify.

“There is some deceleration in sales as part of their forecast, and that’s not unexpected but is, of course, not our first choice as investors — they’re guiding to about $260 million in revenue, which would “only” be 30% revenue growth. You can see their investor letter from the outgoing CEO here, I’m still pretty impressed with them, this company reminds me a little bit of Akamai (AKAM) 15 years ago, when the idea of a content delivery network seemed a little too expensive to be worthwhile… now it might be that edge computing is that next level of CDN, moving processing and logic to nearby data centers instead of just putting video and other large-file “content” closer to customers, and the standard-bearer could, dare we hope, be a small fella like FSLY.

“It’s early yet and FSLY remains quite high risk — the nice thing is that it is not nearly as flashy or well-established as some of the cloud software names, so you get 30%+ revenue growth at 8X sales instead of the 40% growth and 25X sales that is pretty common in the cloud space. That’s similar to the valuation that appealed to me with DocuSign (DOCU) about a year and a half ago, and that stock, which like Fastly was an IPO that hadn’t really found its footing, has doubled since then.”

Everything is relative, and if all the cloud stocks collapse because we’re not doing the “20X sales is fine for high-ceiling growth stocks” thing anymore, well, so be it — but on a relative basis I think FSLY is priced reasonably, compared to the crop of rapid growth stocks that have led the market until the coronavirus drop last week.

Moving on!

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“A — at only $4B in market cap, their revolutionary software platform is singlehandedly replacing the concept of the in-house ‘tech team.'”

Well, the stock has lost 25% of its value in the past two weeks so it’s not quite at $4 billion any longer… but this must be Appian (APPN), which provides a “low-code software development platform” that essentially makes customized applications much easier for non-programmers to build.

This isn’t one that fell just because of the COVID-19 panic, Appian reported earnings on February 20 and posted both disappointing revenue numbers, a little below analyst estimates, and a forecast for 2020 that was meaningfully below the average analyst forecast for both revenue and earnings (well, losses — they’re not yet posting any earnings).

Appian has been a Fool favorite in the past, getting the full teaser treatment in late 2017 when Tom Gardner hinted that he was buying it as an appealing recent IPO. I thought at the time, and still think, that it’s a cool idea with nice strength in customer retention, but I still don’t understand what they do that well so I’ve never owned the stock. The risk here is clearly a “failure to grow” risk — the company can’t become profitable unless they get quite a bit bigger to scale the business, and they just posted their worst year-over-year growth quarter (with revenue growth of only 7% last quarter, a shockingly low number for them even though it’s just one quarter).

Current forecasts, based on APPN’s guidance, have revenue growth for 2020 at about 14% (and 13% in 2021)… which would be very good for some companies, but is not good enough, in my book, if you’re not profitable and are trading at more than 10X sales. If you want to buy this one you’ll probably have to become knowledgeable enough about it to be convinced that they’ll become a much larger company in the long run — it may well work out in the end, but they look relatively unappealing to me at this valuation. Better than they did two weeks ago at $63, I suppose, but still too rich for me at $45.

“Z — the radical video technology company changing the way society will communicate in the future.”

That’s got to be Zoom Video Communications (ZM), the purveyor of video conferencing software and services. This one, despite it’s crazy valuation (50X sales), has been one of the beneficiaries of the COVID-19 panic — after all, if people can’t travel for business because of a pandemic, maybe they’ll do a lot more video meetings.

The good thing about Zoom is that they’re profitable and growing very fast, with analysts predicting that they’ll earn 27 cents per share this year on revenues that increase by almost 100%. The bad thing is that I just don’t get it, and that’s probably a shortcoming for me personally (partly because I never user videoconferencing tools, so maybe I just don’t understand how much better Zoom might be than their many competitors). Here’s what I wrote last time Eric Bleeker was teasing this one for the Fool, back in June (the stock was very close to the current price back then, in case you’re curious — in the interim, to oversimplify, it dropped 40% on valuation fears, and then rose 50-60% on coronavirus enthusiasm):

“This is a company I don’t really understand, to be frank — they offer something that has been available for a long time, without an obviously better experience (as a non-user, at least) and with huge amounts of competition, and yet they’re apparently getting a $25 billion valuation (50% above the IPO price of two months ago, which itself seemed nutty to me). That’s about 50X sales, if you annualize this quarter’s $122 million in revenue (“annualize” is just fancy investor-speak for “multiply by four”), so there’s probably something more appealing than I understand about their product.”

Next!

“E — the ‘next Google’ that’s redefining the concept of search functionality as we know it, but at 175 times smaller than the current size of Google.”

That one must be Elastic (ESTC), which I’ve looked at a little bit in the past few months (they were teased by a different newsletter, RiskHedge, back in November)… this is how Elastic describes itself:

“Elastic is a search company that powers enterprise search, observability, and security solutions built on one technology stack that can be deployed anywhere. From finding documents to monitoring infrastructure to hunting for threats, Elastic makes data usable in real time and at scale. Founded in 2012, Elastic is a distributed company with Elasticians around the globe.”

Elasticsearch is based on open source software, but like many companies they essentially sell a gussied up version of the software and add integration and customization services on top of that — and like essentially all software companies, they’re migrating to the subscription “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model which provides good stability of revenues and a sticky customer relationship. They say in their latest quarterly update that subscriptions are now 92% of revenue, and that they’re still bringing in new customers at a pretty rapid clip (8% customer growth in a single quarter is very impressive, and the growth in “big” customers, over $100,000 in annual expected revenue, was also 8% — which is even more important).

I’m inclined to like Elastic, and analysts have fallen back in like with them (not quite “love”) after a rough December quarter — when I covered this stock for that RiskHedge tease back in November the analysts had a $104 price target, and then December came and scared everyone away (the stock dropped roughly 25% on last quarter’s earnings report) and the target is now $96, but this quarter was a solid one with “beat and raise” numbers that included stronger billings but also, with some worry, the loss of an executive (the Chief Revenue Officer).

My problem is that I have a hard time envisioning the future profitability given how much Elastic is having to consistently spend on both marketing and R&D to get this growth, but the growth is very strong — revenue grew 60% year over year in the last quarter, and that’s worth at least paying attention to even if operating expenses grew still faster at 64% (operating expenses have grown faster than revenue very consistently for all of ESTC’s life as a public company, though that differential has improved a little bit over the past year).

We’re actually close to testing the Elasticsearch product on Stock Gumshoe, so maybe if that’s a big success and seems worth the cost that will push me over the edge to considering an investment in ESTC… but I’m not there yet.

And one more…

“R — the silent king of streaming media that has set itself up perfectly to dominate tomorrow’s entertainment industry.”

That pretty well has to be Roku (ROKU), which I’ve never owned even though it caught my eye way back in September when it had that dramatic drop from $175 to $100 (that was when Comcast announced that they would be giving away free streaming boxes).

The stock has since recovered and then lost all of that recovery again, so it’s getting a little more relatively appealing once more — it’s still not profitable, but it’s pretty close and probably could reach profitability within a year or two if they focus a little more on costs. The impressive thing about Roku recently is that they have pretty consistently posted accelerating revenue growth — meaning that they’re growing faster now than they did last year and the year before. That’s very rare, usually revenue growth slows down as you grow, and it’s therefore a sign of someone worth watching.

The big question for Roku is whether or not it will succeed in establishing a defensible “platform” for streaming — will they be the cable company of 2025, tying together all those various streaming offerings into one interface to make things easier for customers? If so, then they will be very successful both because they control some of the advertising time on some streaming platforms they serve, including some video streams that they supply themselves, and because they earn commissions for directing customers to those streaming platforms (like Netflix, Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, etc.) and royalties for providing their “streaming operating system” to makers of Smart TVs (and if you’ve bought a Roku TV, you’ll probably be inclined to let yourself be locked in to using the integrated streaming services, not someone else’s box, which will further boost the stickiness for Roku). That’s a company you want to own.

If, however, those big content providers balk at letting Roku “own” the streaming space and cut back on commissions, or simply make it hard for Roku to provide a great service for its customers, then they are at significant risk. And while Roku really started as a hardware company, selling those little Roku boxes, there are dozens of companies that provide cheap boxes for accessing streaming video services on your TV, including huge and deep-pocketed competitors like Amazon and Google who are happy to give their products away almost for free… so if you think of Roku as a hardware or gadget company then you’re probably not going to be interested at all.

I actually like Roku more now that I look at them afresh, and today I decided to finally pull the trigger and buy a small position following that second look (actually probably my fifth or sixth look). Roku is not the only interesting play on the continued acceleration of streaming video to the TV, for sure (I’ve held The Trade Desk (TTD) for several years, for example, and a lot of their growth is coming from serving video ads into streaming services), but they are really leading the charge and delighting customers as a “cable replacement” during a time when cord cutting is setting new records and the big streaming services are looking more and more appealing as an alternative to traditional TV.

I am really impressed with the accelerating revenue growth for a company that already has over a billion dollars in annual revenue, which also gives them the flexibility to keep investing to protect their market share against very strong competitors, and that’s what pushed me over the edge to putting on a small position… they’re not profitable, and they’re intentionally reinvesting cash flow into trying to accelerate that growth, so they’re still tough to swallow at a bit over 10X sales, but they seem to me to be pretty well positioned for a trend that’s still growing very fast. The big revenue surprise last quarter was caused primarily by the initial success of Disney+, but I expect that will not be the last “hot” streaming launch or the last revenue surge we’ll see from Roku. You can check out their shareholder letter from last quarter here, it came out on February 13 so it doesn’t even mention coronavirus or China… which means it’s at least a nice respite, even if you aren’t interested in the stock.

So that’s what I see among the FAZER stocks, mostly strong growers who have some potential… and I end up with owning two of these stocks, considering a third, and not really understanding the valuation or product strength of the other two. Your mileage may vary, of course, and I hope your opinion on these guys differs from mine — if so, please do jump in with a comment below and let us know what you’re thinking. Perhaps we’ll learn more about the Fool’s position on any of these stocks when they have their presentation tomorrow, but I’d expect it to be a fairly underwhelming sales pitch about five stocks that are already pretty well covered in the investing media, so you can probably make your own call. Enjoy!

Disclosure: I own shares of and/or call options on Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Disney, DocuSign, Roku, The Trade Desk, and Fastly among the stocks mentioned above. I will not trade in any stock covered for at least three days, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules

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Zach M
Member
Zach M
March 2, 2020 3:37 pm

One thing to consider about Appian (this is from the fool, not something I really understand either but it made sense the way they explained it) is that the weak reportings is partly because they are using a different accounting standard. I forget the exact explanation but it does make sense and helps soften the blow a bit

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zmossburg96
Member
zmossburg96
March 2, 2020 9:56 pm

Thanks for the additional commentary (I’m the OP just decided to create an account). I’ve invested in it and I’m planning on increasing my investment as it seems to be an interesting company with a lot of room for growth, but you’re right that the numbers don’t quite add up. Hoping that it turns out good, I love the fool service and it has gotten me more comfortable with investing for the long term and being patient with my investments. Also just want to add that I absolutely love this website and the work you do, please keep it up as this site provides some extremely valuable information and investing ideas.

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Investor Clouseau
Investor Clouseau
March 2, 2020 3:40 pm

I’ve loved my $ROKU box since I cut the cord a couple years ago. Had’t really thought about them as an investment until now. I’ve only ever watched a couple movies on their (free) included Roku channel, but it is free and I’d assume people take advantage of that. Their box saved me from having to upgrade to an entirely new (smart) TV.

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tanglewood
March 2, 2020 5:44 pm

Hi Investor Clouseau Isn’t the long term growth problematic for $ROKU once the old TVs phase out and mostly everybody has a smart TV?

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Jerry132
Member
Jerry132
March 4, 2020 5:00 pm

Isn’t Roku already installed in a vast number new smart TV’s being sold? And how does this get them their in on the ad platform?

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Sital Johal
Sital Johal
March 8, 2020 12:42 pm

Hi Travis,
Very nice analysis. I was checking on reddit and they came up with same names as well. However, they had a lot of guessing in there!

Regarding ROKU, I have a smart tv and it came with all the apps (Netflix, Apple, Amazon, etc.) so I don’t see the need for ROKU. I’m
guessing all the new tvs in the future will have built in apps like mine does so ROKU won’t be needed. For the time being I’ll stick to TTD. I think it’s one of the best ones out there when it comes to CTV.

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David
Member
David
March 8, 2020 6:46 pm

I’m a Canadian who hasn’t cut the cord. And with Rogers Ignite TV there is little need to. With their latest update, my old HD TV now acts like a smart TV. The new remote accepts verbal commands like “Channel 24”, or “Weather Station” or “Amazon Prime” or “Youtube”, etc. The cost is reasonable. 150 basic channels, plus46 Flex channels and unlimited high speed internet (1 Gbps download) for $150 CDN, about $110 US.

If Verizon or someone provided that functionality, it could be a Roku killer.

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Mr Mike
Irregular
March 4, 2020 6:45 am
Reply to  tanglewood

Excellent point tanglewood. Why would people need a ROKU box when new smart TVs have come bundled with streaming services already (Netflix, Amazon, Disney …) for a few years?

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Paul
Guest
Paul
March 7, 2020 12:18 pm
Reply to  Mr Mike

Because they still have a fully functioning “dumb “ tv like me and my little black Rolu box

Sital Johal
Sital Johal
March 8, 2020 5:25 pm
Reply to  Paul

I guess there is a market for them as long as there are older tvs out there or they make a contract with tv companies where it comes preinstalled.

Matthew Nash
Matthew Nash
March 2, 2020 3:54 pm

I watched someone from the Motley Fool give a long drawn out pitch on a “little black box”.
Was assuming, but not sure, they were referring to Roku.
I am new to trading and am a member of the Motley Fool.
And Yes, 3 of the above stocks they have already given out as best buys.

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Robert Ziegler
Member
Robert Ziegler
March 4, 2020 8:49 am
Reply to  Matthew Nash

Mr. Nash
Actually 4 of them. Fastly Appian zoom and roku

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Matthew Nash
Matthew Nash
March 5, 2020 4:21 pm
Reply to  Robert Ziegler

Thank You

Robert Ziegler
Member
Robert Ziegler
March 6, 2020 6:54 pm
Reply to  Matthew Nash

I know for sure 2 are Fastly and Zoom.

Ozmo
Ozmo
March 2, 2020 5:13 pm

As a member of Rule Breakers ( yes I was a sucker before I was a gumshoe) I was recommended Fastly in August 2019. I love this site. I had the same feeling on Zoom.

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Tim
Tim
March 3, 2020 1:09 pm
Reply to  Ozmo

I’m also a MF Rule Breaker member/ idiot. What incensed me about that company is how they front run their trades against all the paying members.
I’m so glad I found Travis and his honest research and disclosure when he enters/ exits a position.
MF more than often costs you valuable hard earned money following them off a cliff.

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OSUfball
Irregular
March 2, 2020 5:59 pm

I also was sceptical about Zoom thinking what is the difference between Skype, Facetime, etc. However, about 3 weeks ago I was on a 200+ person video conference call during which the host was presenting power point slides and had a video stream of himself chatting. (I forgot which software he was using but it was one I had not heard about). The video kept cutting in and out many times. During mid presentation the host switched over to Zoom and there was no lag at all. Seeing that dramatic difference in performance in person made me a beleiver in Zoom. I started a small position in it right after this and was of course pleased to see the rise in Zoom the last week due to Corona virus fears. Microsoft made an agrrement with Zoom a few weeks ago whereby Microsoft’s video conferencing software and Zoom’s is now compatible. This makes me think that Microsoft will probably buy out Zoom eventually. Major corporations, which demand 100% reliability, are switching over to Zoom so it definitely has a bright future.

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joaotfernandes
joaotfernandes
March 3, 2020 1:11 pm
Reply to  OSUfball

It’s also much better to schedule, manage, integrate with calendars and e-mails, etc.. It’s true that at first one thinks “yeah… another videocall app… these geeks always going after the novelty…”, but then you actually give it a serious try and it just is that much better. And they seem to be running an actual business, instead of just burning money. I like it!

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estevado
estevado
March 13, 2020 9:47 pm
Reply to  OSUfball

Encouraging to hear how well it works for conferencing and presentations. It’s a video pure play and developed as video first, audio second, which certainly helps in terms of reliability. Having a company spend all efforts on a platform that is usually an aux service from a larger tech company is an interesting niche. The network effect is going to spread like a virus (sorry, couldn’t help it). MSFT buying Zoom is definitely a worthy outlook and perhaps another validation to open a small position despite crazy valuations.

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ronwill
March 2, 2020 7:13 pm

there is one article on MF that says prudent investors will have a hard time seeing strong performance gains from Elastic and should avoid it as a risky growth stock. (high valuation plus lots of competition)

I also wonder how they sell this as a service. Most of these stocks, if not all of them, they have recommended on other services. But probably not all in one service. I also assume they are going to offer up more recommendations later.

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millerfilm
March 2, 2020 7:54 pm

Unrelated, here is one of the often-posted teasers where I would like to know what’s it about: 2020 Election Checks – https://tips.wyattresearch.com/dc-webinar-mar-3-2020/

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toff
toff
March 3, 2020 12:37 am
Reply to  millerfilm

Travis accepts teaser investigation requests at his email address, ilovestockspam@gmail.com. He gets thousands, I reckon, but don’t hesitate to join in. Also try a search on the website just in case it’s already been covered.

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one2many
one2many
March 3, 2020 5:19 am

I subscribe to research from Beth Kindig – who also hosts a free blog. Because of her conviction about Roku I bought last year and sold a few high, added a few in the recent 110-115 range. Roku recently started in the U.K. where premium TV is mostly by Sky satellite. They also started in Brazil, and I think they are also in Mexico after a recent court case concluded. So Roku has the potential to become a global streaming platform over the longer term.
She also pointed out Zoom when the price was falling last year, so I started at 80 and finished buying around 60. Just last week a local university professor told me that she uses Zoom to conference with student groups, and that it has already been used for PhD viva examinations – cutting travel costs and making these more convenient for examiners .
Also bought Elastic this year as a result of Beth’s research, holding this along with Mongo DB to cover cloud software.
As regards Motley Fool, I think they mention so many stocks that they are bound to pick a few big winners. More of a reference library, if you are running a growth fund and have a research budget from your company.

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OSUfball
Irregular
March 3, 2020 10:39 am

Listened to their pitch. They revelead the “F” as Fastly. Was basically a pitch for their new service “Motley Fool IPO Trailblazers” for $1300/year. Personally, would never pay that much for a stock newsletter. The most I would ever pay is $100.

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ronwill
March 3, 2020 5:00 pm

It’s pretty long and boring…
not a new service but opening up an old one for new subscriptions. You get 47 picks right off the bat, not just the 5 teased ones. I think they recommended putting at least 2K into each one and hope a few of them take off.

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R K LAKHOTIA
Guest
R K LAKHOTIA
March 7, 2020 11:48 am
Reply to  OSUfball

Though my limit is $199, I agree with your views OSUfball. Many suckers equate high price of a investment letter with high performance till they part with dollars and later realize their folly. But in the meantime, high price serve the objective of Publisher/ Editor. They depend on ever increasing supply of new suckers and duffers. This drama will continue till the government steps in with regulatory guidelines.

youwannabet
youwannabet
March 3, 2020 11:33 am

I just listened and read thru entire FAZER presentation. I think the Z is not $ZM as Zoom is later presented in the written material and is not called out as one of the 5 stocks.

So, I think its Zynga $ZNGA. Which also fits the teaser and is a Motley Fool rec that I own, up 25% today from when I bought in even after the “corona crash”.

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RJ
Guest
RJ
March 3, 2020 12:38 pm
Reply to  youwannabet

it’s def. Zoom. They have already offered both stocks on their standard subscription platform (I’m a current subscriber)

thought they have recommended Zynga twice now in the last 6 months. I didn’t buy Zoom as i also felt Skype, Facebook, MSFT and Apple already address this platform. But it I think I looked at it from a competition standpoint and not a technology standpoint. They make money on their platform and they do it well. The other Services not so much.

As far as Zynga, seems to me people are fed up with the pay for nothing business model. They hold a lot of cash but they have failed to innovate that into new games that grab current audiences. However its a cheap buy in a company that has a great Cash flow.

Personally like their Appian suggestion the best. Every company needs an App. Every company needs IT. the question? Can they do it profitably.

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youwannabet
youwannabet
March 3, 2020 1:43 pm
Reply to  youwannabet

Nope … now I think it’s $ZM after all .

Travis, thank you!

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Robert Ziegler
Member
Robert Ziegler
April 24, 2020 1:58 pm
Reply to  youwannabet

The only one I don’t have at this time is the R. Roku I believe. It is too rich for my blood at this time. If Z is Zoom, then R is all I need.

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Robert Ziegler
Member
Robert Ziegler
April 24, 2020 2:02 pm
Reply to  youwannabet

Elastic is also too rich for me.

Robert
Member
Robert
March 3, 2020 8:11 pm

I am very excited about FAZER. I believe I already have 3 of those stocks.

Mike Foley
Guest
Mike Foley
March 3, 2020 9:48 pm

I highly recommend the Rule Breaker service, they are the real deal. They are transparent and show all their picks versus return of the S&P from the date of pick. Listen to their RBI podcast every week and you will begin to learn a lot. They don’t sell because a stock as doubled or quadrupled, they sell because the thesis changes. They tend to hold winners forever, which is the hardest thing for humans to do. They add to winners, but never average down because a stock is lower.

Probably 60% of their picks under perform the the S&P, but so many go 2x, 3x 5x that overwhelm those losses. When the market was down 20% at the end of Dec 2018, my RBI picks were still outperforming the S&P by 25%.

My top returns for stocks I still hold, most acquired since 2017: 224%, 183%, 161%, 150%, 145%, 134%, 121%, 376, 286,223, 337, 406,139,117,282,264. How many stocks are you holding with 100% plus returns? Of course you are going to have FOMO and rightly so.

If you have a 10 year horizon, just start converting all your holdings to rule breakers as they announce each of the 2 monthly picks. Decide on a fixed amount you want to invest and do that for every pick. $1000, $5000, $10000, whatever works for you portfolio value. They will recommend great stock multiple times. The recommended Amazon at about $3.13 per share split adjusted and have recommended it many time since. They add to winners because winners win. New England Patriots anyone?

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Cyn Dinwiddle
Guest
Cyn Dinwiddle
April 24, 2020 10:10 am
Reply to  Mike Foley

Mike, thank you for your recommendation to buy each RuleBreaker and your overall analysis. And I fundamentally like buy and hold good stocks. But if 60% underperform, how do you know when to sell a Bad pick?

Cyn

Joe
Irregular
Joe
May 20, 2020 12:38 pm
Reply to  Cyn Dinwiddle

Cyn, I read some analysis MF did for their Stock Advisor, they looked at all the recommended buys and sells, and found that, even though the gains beat out the sp500 over time, if they had just held everything they would have come out even further ahead, and that’s where they are already conservative to recommend selling. So, they don’t really know when to sell, but knowing when to sell is much less important than choosing what to buy with some strategy/analysis, buying enough different stocks to have a good chance to choose some winners, buying regularly, and holding long term, because in the long term the few winners will dwarf the many losers.

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j tr0n
Member
j tr0n
June 9, 2021 7:22 pm
Reply to  Cyn Dinwiddle

When you subscribe, MF keeps you updated regularly…they let you know if you should buy more i.e., “Buy Now” and they have “Penalty Box” for picks that are not looking good and ultimately “Sell Now” whenever patience has run out or when business model seen as flawed or lost confidence in management ….

Caris
Member
Caris
March 4, 2020 11:04 am

Thank you for this article. I was very interested in the content from the Fool, however wasn’t really interested in spending 1,200 just for stock recommendations, when I should be investing that hard earned money at this point in my investments. I’ll definitely be heading here for more advice in the future.

janet
janet
December 28, 2020 11:01 am
Reply to  Caris

I subscribe to their services. Rule Breaker and stock advisor aren’t expensive, and they recommended a lot of winners over my last three years. Beat the market handily. The high priced services are no problem when you get big winners. I made up their cost with just one of their stocks. about 70% winners. Plus since covid they have been offering lots of pod casts. Of course the past three years have been bull markets. If we have a slow market next year, we’ll see. Their sell side advice is rare and not so on target

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Motley Fool
ntquigley
ntquigley
March 9, 2020 11:36 am

Hi Travis, just wanted to Chime in about Zoom (ZM). They are more than just video conferencing. I used an enterprise-wide deployment of Zoom at a 40,000 person company for many months, and it was an absolute joy to use. Seamless meeting recordings and cloud hosting for sharing, easy integrations into outlook for booking rooms, and video that finally doesn’t stutter and skip — it’s modern meetings finally done right. Certainly a best-in-class product compared with the likes of Cisco / Polycom and the like. I plan on taking on a position once the current market craziness fades a bit.

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Investor Clouseau
Investor Clouseau
March 9, 2020 12:52 pm
Reply to  ntquigley

Just to chip in, I had never heard of Zoom until reading about it on the website here very recently but since then I’ve seen their name pop up a bunch of times in gaming communities as a better way to play old school games (ie RPGs) over the internet, like a virtual table top people can share. It’s a far cry from huge companies adopting their product but it’s feedback from a small slice of people that extremely frugal and are famously picky.

#NerdAlert

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estevado
estevado
March 13, 2020 9:53 pm
Reply to  ntquigley

I always regarding video conferencing as a digital commodity, but the fact that they do much more is encouraging and helps me to get more intrigued. Thanks for the info. Perhaps ZM is sticky enough – as a platform AND as a brand – that they’re here to stay, whether it is as a stand-alone company or as an acquisition target of a bigger company (MSFT, ADBE…). Opened your position yet, ntquigley? If so, at what price point?

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Carla C. Carter
Member
Carla C. Carter
March 11, 2020 6:13 pm

Rule Breaker is showing a 323% gain in its portfolio. Is this real, you Rule Breaker members?

Matt
Matt
April 25, 2020 10:37 am

I just seen your comment, a little old… but… I did just check rule breakers, the actual gains say 162.4 %. I am not sure what time period they use to come up with this.
I will have to sit back and kick my feet up a while to see that I guess.

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j tr0n
Member
j tr0n
June 9, 2021 7:27 pm
Reply to  Matt

….it’s all about valuation….at what price did you buy in? Buy in super early with MF = 300% gains…buy in 3 years after first recommendation = 30-40% maybe….Yes, I have bought in days after the recommendations and I have many 2 and 3 baggers.

Blu
Guest
Blu
July 19, 2020 4:11 pm

I own all the fazer stocks except roku. I recently sold my roku stocks as it’s too volatile and didn’t see any growth for 6 months while other stocks where growing, I like TTD better. Fastly skyrotted and I wished I would have bought more shares. I’m holding on to appian as I believe this is a growth stock. The fools are legit. If I have to invest my entire retirement funds, I would subscribe to fools stock advisor. I have rule breakers. Great job again Travis!

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Guest
Guest
December 12, 2020 12:24 am
Reply to  Blu

Looks like ROKU has doubled since you sold! All the FAZER stocks have had stunning years.

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Patu
Guest
Patu
June 6, 2021 9:31 pm

Good points. However, I think you are mistaken about the secret A company. I bet it is not APPN, but ASAN, who is offering a platform for teams to perform even better with the combination of existing teamwork solutions such as Microsoft Team, Slack, etc… Full disclosure, I own shares of ASAN.

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Bill Hwang
Guest
April 28, 2022 7:18 am

It would be fun to put those companies under a microscope and see what the price of the FAZER stocks were when Motley Fool released them as part of the basket, and what their price is today. Seems like no one knows anything about the future price of the stock market with regards to individual companies. Perhaps it’s all just one big Random Walk. I’ll stick with the SPY.

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