Author/Editor
Dave Gardner, Tom Gardner
Publisher
Motley Fool
Description
Launched by the Gardner brothers, with one stock pick from each per issue, but now Tom and David Gardner have largely stepped back from stock picking and the picks are made by “Rule Breaker” and “Everlasting Stock” teams.
Overall Rating
Rating: 3.6/5. From 286 votes.
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3.8
Rating from 1253 votes
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Investment Performance
Rating from 362 votes
Rating: 3.8/5. From 362 votes.
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- 5 Stars 135 Votes
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Quality Of Writing/Analysis
Rating from 300 votes
Rating: 3.8/5. From 300 votes.
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- 5 Stars 83 Votes
- 4 Stars 127 Votes
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Value For Price
Rating from 305 votes
Rating: 3.8/5. From 305 votes.
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- 5 Stars 126 Votes
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Customer Service
Rating from 286 votes
Rating: 3.6/5. From 286 votes.
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I am a member of an investment club…… Yes, I know, they never do well and never make it past one year as a club.
We are celebrating out 20th anniversary this year.
We decided to take a “tour” of the Fools headquarters about 10 years ago. If you haven’t done it, take one, it’s well worth it. After the tour, we were escorted into one of the” board rooms”. Low and behold, in came on of the stock pickers from David’s team and one of the vice presidents. I am sorry, their names escape me after 10 years. They actually sat down for down with us for a hour and a half to just chat. That alone was surprising, I think they were “intrigued by us because, we were still together after 10 years, and we are a all women club ( honestly, some of the ladies are quite funny and had them in stitches over some of our comments). The only thing missing was some cold beer and chips! We knew they couldn’t give us any stock advise as we were going in to take the tour. We showed them our portfolio, and they were impressed.
They were really fun and gave some tidbits for choosing a stock.
First fool rule- never invest in anything you don’t know or understand.
Second fool rule- Look to see if the CEO is a visionary (ex: Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezo, etc)
These two simple fool rules advice alone has the clubs portfolio up over 166%. We love the Fools Stock Advisor news
letter. Sorry for the long winded clip!
How does a person decide if a CEO is an actual visionary such as Elon Musk ? Jeff Immelt (GE CEO) looked like a visionary when he began investing in the Internet of Things, and telling the stock holders everything was going well (down the drain). Elon has the talent to convince the stockholders that everything is going along smoothly,
when they are unable to meet the production schedule, and are in need of funds.
Ever read the Richest Man in Babylon? Excellent advice and if you follow the ideas you can’t go wrong in the long run. Trick with most advisors is that they seem to push themselves with ads and newsletters and subscription pitches. If they were as good as they advertise then people would come running to them with cash in hand. Like many here the constant pushing of services and collecting fees is maddening. They make their money from you, not from investing. They’re selling something – advice. Like most things, worth what you pay for.
I subscribe to The Street and The Motley Fool Advisor. They both are excellent in providing rationale and recommendations and following them has provided me with this view:
The Street is conservative, doesn’t take large risks, is big on actively managing their portfolio and will likely match or outperform the standard indexes over time. It is a lot of work to track, evaluate and manage such an active portfolio. The other side of that is you must pay attention to your business or someone will take it from you. (The Richest Man in Babylon talks to this.)
For The Motley Fool I’ve come to the conclusion that David has the best performance recommendations overall. The combined results seem to be more scattered and leave more to the individual to figure out what is best for their goals. Almost too many options which can leave one hanging……….but it does provide enough variety to satisfy multiple goals for their customers so a lot to pick from successfully.
I put both portfolios, (The Street and The Motley Fool), through the Folio Investing, Scottrade and RBC Investment Management analysis programs. What I learned is that if you purchase and track all of The Street portfolio moves you will likely lead the S & P 500 slightly over time. If you purchase the Motley Fool monthly recommendations you’ll do far better. If you purchase the Motley Fool Starter Stocks you would make between 10 – 12 times more than the S & P 500. All this over a five year period. The best path between these options is obviously the Motley Fool Starter Stocks listing.
To assist in my investing I’ve combined the input from these advisors, the analysis tools listed above, and developed a hybrid portfolio. I have a reason for owning every company and track each to some degree daily when possible. Now that I’m retired I have more time to do such things and found that I actually spend less time on investing.
The best thing is to do as the basic advisors tell you; know what you’re buying, owning, and when to buy and when to sell. Don’t get greedy and don’t panic. You’ll miss a lot of times, but for those few you hit dead on, they will far outweigh the poor choices. Overall you can do extremely well.
I’ve been able to generate enough income to cover ยฝ of my retirement needs in case my pension incomes ever hiccup. That’s getting rolled back to pay off debt, improve my real estate holdings and further diversify investments. I had never expected to be in this position. A lot of hard work, sacrifice, luck and common sense went into getting me here. So, my analysis results without going into too much detail:
If you take a $300,000 portfolio configured as I have described it would be up over $42,000 in the past two years. Another, configured slightly differently, a $300,000 portfolio would be up $31,000 in the same time. A $100,000 portfolio would be up $18,000 in 16 months. A $3,000,000 portfolio is showing up over $552,000 in 20 months. All from following the advice and processes I’ve developed.
Note that the markets have risen recently and these have not been tested against a down market. The statistics say that they should fall far less than the indexes in general.
There is a correction coming at the very least. I’ll be monitoring the performance very closely and make adjustments where indicated.
Now if I had all that money to actually invest I’d probably not worry about my income streams in retirement. What I do have is growing because of the support from advisors such as The Street, The Motley Fool and others. My experience says to pick a method that you’re comfortable with, that works for you and stick with it. Make adjustments where needed and you can’t go too badly off the rails.
I not only appreciate their stock advice, but their ethic over the years and scarcity of pitches to upgrade to their other services, so I get a minimum of undesired emails from them. Fantastic folks with a good heart.
I have only just joined and have been to happy. Each week they try to get you to
upgrade. I will not renew.
I’ve done very well with the Stock Advisor. Just ignore all the new super deluxe $5,000 big sale $1,000 off today only hustles.
My investment club follows the stock advisor. We buy what the fools recommend, only if we understand the company they are talking about and if the CEO a visionary. This philosophy has raised our portfolio well over 200%. Can’t say enough good things about the stock advisor and the fools.
Rather good picks pertaining to the underlying companies but they should pay more attention to the price of the stocks as they advise to buy even with very high P/E ratios or where the stocks are at a maximum high.In that case it is better to keep those stocks on radar and wait one or two months to buy.
I have subscribed to Motley Fool Stock Advisor for the last 10-15 years. Their records is very good but you have to hold for long periods – 5-15 years. I am up 2,400% in Netflix, about 400% in Activision, about 300% in Google and Facebook. Dave Gardner’s verified track record is about 400% better than the S&P (since inception of his newsletter. He usually saves his best ideas for the Stock Advisor. His other ideas go to Rules Breaker. These are actually the only two services you need, although I subscribe to them all. His track record is mostly based on a few ideas such as Netflix, Salesforce, Disney, Activision that have gone up very large amounts over a long period of time. He hardly ever recommends a sale and he once wrote an article saying he would have done better if he had never sold any of his recommendations.
I’ve done better when i choose stocks that have been recommended by the Fool, than I do when I buy stocks recommended by friends, relatives, co-workers, etc. Love the information they share about different businesses and industries.
Latest tease “We’re betting $1,005,998 on ONE stock in 2018”
this one is Facebook FB
Not a fan salesman when I talked to them.I get seven letters dropped them after there second book! Now i sound
old.Hope you all had a good year.
I have been following their advice for nearly two years. I have had very mixed results. I have come out ahead on many of their selections, but they have really missed the mark on others. With spotty performance, I grow weary of their incessant marketing of their more expensive products.
Luv the fools, best thing I ever did for my bank account
i have it, they are in consistent for 3 yrs & have warmed up.
the other services were TERRIBLE I had to drop them. you go bankrupt 4 picks at a time for HIDDEN GEMS for 7 mos of losing that 28 picks of loss greater than 35% to 90%. YUK.
tried Income Investor they had picks that went BANKRUPT, for income investor that is COMPLETE FAILURE. dorpped that also.
they r now a subscription model & herd movers.
Tom/David aren’t working for u but to support the company they have scaled to.
They keep touring $AMZN $NFLX but don’t tell u how much u lost with other picks if u didn’t go bankrupt when those services recommended them.
I subscribed to the Stock Advisor for several years and only actually bought a few of their recommendations. I just do not like to invest in a stock that may or may not go up in price. I want dividends monthly or at the very least quarterly. Because most of the recommended stocks that the stock advisor tells you to buy do not pay a dividend and I am getting on in years and do not want to wait for the ship to come in. They have made some great recommendations over the years and I do believe they know what they are doing.
Good plan, Dave. I’m 58, do not have time to GAMBLE with hard-earned cash. DRIP plans invested in solid companies that actually earn dividends. Buy them on the days the market as a whole tanks as cheap as you can buy. I laugh looking back at the Pets.com days of investing and raking in $$$ with anything (.com) in the company name. No get rich quick schemes for me. I do have a $2,500 side account to “play” for fast monry. First, I’ll study then buy some biotech CRISPR related stocks….investing in genetic healing is a sector with unlimited possibilities. Oops, good nightAnna
Haven’t read the MF stock Advisor in months. However, I do enioy and lean tword Toke Gumshoe. He’s saved me time, money and Aida ( aggravation).
Robert B. = cloud8
The Gumshoe – I meant
So far, the only Stock Advisor stock I bought is AVGO, and it paid for my subscription in the first week. I also read Rule Breakers and so far every position I entered went positive (although I should have exited NFLX at my own calculated target $416, but I held it longer).
I’ve done very well with some of their recommendations. I don’t buy all that they recommend; only what appeals to me. No one is 100% right, but the Motley Fools hit the mark more often than not. Their buy and hold philosophy has some pluses and some minuses. One can hold too long in some cases, where it would be better to sell and redeploy the assets.
The only problem with the Motley Fools? They don’t give you a fair price to buy. They just say buy this, buy that. No specifics. They should offer a more details. Like recommend to buy stock xyz in the range of 75 to 78, September 15th, 2018.
If you pay? You need a bit more info. I didn’t renew for that reason.
I’ve been with the guys for nearly 10 years and I’ve gotta thank them. My husband taught me the basics before he died, but I needed help picking stocks and not making really bad mistakes that should have been avoided. So far I’ve notched education for a social worker, two lawyers and a doctor (my grandchildren) plus living in a plush retirement community. This would not have happened without Tom and David!