Our Motley Fool Review. Are Stock Advisor and/or Rule Breakers subscriptions from The Motley Fool worth the cost? Do they provide good advice and what will you learn? Before we go any further let’s make it clear we are long time subscribers of Motley Fool and raving fans. Yes, I have sent the Fools a couple thousand dollars in subscriber fees. Wait to the end and I will let you know what my personal ROI looks like on that investment.
Let’s start with the Motley Fool free website
The Motley Fool website www.fool.com is an excellent place for both beginners and skilled investors to get answers on financial and investment questions. The website is great to read to learn about a traditional IRA, a 401K or a Roth IRA. Spend time reading here until you find you crave more sophisticated reading.
Motley Fool Review of 2 Premium Services
To receive advise from Motley Fool you would subscribe to one of their Premium Services. We will focus on “Stock Advisor” $199 per year and “Rule Breakers” $299 per year or as a bundle for $498 per year. These are two of the most popular paid advisory services. These subscriptions provide you with new stock recommendations each month. Also included is a list of “Starter Stocks,” access to the Fool community (Online Forum) and “Best Buys Now.” You of course can look through new recommendations, current “Best Buys Now” and interact on the forums. You also receive regular emails that are informative and encouraging.
You should initially pay a lot of attention to the recommended “Starter Stocks.” Great advice on starting a portfolio. Build out a good group of at least 25-55 stocks and then add in some of the more timely recommendations. You could also instead purchase an ETF fund like The Motley Fool 100 Index ticker, TMFC to make sure you have a good base of diversified holdings. Then add some recommendations. Make sure to follow the Fool’s advise on owning base stocks, diversification and not over buying any one recommendation. Also follow the Fool’s advise on selling, buying your winners, buying the dips, and not panicking during a downturn.
Does the Motley Fool make good recommendations?
So, MF does make specific stock recommendations each month. Our Motley Fool Review was done from current experience and from over 5 years of experience. Thus a very long and detailed review and use of MF. As you build out a portfolio or add to one you have several options, ignore the stock(s) recommendations, buy some but not all or possible buy every recommendation. You might also put them on your watch list or in a test account if your brokerage offers this service.
We won’t tell you any more than from experience we should have bought every recommendation with only a variable of how much. For example if you have a portfolio value of $25,000 with $10,000 that is in cash, not invested you might only buy smaller chunks of a recommendation, $250-500 is reasonable. Motley recommends only buying a small percentage of your portfolio value on any single recommendation. MF also gives advice on how many; at minimum, stocks you should own and how long you should plan to hold these recommended stocks. Follow this good advise!
What do the recommendations look like?
Many recommendations are not widely known companies and yet several aren’t exactly a secret if you are regularly reading and following stocks. MF lists many of its past recommendation on their free website and some are still being recommended. Some are a little more under the radar or you just might not have yet thought to invest in. Like a good Fool I used products or services from several recommended companies that I should have bought much earlier. The Fool is going to tell you to look at a lot of stocks, why they recommend them and each will receive excellent thought and scrutiny before it is recommended. Your job from there is to decide, buy some or buy them all. You may also choose to watch all or some of the recommendations over time.
The Fool is a good teacher.
Any Motley Fool Review should tell you MF is going to teach you to be a better investor. Even after decades of investing experience the Motley Fool will teach you new ways of looking at investing, selecting stocks, holding them and for how long. MF was incredible during the Pandemic stock plunge offering insights, encouragement, and timely stock picks.
Which is better Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers?
Both Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers are reasonably priced for recommendations with very impressive results. Both offer a 30 day money back guarantee so you have no risk. So, Read our Motley Fool review, try MF and cancel if you really don’t think you will receive any value.
Stock Advisor is described as:
The Motley Fool Co-Founders’ flagship service – David and Tom Gardner’s top stock recommendations. This is older, has a stellar track record and I would consider having a broader focus. There are more recommendations and it is a great place to start. If you are just starting or have a few thousand to invest the $199 for Stock Advisor might not yet make sense. You are also much more likely to be better off in 2-3 ETF funds until you get your portfolio over about $10,000. However you can consider it a bargain if you turn $10,000 into $20,000 to 50,000 in 3-5 years.
Rule Breakers is described as:
High-growth stocks hand-selected by Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner. This is where I started before adding Stock Advisor. This is where my absolute rocket ships have been so far. Several Rule Breaker stocks have done better than 2,3,4 and even 9 times their initial costs in 2-5 year time frames. A couple companies have doubled and then been bought out at a high valuation by a competitor. I won’t name, names but some of the most successful stocks of 2015-2021 where single or multiple recommendations in Rule Followers.
There have been a couple real dud recommendations too but being a good Fool you will want to own many stocks so you don’t miss the 1-3 per 10 stocks that can literally change your financial life. Often a dud is just a little over bought, currently overvalued or has yet to really bloom. Patience is needed and a long term focus. Motley Fool Rule Breakers is $299 per year and you should be ready to buy 15-25 stocks in your first year. You will want to buy many of the starter stocks and many of the recommendations. There is a very compelling case for someone with at least $100,000 invested to buy RB and SA. If you invest like a Fool, buy and hold the costs will be immaterial. Do remember past results do not indicate future results.
Something some don’t like about the Motley Fool
MF like other advisors make money selling you more and more advisory services. If you don’t manage your communications/email preferences, you will get a lot of long emails from MF. I have found their emails to be very long and would prefer much more concise communications. I am already a Premium Subscriber but can’t buy every service that MF offers. With many of their subscriptions being around $1-2,000 a year they are for those with far more money in the market than me. That said I more than trust the Motley Fool and may try their $999 options subscription. To make a fair Motley Fool Review and so you aren’t put off by all the long emails, just turn them off until you are ready to consider buying more subscriptions.
Motley Fool Review – So, Does it work?
This is one person’s experience and not to be considered investment advice. Yet, a good Motley Fool review should come from an actual user. So, going back a few years I was much more focused on dividend paying stocks and more of a large capitalization investment strategy. I was doing well with 8-12% annual returns. Over time and with a subscription to Motley Fool Rule Breakers in 2015 I shifted some funds to some Motley Fool recommendations and built out a base of starter stocks as well. Some I already owned so I moved them over to the MF bucket in my account to watch. Many accounts such as M1 Financial let you segregate stocks into buckets or “Pies” this way. Eventually my MF bucket grew to about 30 stocks.
Well, over time this part of my account became twice the size of my more conservative stocks, the growth was at least double over 2, 3 and 4 years. Thus, 1-2 Motley Fool subscriptions not only pay for themselves, they make you money. You must however, follow their advise and let time work for you. Growth stocks take time to mature and the companies that grow tend to continue to grow.
Will you make money with the Motley Fool?
In my case and I don’t buy every recommendation, or I don’t buy it right when the recommendations are made but the answer has been a resounding Yes. The ride has been exciting, new skills have been learned and the returns have been excellent. Had I followed every Motley Fool recommendations, I would have done even a little better.
Call me a Fool!
After you have read our Motley Fool Review you may want to review some of our investment account reviews. See Review of M1 Financial and Review of Stash Investments