I have a hard time believing anyone who tells me that they have never heard of the Motley Fool. After all, it’s one of the Internet’s best known stock picking services and has been around since 1993, so if someone claims to have never heard of it chances are that they have not researched stocks online very much, or they are familiar with the website but simply don’t recognize the name. Either way, the Motley Fool is a terrific resource that represents good value for investors of many different experience levels.
The Motley Fool has several distinct subscription services that are best suited to different levels of risk tolerance. While most of them have the same basic features in common, there are some differences in the kinds of stocks that they recommend. If you are less familiar with the Motley Fool, it’s a good idea to begin with looking at a comprehensive overview.
The Foolish Basics
That said, there are a few key things that will give you an overall sense of what the Motley Fool offers. Its core offerings release two stock picks per month, for a total of 24 per year. They also publish other helpful pieces of information, such as suggested core stocks that everyone should own and regularly updated lists of the hottest current stocks. New stock picks are accompanied by commentary and analysis to help you decide if it matches your investing interests and risk profile.
Motley Fool Rule Breaker
One of their services that’s worth going into more detail on is known as Rule Breaker. Let’s take a few minutes to run through a basic Motley Fool Rule Breaker review so that you can get a better sense for if it might be the right stock picking service for you. That said, other experts have gone into a tremendous level of detail summarizing Rule Breaker’s features and pros and cons, so you may also want to check that analysis out.
The main way in which Rule Breaker differentiates itself from other Motley Fool services such as Stock Advisor and Everlasting Stocks is in the kind of picks it recommends. While the basis of Stock Advisor and Everlasting Stocks are time tested, durable companies that have been around for decades, Rule Breaker focuses on emerging or less known stocks that have the potential to be true industry trendsetters. They do this by targeting first movers in industries that have significant relevance to consumers and are backed by strong management teams. That is how stocks such as Tesla have ended up as Rule Breakers picks.
Big Time Tips – Manageable Cost
I can almost hear your next question as you read along – for all of this advice and fancy marketing, the Motley Fool most likely costs so much that any returns you make from its picks would hardly be worth it, right?
That’s not actually the case – across the board, Motley Fool stands out for a very fair value proposition that offers investors of all experience levels a novice price point. Rule Breakers only costs $299 per year, and because they care about new users feeling confident they have made a good purchase, an introductory offer lets new user get their first year for only $99 along with a 30-day money back guarantee.
Returns for a Fool?
It’s great that Rule Breakers has hit the occasional home run (okay, if you bought Tesla early, that would be much more like a grand slam) but we all know that it’s batting average that actually counts, right? After all, occasional hits don’t usually help the team if they are surrounded by strikeouts.
Fortunately, Rule Breakers also hits for average – more than a 300% average return over time, in fact, which greatly outpaces the S&P 500, one of the most universal stock market benchmarks. Some analysts will point to the fact that the more conservative service Motley Fool Stock Advisor has actually posted higher percentage returns overall, but there are a few important caveats to understand. Rule Breakers is oriented to picks that run, and run, and run. That’s to say that the stocks they recommend should be thought of as long-term plays where the true potential may not be seen for several, or many, years. It makes sense that first mover stocks in emerging industries may not reach their full potential as soon as they are identified by a service like Motley Fool Rule Breakers.
Regardless of which Motley Fool product you select, that’s a really important piece of information to remember. The Motley Fool is not a day trading or swing trading advice service. It is only for long-term, growth oriented investors. In fact, if you try to swing Motley Fool’s picks there’s a real chance you could get burned and not see any of the significant appreciation opportunities they offer.
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