Motley Fool Review
I resisted trying out the Fool for years because they wrote so many articles and ads touting their stock picks that I assumed they had to be full of it. But, when I had enough money in the account, I decided to try it out and see if they maybe could save me some time finding stocks early or if they were the cause of certain pump and dumps I was watching.
TLDR:
They pick good, overvalued growth stocks but they don’t try to time the market at all because they want 5 year hold times, which can lead to big drawdowns while you wait
I would’ve lost a fortune had I taken much of their advice. However, if you have a decade long time horizon and can stomach 75% pullbacks, the stocks they recommend will probably come out ahead if they don’t burn all their cash
They repurpose recommendations from different subscription tiers, often using lower tier recs to increase the returns of higher level subscriptions
They make a lot of recommendations. It’s time consuming to keep up.
Big range of prices from $100/yr to $5,000/yr and they upsell a lot
How Much Does Motley Fool Cost?
They had a lot of subscription options to choose from that range from a hundred bucks or so a year to $5K per year. I signed up for a few of them, including their stock advisor, IPO one, and cloud innovators and small caps service. I should note that the lists they provide overlap enormously, so they clearly repurpose their recommendations and charge you more to get the same recs again and again.
For the cloud services recommendations, I found they generally picked out solid growth companies (DOCN, DOCU, ESTC, etc) but too late, after the stocks were already richly valued. So I traded them instead of buying them. Below are the email recommendations they sent out I saved.
My Motley Fool Stock Picks and Returns
12/17/21 Buy Recommendations W/Subsequent Performance Since Then
Intel (INTC): -29%
JFrog (FROG): -17%
Procore (PCOR): -18%
12/14/21 Recommendations W/Subsequent Performance Since Then
Sell Cloudflare (NET). Return since: -41%
Buy Autodesk (ADSK). Return since: -11.5%
Buy Crowdstrike (CRWD). Return since: +1.12%
Buy Docusign (DOCU). Return since: -52%
Buy Ncino (NCNO). Return since: -35%
Buy Twilio (TWLO). Return since:-66%
Buy Zoom (ZM). Return since: -40%
Motley Fool Small Cap Playbook
I Tracked Every investment from their Small Caps Playbook List from January 2021. Here are their returns since then.
Percent Winners: 33%
Avg return per rec: -25%
Agora (API): -88%
Boston Omaha (BOMN): +7%
Camping World (CWH): +20%
Flugenics (FLGT): 0%
Magnite: -68%
Inspire Medical Systems: +14%
Par Technology: -34%
NCino: -48%
Sharespring: 0%
I kept emails of other recommendations, though I admit this list is not complete since they only sent emails containing the rec half the time. The rest of the time they send you to their website to watch a 30-minute webinar of their picks in the middle of the work day, which was strange to me and defeated my purpose of saving time digging through stock screeners. I tracked the returns from the next day’s opening price.
Motley Fool StockAdvisor
2.3.22 Buy ABNB. Return Since: -17%
1.6.22 Buy CFLT: Return since: -59%
12.20.21 Sell Healthequity. Return since: +38%
12.20.21 Sell Invitae. Return since: -69%
12.20.21 Sell Grand Canyon Education. Return since: +1%
12.20.21 Sell Markel. Return since: +3.34%
12.20.21 Sell Ollie’s. Return since: +41%
12.16.21 Buy ROKU: Return since: -72%
12.2.21 Buy DOCN: Return since: -48%
10.7.21 Buy SHOP. Return Since: -70%
10.7.21 BUY DOCN: Return since: -42%
9.23.21 Buy UPST. Return since: -90%
Motlet Fool IPO Trailblazer:
1.31.22 Buy DOCN. Return since: -20%
1.31.22 Buy Confluent (CFLT). Return since: -51%
1.31.22 Buy Roblox (RBLX). Return since: -25%
1.31.22 Buy DCBO.Return since: -36%