The Motley Fool

Wait a while

I've only been a subscriber to their Stock Advisor Canada for a little while. Two of their top reviews to buy now were MTY and Pulse Seismic. I noticed on both of those stocks there was a big run-up prior to their release and since then they have been drifting down. Almost every one of my holding is on fire right now, except for these two which have been drifting steadily down. Then they came out with an MTY release about the poor earnings just released, just 2-3 weeks after their recommendation. I noticed the guy hyping Pulse has the same last name as the marketing exec over at Pulse. Their recommendations are about the only stocks in my portfolio losing money, but in the long term, I suppose I'd recover my losses if I wait long enough.

There newsletters are so full of hype it is difficult to find the content or figure out their point. I doubt I'll renew. I think I can do better on my own, and for anyone holding good companies on the longer term they will almost always go up eventually. I'd be a rich man if I didn't get scared out of some of my old holdings early on.

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1.0

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No gain on subscribing, but not a scam

I subscribed to some of their services (SA, RB). It gave me nothing. Most of the time you'll loose money and you should rather put your money in an index fund instead. I'm not going to say MF is way off. They do recommend stocks which go very well. The problem is that they recommend far to many continously. You have no way of knowing who is risky or not (forget their risk evaluation). And their articles are too positive - they don't actually evaluate downsides and risks properly. I would rather use Seeking Alpha as a place for tips and then do your research. And they never/seldom tell you when to sell, when the stock falls/crashes they just blame on short-time disturbance in the market.

After a while you also get bored of getting your mail inbox full of commercial junk, and listening to that they discovered Netflix etc in an early stage.

Note: I had no problems with refund of money when cancelling so they are serious in that respect.

All in all, it's not worth spending the money. Following all their hot recommendations give no upside compared to an index ETF.

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1.0

User’s Review Ratings

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The best Winner Stock Picking source i've ever found

Thank you so much, Trenchwarrior, for your outstanding, comprehensive and insightful review of The Motley Fool here back in April 2014. I found it very useful, well informed and highly credible, so obviously based on extensive knowledge of The Motley Fool's offerings. And your review is unquestionably genuine, being so severely critical about the things that you dislike or that haven't worked for you when tested, while also giving due credit to those that you've found to be of value and that keep you as a devotee despite the things that irritate you.

For my part, I'm far less experienced than you on the full range of Motley Fool products, being a subscriber only to MF Stock Advisor and MF Rule Breakers -- and even these for less than 2 years. But I do find the advice I get to be priceless. And it's so refreshing to be able to see every recommendation ever made -- the failures as well as the successes -- since each service started. Most investment "gurus" only tell you about their winners and airbrush out all memory of their losers, so by pitching everything, amongst the dross they're bound to have a few big winners to boast. And almost all the rest are just Pump & Dump scammers.

My detailed analysis of every MF-SA and MF-RB recommendation from 2008 to Oct 2015 confirms the exact extent to which they've beaten the S&P500 on average. It's seriously impressive, especially when applying some prudent secondary filters to highlight the best MF recommendations.

I appreciate that your most consistent criticisms of Motley Fool are in the areas of literary style, hype and occasional hubris. I don't find this as objectionable as you, though. I think MF writers have the same philosophy as I often employ... that it's easier to educate and inform when you amuse and entertain at the same time.

Finally, if I was as talented and effective a stock picker as David Gardner, I might find myself indulging in a bit of occasional self congratulation too. I think he earns that right. I'm certainly willing to forgive this if he promises to continue to be my most trusted mentor and keeps me beating the market dependably by 5% to 10% on my self-managed investments. Especially when even the most revered fund managers out there all seem to struggle to achieve consistent results that are as little as 5% behind the main indices, after deducting their charges -- making them a little less effective than a pin.

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1.0

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MF one-for-five with my choices

Like an earlier review here, I went for an email promotion from MF in Oct 2014 and bought a look at a select group of stocks (8? 10?) they said could take off in 2015. I picked out 5 from the group. Only Disney ended up in positive territory. The other 4 -- SNI, DISCK, DDD, and SSYS all tanked miserably. SNI is the only one I still own -- lost a chunk on the others before I bailed, and those 4 (including SNI) are now down more than 185% since my initial try. I know the risk involved with any stock and I'm willing to take the hit on occasion, but I figured these "hand picked" specials from MF had been put on their super-list because someone knew something about them that I could not find out for myself. Wrong, I guess. That's the last time I'll sign on with MF. (Gee, those company initials seem so appropriate to me, now.)

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1.0

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Good website for the rookie investor

I like Motley Fool, I really do, I just think they come off wrong to certain people, they offer a good service and great products, they just market their services in a unique way, often, I feel their emails are similar to a penny stock or get rich quick scam email I receive.

Bottom line - this website is great for someone looking to add a little spice to the market articles they have been reading.

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1.0

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Looks impressive but results are poor

I bought some stocks per their recommendations. WPRT, LUK, The container store. All are down miserably when stock market is up. The best way is to use Vanguard etfs or stocks.

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1.0

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Don't be so stupid like me

I got promotion from Motley Fool for $49 a year at the beginning of 2014. I was so stupid to even subscribe it. In 2014, I lost $15000 from the worse recommendations from DDD around $60, WPRT, TCS around $27, etc, by following Motley Fool. I noticed they also recommended to buy AMZN around $400, buy CLB around $160, etc. Every month, they list 10 stocks. But have they really done thorough stock analysis, to decide if the stock is overvalued and on the serious decline? They may spend more time selling their products for membership fees than doing some real serious research on the recommended stock. My advice, if they list 10 stocks, you will need to spend twice time doing research to decide if you would buy any or none of those recommended stocks. Don't be a fool. Once you lose your high percentage of investment principals, you have already lost half of the game.

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1.0

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Don't be a fool like me.

I don't consider myself a fool, but I did a foolish thing. I fell for a teaser ad promoting the best new emerging technology stocks to own and paid money to Motley Fool to get the names. I was aware of two of the recommended names Westport, WPRT, natural gas engines and 3D Systems, DDD, 3D printers. I have industry knowledge and know they are viable technologies and put my trust in the Motlety Fools to know they are good companies to invest in I invested $20,000. in DDD at $49.41 per share and in no time it fell to $37.05 -25.11% and the same with WPRT, purchased at $14.80 and it quickly fell to $5.79 -60.88%. If Motley Fool is legitimate I cannot comprehend how they can get it so wrong. Are they running the shares up and then shorting them or just taking advantage of people willing to pay for their information. Please beware, their expertise seems to be selling themselves, not researching companies.

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1.0

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Cringe worthy articles

I find very little value in anything posted on the Motley Fool. It's mostly junk.

Trust Score

4.1

User’s Review Ratings

Overall

Great resource for investing

I would describe the Motley Fool as a rich man's "Seeking Alpha," that is to say that the main page is nothing more than a collection of articles written by volunteers (mainly professionals in the industry). Just by reading a few articles, you can tell from the style right away that these articles aren't written by journalists, simply by CFAs, most of the time who just want to write their opinion on a stock.

So due to the decentralized nature of the main page, and combined with the varying opinions (and often times contradictory!) of the writers, I don't really know if motley fool (not talking about the premium services) has any official "recommendations" for anyone to really follow.

The real strength of the fool is their section in personal finance and their articles on fundamental analysis. They stress a buy and hold strategy, which is a strategy I personally subscribe to.

As for the articles themselves, I will agree that a lot of them can be fluffy and I suspect that a lot of the cheesy "penny stock" sounding ads are simply automatically appended at the end of each article.

Also, there are a lot of investors at the fool who recommend a lot of high pe growth stocks, such as Facebook and a bunch of 3d printing stocks, which, as an aspiring value investor, I don't agree with. I've been reading them long enough that Ive learned to simply ignore the articles on stocks or industries that aren't in my circle of competence.

If I blindly bought a stock on the advice of a certain fool article, then I figure I would do no better or worse if I read any random article on the internet. I think that those who are buying stocks based solely on a single article on the fool is missing the point of the site.

As for the services they are pimping out? I expect that those articles are written by full time staff at the fool and will contain formal recommendations as well. I honestly have no opinion on those, since I've never tried them. I may try a 30 day trial one of these days though.

Long story short TMF is a great resource for getting ideas on stocks and reading a few differing opinions on them. It's a starting point, and hopefully it will motivate investors to research more into a company if they read about a stock that sounds compelling.

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1.0

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Overall