N.B. – Please note this review is continued at our sister site, tradestocksfx here.
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The Motley Fool Stock Advisor is a share tipping service provided by two brothers, David and Tom Gardner. It is one of the best known stock picking services in the world and has been running for nearly 20 years. We have been following the service for over three years now here at HBR.
Even with the market crash experienced over the last couple of months due to coronavirus, they have still managed to add more growth since our last update, with a further 89% growth in the recommended stocks.
That means the stocks have grown a combined 2,816% for our trial overall.
You can view full results here.
It’s testament to their stock picking skills that their picks have still managed to hold up in the current market conditions, with their selections over the last year alone up a combined 82%.
There may be more turbulent times to come for the stock market but the Motley Fool’s ethos of buying and holding for the long term has certainly produced stellar results over the past twenty years despite all the market’s ups and downs.
It’s great credit to them and why they remain one of the most popular share tipping services in the world.
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Motley Fool Stock Advisor – Update
14th November 2019
It’s now been a full three years since we joined the Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor service and a year since we last did an update so we are well overdue a report on progress.
Once again we can say the performance has been amazing, with a further 1159% growth made since our last update and 2727% growth of the recommended stocks for our trial overall.
You can view full results here.
Those results are quite phenomenal and as we have said before, the best of any stock-picking service we have seen.
It’s interesting that the results from the two brothers David and Tom have been almost identical for the period of our review, with David having made 1377% profit and Tom having made 1338% profit. Although over the whole history of the service David’s results have been better (an average gain of 518% for David on each share recommended versus 153% for Tom), it appears Tom may be catching up.
The only slight negative is that this year hasn’t been quite as good for them, with the stocks recommended in 2019 actually down a cumulative 53%. However, many of those recommendations are only a few months old and the average holding time is recommended to be 3-5 years, so it may just be the case that these recent ones need time to play out.
In any event the overall performance of the service as we say has been superb so we’ll continue to monitor it and let’s see what the next three years bring!
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Motley Fool Stock Advisor – Update
9th October 2018
It has now been almost two years since we started following the Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor service and what a two years it has been!
Their total stock picks combined are now up an amazing 1569% since we started following them in November 2016.
You can view full results here.
(Please note on the results spreadsheet we haven’t included the names of the stocks recommended to avoid giving away their picks for free).
To put the results another way, if you had bought $1000 worth of each stock recommendation they have made since November 2016, you would currently be over $156,000 up!
Now to do that you would have had to invest $47,000 in buying the 47 stocks they have recommended over the last couple of years, which of course not everyone has just lying around.
But even if you had bought just $100 of every stock they had recommended, you would still be over $15,600 up, which is pretty awesome.
Some shares do cost more than $100 each of course, but there are other options for that such as using a spread betting account.
Anyway, the bottom line is the results have been quite amazing and this is the best stock picking service we have ever come across.
These are not penny stocks they are selecting either that can surge or crash on a whim, they are virtually all multi-billion dollar companies that are stable and you can actually achieve the prices they recommend to buy the stock at.
There is also lots to learn across the Motley Fool platform and a great deal of wisdom about how to approach long term investing.
We will continue to follow this just because it is doing so well we want to see where it ends up and if they can continue to achieve such amazing results. They have been doing so for over 20 years so let’s hope they can.
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Motley Fool Stock Advisor – Update
14th February 2018
It’s been a while since we updated our review of the Motley Fool Stock Advisor so we thought it was high time we brought you some news.
And we are pleased to say we have good news to report – very good news in fact.
Since we started following the service back in November 2016, they have amassed an incredible 611% profit from their stock picks.
You can view full results here.
Those gains are outstanding and as we have said before, this is the best stock-picking service we have ever come across.
In terms of the records of the two brothers who provide the picks – David and Tom Gardner – their records since November 2016 are as follows: David is 347% up and Tom is 264% up.
That kind of fits with the long-term pattern, with David having achieved an average gain on his picks since the service started of 487% versus Tom’s 133%. In fact you could say Tom has been outperforming his overall record lately.
Either way though, they have both done fantastically well.
There is also so much useful information on the website to learn from. We enjoy in particular David Gardner’s podcasts for his Rule Breakers service, which is very educational as you can understand more about the thinking that goes behind his picks and why he has been so successful.
Anyway, we will report back again in a couple of months’ time to see if their impressive results continue.
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Motley Fool Stock Advisor – Update
27th July 2017
It’s been a while since we updated our review of the Motley Fool Stock Advisor so we thought it was high time we brought you some news.
And we are pleased to report that the news is good – very good in fact.
Since we joined the main Motley Fool Stock Advisor last November, they are an astounding 207% up on their stock picks.
You can view full results here.
Now we can’t include the names of the stocks here because as the Motley Fool is a long-term service where you generally hold stocks for 3-5 years or even longer, that would be giving away their picks for free.
But rest assured these results are fully accurate and verified.
And it is worth pointing out that unlike some other share tipping services, you can generally get the price they recommend the stock at with no problems at all.
This is primarily because they are picking big, multi-billion dollar companies whose prices are not going to be affected by the followers of the Motley Fool all buying shares at the same time. Plus they give out the stock tips with the live current price, rather than “this is the price I bought it at a week ago” which has now gone up 20% by the time you hear about it.
As we mentioned last time, we also signed up to the Rule Breakers service that is run by David Gardner. That is also up an astonishing 218% this year, simply fantastic results.
The UK version, Share Advisor, is around break even for the year. We have stopped following the Income Investor because it is too long-term a service to be worth reviewing here – it is the kind of thing you do to set up an income for yourself in retirement.
All in all though we think the main Stock Advisor and Rule Breaker services are fantastic and without doubt the best stockmarket services we have come across.
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Motley Fool Stock Advisor – Update
20th March 2017
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor is a legendary stock-picking service run by two brothers, David and Tom Gardner.
In this fast-paced, action-packed world we live in, Tom and David take a rather contrary approach to investing and look to hold stocks for a long time rather than profit from day-trading or quick swings in prices.
When they say a long time, they mean a period of around 5-10 years, which is like an eternity in the modern world of super-fast trading.
However, their approach has been phenomenally successful, with winners such as Amazon (up 500-fold since they originally recommended it), Netflix (up over 7,000%), Priceline (up over 7,000%) and many more fantastic winners.
Now given their investing timeframes, we can’t really do our normal results spreadsheet as that would give things away and you could just use that to buy their recommended stocks rather than signing up to the service.
What we can say though is that their stock picks are up a combined 70% since we joined in November, a pretty awesome total.
In that time there have been nine picks, with one of those picks up 40%.
We have to say we are absolutely loving this service and think it is without doubt the best stock-picking service we have ever come across.
The depth of knowledge, the quality of the analysis, the presentation of the website, but most of all – the results – are superb.
As we said below in our introduction back in November, imagine if you had bought just $1,000 of Amazon shares back when David originally recommended it. You would now have shares worth over half a million dollars!
And you would have had some other fantastic gains as well.
We are enjoying this so much we have signed up to three of their other services:
- Rule Breakers – a service run by David Gardner that focuses on breakthrough tech companies he believes are poised for massive growth. Big winners to date include Netease (over 2,000% gain), Intuitive Surgical (over 1,400%) and Baidu (over 1,900%).
- Income Investor – a service focused on creating an income through investing in shares that pay dividends.
- Motley Fool UK – the British version of the site, which recommends UK companies to buy and has also had some decent results.
We will start including these services in our updates as well to give you a sense of how they are doing across some of their different services.
It is worth pointing out that you do need a decent bit of money to invest to make it worth signing up to these services – we would say at least ten thousand pounds, but maybe more like twenty-five thousand.
And of course you would need to have money to invest on an ongoing basis if you wanted to buy each of their monthly picks as well.
If you do have some money to invest and are looking for a stock-picking service to follow, then certainly on the basis of what we have seen so far, the Motley Fool is looking very good.
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Motley Fool Stock Advisor – Update
20th December 2016
It’s a bit early for a results update on the Motley Fool Stock Advisor service, as the picks take a long time to realise their full value, with the average holding time for a share being 3-5 years.
So we thought we would just do a quick update on how we have found the service so far.
Basically you normally receive one pick from each of the Gardner brothers, Tom and David, every month together with their reasoning for their pick.
I really like the detailed explanations for their stock picks. They are a mixture of sound reasoning as to why the particular company is expected to grow (and thus the share price should grow) and detailed (but not boring and overly-long) analysis of the numbers.
You can see why they have made such incredible picks, like 500-bagger Amazon, 40-bagger Netflix and so on over the years.
On the website you can also look back at all their previous picks and the thinking behind them, which is interesting. Quite a lot of their predictions about how companies would grow have proved startlingly accurate!
There are David and Tom’s top 5 “Best Buys” now, plus their 15 “Starter Stocks” – the essential companies that embody David and Tom’s investing philosophies and the ones they think should form the basis of your portfolio. These are mainly big-name companies that we’ve all heard of and have been solid growth engines, with more expected.
In addition you will find other features on the site such as a community forum to discuss things with other members, plus a “scorecard” to track stocks you are interested in.
After signing up to the Stock Advisor service, you are hit with quite a lot of marketing to sign up to other Motley Fool services. Some of these actually look quite interesting, particularly the Rule Breakers and Options Trading services.
However, these are all considerably more expensive than the Stock Advisor service, which is a squeak at a mere $99 per year.
So overall our impressions of the service are very good so far. Obviously as we say only time will tell how they get on in the long term with their stock picks, but we will update things periodically on the progress being made.
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Motley Fool Stock Advisor – New Review
22nd November 2016
Among the many dozens of e-mails, adverts and requests we receive each week to look at betting and investment opportunities, occasionally one comes along that really sparks our interest.
This happened to us today when we came across an article talking about a stock recommended by a guy called David Gardner, who is the co-founder with his brother Tom of the popular Motley Fool share website.
The article went on to mention that David Gardner had a pretty decent record in his stock tips, having recommended Amazon back in 1997 (and again in 2002).
Now everyone knows that Amazon has grown massively as a company since those recommendations. But how much exactly?
Well, back in 1997, Amazon was worth around $1.50 per share. In 2002, it was around $15 per share.
Guess what it is today?
A whopping $785 per share.
Yep, that’s not a typo – it really is $785 per share.
That is pretty astonishing growth. And yet, back in 2002, most people would certainly have heard of Amazon, used its services and would have expected it to grow as a company.
But how many people actually bought some shares in it?
Well David Gardner did and now he’s sitting on a 500-bagger (i.e. a share that has grown 500-fold, or 50,000% since he bought it).
Intrigued by this, I started looking at some of the other recommendations made by David and his brother Tom in their Stock Advisor newsletter.
How about Netflix – advised in 2007 at $2.69 per share, now worth $118.
Or Nvidia, advised in 2005 at $7 a share and now worth $93.
There is Priceline group, advised in 2004 at $23 and now worth $1,526.
Or Walt Disney, advised at $3 per share in 2002 and now worth $98.
Some pretty astounding success stories there, any one of which could have made you pretty wealthy. Think if you had invested just $1,000 in Amazon when he recommended it in 2002, you would have made a cool half a million dollars.
Looking at their overall record, obviously not every stock they pick is a winner and there have been some losers as well.
But the beauty of this kind of investing is that you can afford a few losers if you have some shares that 10, 20, 50 or even 500-bag.
Indeed, David has averaged an incredible 300% profit for each of his stock picks whilst Tom has managed a very respectable 81%.
And this isn’t one of those “throw enough stuff at the fan and some will stick” situations either. They tend to give out just one or two stock picks per month, so it is a very selective service and should be manageable in terms of running a portfolio based on their picks.
The other thing we like about this service is that these are all big companies they are investing in, not some fly-by-night penny share nonsense that you see ramped by the pump and dump merchants.
That means they shouldn’t suffer from some of the problems we have seen with other share services that recommended much smaller stocks, where they recommend a tip and then it has shot up in price by the time you get to buy it.
We are quite excited about this service, as you can imagine. It takes the approach that we think is the correct one for investing in shares – buy and hold for at least 3-5 years.
The only negative we can see from looking at the results is that the recent results over the last couple of years aren’t quite as impressive as previous years, but then a lot of their really big wins took a few years to build, so this is perhaps understandable.
Anyway, we have signed up to their $99 per year subscription today and will be commencing a review.
Obviously given the nature of their approach, we will have to run the trial for longer than the normal three months and will aim to run it for a year.
In just a year we won’t see the kind of massive winners they have had, which as we say take many years of growth, but it should give us ample time to judge how the service works in practice and to see if it is worth carrying on with.
Just a final note to point out this is the US version of Motley Fool’s Stock Picks, as there are ones in other countries as well but it is the US one that we will be reviewing here.
Onwards and upwards then – let’s hope they find the next Amazon!
Another scam doing the rounds here in the UK is a text message purporting to be from HMRC, saying they know times have been tough and offering a tax rebate. This is fake – they would not contact people by text and no such schemes are yet in place. There has also been a scam in America from a fake organisation pretending to be the CDC.
Most of us are familiar with scam callers by now, often claiming to be from your bank, the tax authorities or even the police. These have reportedly been increasing in light of the coronavirus and targeting people for their bank details, PIN codes and so on, again exploiting people’s fear and desperation in the current crisis. As always, any authorities who are genuine would never call you up unsolicited asking for such crucial information. Just ignore them. 
You may not be surprised to learn that Bitcoin is being used in yet more scams, this time though in relation to the coronavirus. Website 
