"Rule Breaker Investing" Essays From Yesterday, Vol. 6

In this sixth installment of “Essays From Yesterday,” Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner takes us on a journey back through time to revisit some of his earliest (and sometimes prophetic) investment writings from his days as a Motley Fool newsletter contributor.

From reflections on the volatility of 2007-08, to introducing new terms like “Big Dumb Money,” and thoughts on building mental frameworks for investing, David reacts to his past essays with fresh insights for today’s markets.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our beginner’s guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Sept. 04, 2024.

David Gardner: I got a secret for you. Actually, it’s a secret investing weapon for you. One word for you, and no, it’s not plastics. It’s history. It’s secret because most people don’t have much of it. They follow the many financial media outlets, which through TV and social media display and promote such a short memory. Quoting stocks minute to minute, throwing the bells and whistles of our attention at whatever’s just happened. Well, as a Fool, I love to look back. The lessons we really learn. I would say, learn and earn, are a consequence of observing and living through history measured in years, not hours or days. Well, for years, I wrote short essays to kick off our monthly Motley Fool issues. Mailed. That’s right. Snail mailed back in the day out to members. Well, today, the Motley Fool is pretty much fully digital. We don’t do paper copies anymore, and we don’t do opening essays. But I put a lot of time into those essays, and they occurred over a long narrative arc of history, 2002-2017, 15 years worth of investing lessons in Motley Fool Stock Advisor and Motley Fool Rule Breakers. In this world of now, I say you and I start September 2024 by getting smarter, happier, and richer today for the lessons learned yesterday. Essays from yesterday, Volume 6. Only on this week’s Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. It is the meteorological start of fall, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, September 1 being that date, of course, the astronomical start of each season is somewhere around the 21st of month 369 and 12. Happy fall, depending on where you are, happy spring, depending on where you are. What a beautiful weekend we had here in the Washington DC area for our Labor Day holiday. Happy Labor Day to all my fellow US Fools. Let’s get into it. This is essays from yesterday Volume 6. That means it’s the sixth in the series. We last brought you Episode 5 the very first week of this year, January 3rd. I tend to do this series once or twice a year, and it has a couple of ground rules about how we work here. First of all, I completely randomize which essays I will be sharing with you. I don’t know ahead of time until we plan this podcast, what I’ll be speaking about, and I do randomize it.

Now, I wish I could cherry pick my best and favorite essays. I guess I like all of them. It’s just that some of them were more right than others. You never know how right or wrong will be with any of these. It’s completely randomized, and sometimes I’ll refer to some stocks. We get to look them up now, see how they’ve done here in 2024. We usually have some doozies. The second and final ground rule is they’re in chronological order from earliest to latest. For example, this particular episode, I’ll be sharing an essay from January 2008, then we’ll jump forward to 2012 and 2013. Well, finally, the fourth and final essay shared this episode was the last one I ever wrote for Motley Fool Stock Advisor. Well, anyway, now, having read through them and thought some about them, I will reflect after I read each. It’s essays from yesterday. Let’s get it cranked up. Des, if I could get, please a little bit of way back music, strapping ourselves into the time machine.

Essay Number 1 is from January 2008. What a year that was. Again, I read these verbatim. Here we go. Dear fellow Fools, I started. January is the best of all months. Seriously, more people try to do more things better in January than in all the other months combined. If you saw my list of New Year’s resolutions and watched how hard I try, all January long. You know how off the charts good I am this month, and I know many of my fellow Fools are right there with me. Sure, some worry warts will complain about the weather. They’ll quote studies about depression rising in the winter months. Maybe so, but not in January, I say, because January is when we’re all going to lose eight pounds. It’s February these studies must be talking about when we’ll put back on those eight pounds. As I write on this frosty mid December evening, well past midnight, as is my want. I’m very much in a January frame of mind. I know 2007 wasn’t great for investors. The year will practically zero out, finishing where we started. That seems crazy since a zero masks some really great highs, spring and fall, alternating with some painful lows, summer and now early winter. At times this year I felt like a really good investor, and at other times a really bad investor. You too. But from a rule breaker standpoint, we’ll take a year like 2007 any time. A year ago, the average rule breaker was up 22.5% versus the S&P 515.6%.

A year later, with two dozen more picks in the mix, our average selection is now up 35.2% versus 13% for the market, extending our lead over the market and demonstrating the power of finding and investing in disruptive growth stocks. Rule breakers typically rack up their gains in strong up markets. That’s when our stocks really go bananas. For us to tack on 12% points of outperformance in this market has been particularly sweet, even if 2007 so often felt bittersweet. Fellow Fools, the stock market is a roller coaster, full of swoops and dives. But unlike every other roller coaster you’ve been on, the colorful track of this green monster is laid upward along the ascent of a long, strong mountain. Many people get fooled small f into thinking we’re investing in parabolas. What goes up must come down. They’re tone in a sad sing songy way. This is categorically untrue.

Yes, you’ll plunge downhill many times, and yes, it’ll make you scream. But the stock market’s historical average annual return rate of about 10% makes it very clear we’re on an upward climb, far more akin to hyperbola. Take a look at a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial average over the past century. The tilt is unmistakable. Remember, stock market equals roller coaster. It swoops, it dives. Always will. But there’s a trick. The day glow green track actually runs along a steady incline as far as the eye can see. Put your arms up high. Fools, feed off the ground, get ready to get richer and smile through the drops. Fool on. That was the essay that kicked off the year of 2008. The NASDAQ, by the way, would drop 40% that year. I was referring, having written that in December, we would always write in December and publish in January. I was already referring to a winter and early winter drop. Well, that just continued pretty much the whole of 2008. In fact, 2008 was the single worst year in NASDAQ history, a 40% drop in one year. Let’s think back to some recent years. Can you remember any bad years for the stock market? I sure hope you can. Just two years ago, the NASDAQ suffered its fourth worst year in history.

That’s right after a bonkers 2021. The NASDAQ went down 33% points, lost a third of its value in a single year, just two years ago, the year of 2022. That was the fourth worst year in NASDAQ history. The other two in-between 2008 and 2022, in terms of how bad they were in 1974 was down 35%, and 2000, the so called dot-era, the NASDAQ dropped in one year, the year 2039. In our 30 year history at fool.com in the Motley Fool Company, now in our 31st year, three of the worst NASDAQ years in all of history have occurred consonant with running our business. I would say we’ve got some scars and some bruises, and I’m really quite proud of those. I know many of you are too. Pinch yourself that you made it through 2022. I hope you didn’t do anything crazy. I hope you kept buying every two weeks with your salary throughout 2022. You’re looking pretty good right now. Didn’t feel good at all as the market lost a third of its value, but those cost bases are probably looking pretty sweet for your 2022 stocks. Two more thoughts before moving on to Essay Number 2. The first is, I didn’t even remember 2007 almost zeroed out.

I thought of 2007 as a great year, and it’s just a reminder that our memory often doesn’t serve. My new neuroscientist friend and his book, Sum, authors in August, David Eagleman talking about how he had an experience as a boy of falling from the third floor of a barn, and he said in retrospect, it had felt like he was in slow motion. His thoughts, he thought at the time were slowing down and it was all in slow motion until he actually calculated it and realized it had taken him 0.6 seconds to make that fall. As it turns out having studied it since then, it’s not that your memory slows down as you’re falling. You really don’t have any time to think at all. It’s that you think back on that time. It’s so dramatic for you that you think back through some of the thoughts, and you don’t actually remember what your brain did so well.

Then, you tend to construct things in retrospect. Well, that’s how I thought about 2007. I thought it was a big up year, and then 2008, of course, the worst down year of my lifetime, probably yours, too. But it turns out 2007 wasn’t even that great a year. That was funny to be reminded of that. The last thing I want to say is that, roller coaster analogy that I used in the essay. I’ve reused that many times and will in future, because I think the magic of the stock market roller coaster is that it’s the only roller coaster in the world where where you get off is not the same place from where you got on.

You definitely had some big ups and you had some scary downs. But the beauty of the stock market roller coaster is it drops you off way higher than where you started, and it’s sometimes hard to even appreciate that because we live in fear of those drops. There’s a very important difference between the stock market roller coaster and every other roller coaster in existence highlighted in that January 2008 Essay Number 1. Let’s now fast forward through time. Where we light, finally, upon December of 2012 12/12, and this essay that I wrote at the start of Motley Fool Stock Advisor that month, it’s entitled Big Dumb Money. Here it is. The markets, they are a change in. I, David, this month, want to introduce a new concept. But first, let me cite a few stats. In his book, Enough, Jack Bogle pointed out that from 1950 through 2009, indirect ownership of US stocks by institutional investors rose from 8%-74%.

Further in 1951, the typical mutual fund held stocks in its portfolio for an average of six years. The holding period for actively managed equity funds today just one year. Put those two together, way more institutional money, moving way more quickly. You’ll see why I’m introducing a new term to you this month, a phrase of my own invention, big dumb money. Here’s what I’ve been seeing increasingly over the last decade. First, huge amounts of money are moving into exchange-traded funds, ETFs, and sector index funds. Ironically, part of this trend has been driven by Bogle and Vanguard.

Those large pools of money, some people call it hot money, sit in positions for dwindling periods of time. Further, the quotes manager pushing that money around these days is as likely to be a computer algorithm as a human. It all might sound pretty intimidating to you and me, individual investors. How could we hope to compete? But think again. Tons of those dollars, A are blindly buying ticker symbols, not companies, and B rotate in big trade first and ask questions later moves from one sector to another or one stock in sympathy with others. Also, of course, C, they’re very short-term minded to D, so-called technical analysis also drives that institutional money issuing fundamentals in order to seek instead, quotes resistance and support levels, magical price points where stocks have previously once traded. Take this lack of attention to the companies themselves, to their products, and marketing, and corporate culture, and management and yes, margins and competition. Then combine that with a lack of attention to longer-term implications here measured in months or years, not days or weeks, and you have big dumb money. Please note, this makes it easier for us to beat the market, and I think explains a portion of our outperformance, but by the same token, we must sit patiently through sometimes ridiculous or inexplicable volatility to do it.

A great example occurred recently with Rule Breakers recommendation, source FIRE, ticker symbol FIRE, documented by Fool community member Danny Vena. The company pre-announced excellent earnings on October 3. Two weeks later, its stock cratered 12% in one day In sympathy with disappointing results from its industry peers, Fortinet and Check Point. Two weeks later, on November 1st, Sourcefire officially announced its earnings, essentially reasserting what it had said one month before. The result, a one-day jump up 13%. All the company ever did was pre-announce good earnings, and then follow through with the numbers a month later. In the meantime, it sank and jumped with unnecessary volatility, all thanks to big dumb money. Ironically, for us, Fools, it’s a friend. That concept of big dumb money I have continued to use ever since. I think that was its debut in that essay 12 years ago. It’s just as true today, my friend.

Big dumb money is out there. There’s more of it than ever before. It’s dumber than ever before, especially in a world where people are convinced that you can’t really beat the market averages you should just index. Therefore, so much money these days is just sloshing around rather thoughtlessly, covering every stock, every ticker symbol. Every company in a sector, I as a Rule Breaker, perhaps you too. We can continue to do this. This is a neat trick. You buy the good ones and avoid bad companies, and you can outperform if you use time as your ally. Yes, big dumb money, as I ended that essay, is a friend, and it’s just as much a friend today. Now, one more thing worth mentioning, certainly, I’ve been asked a number of times this year and over the last few months. What about artificial intelligence? Is that going to make it harder to beat the market? Or how do we as individual investors navigate a world driven by AI? My answer is we’ve already been doing that for more than 20 years. I realize ChatGPT and large language models showed up rather recently and hit pop culture and I’m a huge ChatGPT fan as is well documented on this podcast. But let’s be clear, computers have been trading using algorithms, people dialing up their computers as intelligently as they can to make as much money as they possibly can for more than a couple of decades on the stock market.

The vast majority of volume every day comes from computers, and that’s been true for a long time, and believe me, people have been trying to be as smart with their computers auto-investing for them as possible. I don’t find myself particularly phased by the notion that artificial intelligence will all of a sudden wipe all the Alpha away. I guess there are two quick things to point out about that. First of all, most computer algorithmic trading and most AI and we can understand why is incredibly short-term in nature. After all, if you’re going to dial up your computers and your artificial intelligence and try to make money, your goal is probably to make it as fast as possible. Fast money a big thing these days. It’s been true for quite a while now. Much of the trading in some cases inside a minute, actually, in some cases inside a second high-frequency trading. Simply by playing the game I play, I hope the one you play too, the long game, there really aren’t many competitors out here on the field of playing the long game with the markets and that includes AI. Now, if AI does get a lot smarter and helps me invest better, I’m a huge fan of that. I do want to point out the game of investing has people on both sides. There is a buyer and a seller. Please picture them at a table. Shaking hands across the table.

I am selling you my shares. I am buying your shares from you. When both sides have computers driving them, it’s not clear that either one would have an advantage, so that AI and that algorithmic trading has been on both sides of the table for a long time. This is very different than if we were arming just one side with artificial intelligence. I would start to tilt my money that way. If in fact, only one-half of the transaction was intelligent and computer-driven. I would probably highly favor that. But, of course, markets working as they are, we have buyers and sellers shaky hands and meeting at certain prices to transact, and both sides have been computer-empowered for a long time, it’s worth pointing that out. The last thing I want to say about Essay Number 2, I did mention Sourcefire near the end in that funny situation where they pre-announced their good earnings, and then other companies in their industry had bad earnings and dropped the stock more than 10% in one day, and it simply bounced all the way back when it announced the good earnings, I had already pre-announced weeks before.

Sourcefire, as I wrote that essay was at about $45 a share. It’s a cybersecurity company, or I should say was because if you look up the ticker symbol FIRE, you won’t find it on the markets anymore, within less than a year of me writing my big dumb money essay, Cisco Systems came along and bought out Sourcefire. It jumped from 45 where I wrote this essay in December 2012 to 76 when it got bought out in July of 2013 consummated in October of that year, it was a big fun winner to look back on. Big fun winner Sourcefire, big dumb money everywhere, just as much the case today. Let’s get back in our time machine. We’re not going to need to go far because this essay comes to us from Motley Fool Rule Breakers. I wrote this in July of 2013. In fact, that same month Sourcefire would get bought out by Cisco.

Again, I randomized the essays, so I happened to have randomized July 2013. I’m glad I did because I enjoy sharing with you today this framework essay, Essay Number 3. This month concludes a series begun in March. After a friend asked me for investment book recommendations. I had looked over my bookshelf and realized I don’t really read investment books. I read business books. This touched off a reflection that for most investors, learning about business makes more sense than learning about “investing.” If you’re a business-focused, long-term investor like me, learning how businesses succeed, grow, and evolve helps you see which ones will do so persistently. If that’s not the whole ball game, it’s at least what’s behind all the big scoring plays. I was reframing the question, redirecting seekers of stock market Savvy toward pursuit of their own private master of business administration, MBA. That will be a new framework for many, one that’ll pay off in real investment winning.

Through April, May, and June, we then covered three more frameworks drawing from another non-investment book, the Art of Game Design, and Idiosyncratic source, no doubt, betraying my own passion for games and the gamer’s mentality. To our frameworks toolbox, we added the hype cycle, disruptive innovation, and the singularity. This month, I want to reflect on these frameworks. Here are two reflections. One’s about F frameworks, the other about the implications of combining these particular four frameworks together. First, about frameworks overall, I want to suggest that you fill your toolbox further.

You already operate with various theories about human nature. Your past experience gives you some horse sense regarding which efforts will result in success or failure and how to choose the odds. To do this, you’re using frameworks, mental constructs that help you make decisions, weigh the possibilities, predict. But my belief is that most of us don’t have enough such frameworks. Think of a new investor tasked with plunking down her money for the long term. Can her selection of equities be nearly as good? If she lacks any understanding of disruptive innovation? Frameworks give us pattern recognition. To see more patterns then, we need to have more frameworks. Otherwise, we risk winding up like the proverbial person who possessing only a hammer, just sees nails. Our effort these past few months has been to give you some shiny new tools.

Make this the start of a continued intentional pursuit. Second, now consider these particular frameworks in combination. Better investing equals MBA pursuit, plus awarenesses of the hype cycle, disruptive innovation, and singularity thinking. To me, this unique mix of ingredients forms a tasty dish called innovation. Innovation uber alles. Business is becoming almost completely driven by innovators and innovation already at all-time record highs is widening and deepening and speeding up. Those who produce innovations will wind up with the most toys, and rightly so. But good news, Rule Breaker, those who recognize and appreciate and invest in these innovations will wind up a close second. Our collective future is more amazing, in my opinion, than most of us can even dream. That is how I ended my Rule Breakers July 2013 essay. Some thoughts back. First of all, I smile because I used in that essay. I used the phrase long-term investor. Now, some of you will know I have a dead-arm rule. I say, and I’ve said this for more than 10 years now, although apparently not for more than 12 years now, I say, I never use the phrase. Long-term investor, you’ll only hear me saying it when I’m making the point I’m about to make to you right now. It is a tautology. It is an unnecessary phrase. Investing is, by definition, long-term. Therefore, we never need to say that phrase, I’ll say it just one more time, long-term investor or investing, because that’s what investing is, and that’s what investors do. The opposite of long-term investing is short-term investing, and that’s not even a thing. That’s just trading. It’s very funny for me to see that this is maybe the last written example I have of me using a phrase that I never use, and I’ve said to anybody for more than 10 years now if you do hear me say that phrase, and you’re within reach of me, I permission you to come over and give me, yes, a dead arm. You can briefly hit me just above my bicep. My arm will go numb, and you will have helped me. Help me remember not to use a phrase that is unnecessary and tautological. Obviously, I’m trying to make an important point to the world here having some fun about investing and what it really is, playing the long game.

I also appreciate the points I made about filling up your toolbox in that essay. I often talk about and think in terms of frameworks, and that year in Rule Breakers, and I’ve done it on this podcast since then, I talked about the Gartner Hype Cycle. You can look it up if you don’t know what that is. Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation framework, and certainly the singularity, which seems increasingly in our focus and awareness in an increasingly AI driven world. These frameworks, and again, the more you can amass new ones and learn and fill up your toolbox the better you’re going to be at making decisions because you’re going to have more angles. If you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail, if you only think as an investor look before you leap, consistently being unwilling to take positions in what look to be overvalued stocks that I call Rule Breakers and try to buy and hold even though they do look awfully overvalued. If you’re always looking before you leap you may not know that he or she who hesitates is lost which is also an equally wise saying and reminds us that both of those are frameworks and true wisdom is knowing when to leap and when to hesitate. But the only way to do that is if you know both a leap framework and a hesitate framework and so I’m a huge fan always have been a frameworks. I’ve written a lot about them, this essay included.

Certainly, I talk about many different frameworks on this podcast and I will always do so because I think they’re so important. There’s an inherent optimism in that essay as well and it’s one I feel just as strongly in 2024 as I did in 2013, and in fact, if you had told me in 2013 that over the next 11 years the stock market would more than quadruple. Which is exactly what it’s done. I would have said no way, and so as I wrote in my final line, our collective future is more amazing. In my opinion, the most of us can even dream. I feel that, yes, a lot of bad things have happened over the last 11 years but pictures of a lot of amazing things have happened over the last 11 years and I can’t wait for the next 11 years and the 11 after that, and I think that’s the most healthy mentality you can take to investing and I really appreciate again, neuroscientist, David Eagleman, he and I exchanged a little bit on the topic of optimism and human flourishing when he was on a few weeks ago.

In fact, I was just checking back, and here’s what he said. He said on this podcast just a couple of weeks back, “We’re certainly getting smarter. It’s not because of evolution.” Eagleman said. “There’s been no chance for the genes to change but instead it’s because of the culture that we’re surrounded with and the technology. Just as an example with the advent of books that made a big difference because suddenly there’s all this knowledge that was packaged up and available and all you need to do is go to the shelf and pull it off and you got that there. But then literacy improved and improved schools improved.” He went on, “I think the biggest change and historically this will be looked back on is the advent of the Internet. A lot of my colleagues have grim things to say about the Internet and kids growing up. I feel,” said Eagleman, “Just the opposite. I’m very optimistic about this.” Well, that kind of optimism, I hope has been coming at you through this podcast every week since we launched in July of 2015. It is now September 2024. I feel just as strongly about it and it helps me invest. It helps me be willing to take risks. Spread my money out, not be too sure of myself ever. Find the best companies. We’ve talked about what their traits are, the six Rule Breaker traits. We’ve talked about the six habits you need to develop. All of these things are here for you. I’ve tried to. I’ll continue to try to bring this to you every week. That was Essay number 3 on Frameworks.

That brings us to the final essay this week, Essay number 4. This one, as I mentioned at the top, this was the final essay I wrote for Motley Fool Stock Advisor. It was February of 2017, and at that point our team made a decision to discontinue essays at the start of our issues. In part, that was because we no longer had issues. We no longer published as a traditional newsletter. Of course these days our services are digital. You’re able to access a lot of stories. News stories and other opinion pieces from us on a regular streaming basis. We don’t have a page one anymore. This was the final page one essay I wrote for Motley Fool Stock Advisor. I’m going to call it I on Investing. It’s time to jump almost four years later. New year and a new idea for how we might help you below. But first, let me, David, this month, make my traditional market call for the coming year. That’s the question financial shows and cocktail conversations have been asking these past few weeks. How will the market do in 2017? You probably know us well enough to realize that we don’t claim any special ability to call market moves.

However, I always say, up when asked. Why? The market rises two years out of every three, my record is therefore way better than the market timers who don’t do much better than a coin flip. Now, more seriously, we’re piloting a new program here at Fool HQ aiming as always to help the world invest better. It’s called Fool’s Eye on Investing. Question for you. Do you see anything in your financial world that looks wrong or needs a fix or could just be done better? Do you have questions about how you or a friend are being treated by a financial professional? We’re here to help. Tell us the story, let us know. For instance, do you have a bank pressuring you to open up eight accounts because eight is great? We’re sorry to hear that. Maybe you have some questions about what you’re seeing around you in your office or your industry. Are you a whistleblower? We might be able to help, so yes, our Fool’s Eye on Investing through the reach of our worldwide full community is ever watching and aiming to right wrongs. Many of us have had a bad financial experience in the past that might never have happened if somebody had spoken up, had intervened, had spread the word. Looking backward, hindsight, of course, always being 2020 but still I think we may have forestalled any number of possible broker abuses, pyramid schemes, bank scams, etc, had we organized more effectively. That’s what we’re doing now. Call it Foolish New Year’s resolution for 2017 and beyond. How to reach us. You can reach Fool’s Eye on Investing by just emailing us privately and directly at [email protected]. What is most helpful is if you include a story with as many specifics as possible.

That’s what helps our Fool’s Eye on Investing take action in one situation versus another. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that because you’re a Stock Advisor member, you’re very likely more savvy than the average citizen about money. Thus, you’re more likely not to get scammed, harmed, or financially abused. Therefore, do make a point of passing this helpline onto any friend or family member. Fool on. Well, that’s an amusing one to reread now. I’d forgotten about Fool’s Eye on Investing, an experiment we tried, apparently seven years ago. The first thing I want to say about that essay is my annual market call. I’ve done it every year on this podcast. Longtime listeners will know that. Every year, I say, where do I think the market’s headed in 2025? I think it’s going up and I think my record is enviable as a market timer picking one year at a time. Something I only do is a joke because I don’t think it’s very important. I’m invested all the way through, I hope you are, too, will do a lot better that way. But because somewhere around December, January, February, people really want other people who probably don’t have a great record to call where the market’s headed, and they’ll do that for the air time. What’s always regrettable, to me, anyway, is that no one usually ever goes back and relistens to anybody’s past prediction or holds anybody accountable. There is no great big scorecard in the sky.

CNBC doesn’t self score, to my knowledge, maybe it does. At least the NFL people picking NFL football picks on weekends usually keep some stats and we get to hear how this guy is versus this other one on ESPN or CBS. I think we do a better job keeping score in sports certainly than we do with market predictions. But I’m happy to say, 2017, that call I made, I nailed it. The market did, in fact, go up in 2017. Here’s a pretty remarkable stat. Just before I wrote that essay and made that market prediction, the market had gone up eight years in a row. You can imagine, I don’t really remember this but I’m assuming a lot of people were pretty bearish going into 2017. I do remember 2016 fourth quarter, I don’t think was very good for stocks. Anyway remarkably, even after going up eight years in a row, in 2017, the S&P 500 went up 21.83%. It was a banner year for Rule Breaker Investing.

That’s my first takeaway. But my second, of course, is that the entire essay was basically given over to Fool’s Eye on Investing, which was an innovative idea. I think it was mine. I still like the idea today of inviting members to let us know if they’re having a bad experience with a financial professional or are aware of a friend who might be getting scammed. The Motley Fool today is a lot larger than it was in 2017 and I do feel as if this kind of thing would be pretty cool to bring back but my recollection is we didn’t get a lot of emails driven by my essay and I’m pretty sure our Eye on Investing at fool.com doesn’t work anymore and nobody’s at that desk. Now, I’m no longer in operations at the company so I’m not positive about this, but I am here to say if any of my fellow Fools want to pick back up this banner and go for it I do think we can make the financial world better lit, safer, and happier by pointing out any malfeasance we see, sometimes it’s systemic. For example when The Motley Fool started, brokers were routinely trading people’s accounts to make the commissions of buying and selling other people’s stocks which was really not just bad advice but really bad performance for the customers themselves.

That was pretty de rigueur in the financial world of the late 1980s and 1990s when The Motley Fool started. We certainly did speak out against that. That doesn’t happen so much anymore and I think it’s in part because a lot of people not just us spoke out against it. That’s my idea of Fool’s Eye on Investing but I would say this episode, this week’s podcast, ends with a whimper not a bang, because this final essay, which I randomized it’s exciting for me to share with you the final essay I ever wrote from Motley Fool Stock Advisor but it’s about a program that to my knowledge doesn’t exist anymore even though it still sounds good to me. I will say this in conclusion.

Our heart was in the right place and I really like businesses. I try to invest in them where they’re trying to do good in this world. Maybe the idea doesn’t work out. Maybe the innovation isn’t continued, and forget about The Motley Fool. This point is not about us. We’re a private company that people can’t invest in. I’m speaking to investors in public companies and I will continue to say and advocate that if you make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future. If you’re looking for the good in the world and trying to support that and be a part owner of it, well, that’s why I made it Rule Breaker portfolio principle number 1, make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future. I’m delighted that Essay Number 4 this week gave me an opportunity to remind you of that once again. Well, there it is, Essays From Yesterday, Volume 6. Four essays, as I do each time, just to summarize them for you again.

The first was January is the Best Month, the second Big Dumb Money, the third Frameworks, and the fourth, as you just heard it, Eye on Investing. Some heartwarming moments in this one. All of these things happened by the way. I know I’m sharing them and what sometimes people refer to as a fake news world but this was all real stuff. The essays as they were published, read for you verbatim. We’ve had the opportunity together to reflect on and take away some lessons that we can use from these essays from years ago. We can use those lessons this week, this month, this next year going forward. It’s fun to follow market moves and your stocks new 52 week high and whatever those people are saying on Cable TV. But for real learning I think the best learning, learning that will help your earning I’ll take history, Essays From Yesterday.