I couldn’t agree with Saul more.
For over a decade I have held my SA and RB subscriptions to the Fool and it has helped me transform my financial life from an investing perspective.
It gave me access to the premium boards here on the Fool, where I spent most of my time before finding this board and NPI back in late 2017/early 2018.
In those years, I learned valuable lessons about how to evaluate companies as investments. I’m a CPA, so the financial statement analysis was the easy part. But numbers don’t tell the whole story.
I was constantly urged by the Fool’s perspective that you should think like an owner. I identified with David Gardner in particular and his approach to finding rule breakers. So much so, that I emailed him at one point in 2014 and laid out my case as to why my former company was a rule breaker.
And finally, through my FOOL subscriptions I discovered many companies that I simply would have never heard of. And when they were official newsletter picks, I read the write-ups voraciously as my starting point. Those subscriptions have paid for themselves many, many times over.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve also branched out and subscribed to other sources in an effort to widen my knowledge and find more great companies.
I subscribe to Bert’s newsletter and if you’re on this board and NOT reading Bert, then you’re missing out on one of, if not the best analyst in the IT space. I get that many will not be OK with his past (look at his Seeking Alpha profile for details), and that’s your right. But if you can separate the past from his ongoing skill set and contributions, then there is significant opportunity in his service. And while I haven’t discovered any new companies from his newsletter as most of them are covered here, his insights have given me additional comfort in building large positions in the stocks we follow.
I’m also a subscriber to 7investing.com. Though in their infancy as a newsletter, they’re doing some great work and are lead by several experienced and FOOLish analysts. They are yet another tool in my investing belt and another way to build conviction in the companies I choose to invest in.
I consider my membership cost to 7investing.com a thank you to one of the lead analysts who I saw pounding the table on Twitter for FSLY. Before I subscribed, I took positions in FSLY and LVGO on the same day in April. Those two moves alone could pay for ALL of my memberships for many years (decades) long after I’m gone.
Apologies for the long-winded response, but I truly cannot agree with Saul enough. The cost you incur to subscribe is far outweighed by the value you receive. And at some point down the line, at least for me, the membership fees became every bit as much about paying it forward as it was about finding great investments.