I think a lot of people, especially when you’ve been on other TMF boards for a while, have an expectation that, because these boards are open and free, and because Motely Fool’s tagline is “to educate and amuse”, they think that all TMF boards are meant to be super-kumbaya. That’s the mindset that I think causes some people to get the wrong idea when interacting with a board like Saul’s, which isn’t here specifically to educate or amuse, it’s here simply to share ideas and analysis of publicly traded growth companies.
I’m not surprised that Jeff’s post above got many rec’s. But I would be willing to bet that most (not all, but probably most) of those users are relatively new to this board and probably have unrecognized losses in several SaaS stocks that they bought earlier in 2019. If I was in that camp, I might have rec’d his post too. When I first came to this board about five years ago, when the popular picks (INFN, SKX, SWKS) where having a rough patch, I wasn’t convinced that I should be trusting what I read here either. Five years and hundreds of percent gains later and that has obviously changed, but I understand the mindset when you come to a source of information that has supposedly performed incredibly for extended amounts of time and then it doesn’t immediately result in what you had hoped for.
In the past, when our stocks have been flying high, the negative posts on this board tend to revolve around trolls that didn’t invest in the same companies and then bash them with “I told you so’s” whenever there is one down day or week (despite the fact that the stocks are still way above where they were months earlier). When our stocks are in a slower patch, like some have been in recently, people, especially newer members, get disillusioned as they are on a forum surrounded by others that have had outrageous success and gains for years, and they see red ink on the page and don’t like it.
That’s natural. But at the end of the day, this forum has been successful for so long a) because of Saul himself, and b) because the board is focused and has the rules it does. Are these rules the only way to invest successfully? Of course not. But they have worked consistently for us and I’m willing to bet will continue to for a long time.
I do want to reiterate that nobody has ever claimed that one of the rules is that you can’t disagree with Saul. He swore “never again” to NTNX, but I’m still a big believer in Nutanix and, while some of my posts supporting the company as an investment this summer received plenty of dismissive responses on the forum, neither Saul nor anyone else on this board ever told me that I couldn’t have that opinion (and btw the stock is up nearly 50% while many of our SaaS stocks are down 30% or so in the same period…just to toot my own horn!)
When all is said and done, finding this board might turn out to be one of the more impactful things on my life. I have little doubt that I will someday retire younger, and more carefree than I otherwise would have thanks to the investments that I discovered and learned about here.
Saul makes the rules and he frankly deserves to bend the rules himself sometimes, I mean it’s his board after all. None of us could be here if not for him. That’s just how it is. Everyone isn’t going to like it but there are a lot of other great TMF forums that are happy to be free for all’s (most of them aren’t as successful as this one has been tho). It’s not too much to ask that, if you are going to disagree with, or question Saul, or anyone on this forum, for that matter, to provide some real analysis or support to back up why you feel that way.
I think that those of you are that are newer here, if you stick around, will ultimately end up with the same appreciation that I do (and I’m hardly one of the more longstanding members on the forum, only having been on here since about 2014, I believe).
Anyway thank you again to Saul and everyone else that contributes here. This forum will never be everything to everyone, but it is a darn amazing place to find market beating investments!
-mekong