Greetings to All,
Whenever the stock market swoons, posters who normally seem to religiously follow other TMF boards specializing in investment strategies radically different from Saul’s approach (like Mechanical Investing or the Berkshire Hathaway board) appear here not only dispensing investment wisdom not compatible with Saul’s approach or The Rules of the Board but worse, blaming Saul and other posters for leading hapless followers of this board astray.
Our investment decisions are ours and ours alone as Saul and many others keep on repeating. Nobody knows our personal or financial situation or risk tolerance better than we ourselves. There is nothing like a sickening drop in stock prices to show what our risk tolerance truly is. Is panic setting in or are we focusing on our companies and how each one of them is likely to sail through the next few months without major damage? Successful investing isn’t easy and requires discipline and time, see Saul’s KnowledgeBase below.
Presenting bearish arguments and videos of gurus who specialize in bear markets is not for this board. Yes, Bears make money right now. Bulls make money during bull markets but Pigs get slaughtered according to an old Wall Street saying, see a recent TMF article for definitions, https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/basics/pigs-get-….
So please, let us focus on each of our companies and how we judge their ability to fare relatively well despite the macroeconomic headwinds and the current negative market sentiment. This too shall pass as it has done before.
THE PURPOSE OF SAUL’s DISCUSSION BOARD
Saul’s board has the singular focus of analyzing and discussing individual, rapidly growing, disruptive companies. That means that certain topics and basic questions that are acceptable on other boards are not appropriate here. We are trying to keep our discussions as advanced and detailed as possible and encourage you to chime in, provided your comments are on-topic and within the guidelines outlined in the Monday Morning Rules of the Board, see links below.
Saul’s board has grown tremendously in recent years, and Saul has had to establish rules, usually published every Monday morning, to keep off-topic and non-contributing posts to a minimum. Thank you notes to Saul are best incorporated into posts discussing our rapidly growing companies instead of a separate, one-line post.
Saul has also engaged several assistant board managers, who will remind posters when they veer off topic, and stop off-topic threads from continuing. The names of the Assistant Board Managers, and the DO’S and DONT’S for this board are found here:
Monday Morning Rules of the Board
Long version: https://discussion.fool.com/monday-morning-rules-of-the-board-35…
Short version: https://discussion.fool.com/monday-morning-rules-of-the-board-35…
Please remember that these ARE the rules of the board. If you are unhappy with them, or feel that they are too restrictive for you, no one is keeping you on the board. You can leave whenever you want. You should know though that this board has been very successful, and is a real treasure, for a great number of people.
If you are new to investing, we strongly recommend subscribing to one or two of the Fool’s paid services specializing in high growth companies where basic investment questions are welcome and handled by paid staff.
Stock Advisor, https://www.fool.com/premium/stock-advisor/landing/
Rule Breakers, https://www.fool.com/premium/rule-breakers/landing/
The Motley Fool and especially Saul’s board are different from reddit, Twitter, Facebook, or Yahoo were snappy little one-liners may be welcome. To help you get oriented, TMF publishes The Motley Fool’s Community Posting Guidelines, https://www.fool.com/community/posting-guidelines/. We urge you to read them and study the links provided below.
This link will lead you to articles on
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How to Write a Post https://support.fool.com/hc/en-us/sections/360005717094-Disc…, including an article on
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FORMATTING, https://support.fool.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000244288-How-….
To profit most from this highly focused board, we suggest reviewing the links below to Saul’s investing approach and philosophy, especially The KnowledgeBase many of us have read and reread several times. The knowledge contained therein is priceless, and for many of us here, it has been literally life-changing. Since this board has attracted many well-informed, analytical minds, including industry insiders, we also found a review of several months worth of prior posts extremely helpful. All of this valuable information is given generously and freely to help us be better investors.
An Introduction to Saul’s Investing Philosophy
A superb introduction to Saul’s development as an investor is his letter to his daughter, followed by the first five references, posted on the right panel on any post on this board, under “Announcements.” If the announcements panel does not show up on the right, click “unthreaded” and it will. You can shift back to “threaded” and the panel should remain, at least until next time.
In addition, Saul’s End of Month Summaries provide insight into each of his investing decisions. Several other investors provide extremely useful end of month summaries as well.
1. An investing primer for my daughter, https://discussion.fool.com/an-investing-primer-for-my-daughter-…
2. KnowledgeBase in three parts, is Saul’s compilation of his basic investing philosophy:
Part 1 - https://discussion.fool.com/knowledgebase-2019-part-1-34381924.a…
Part 2 - https://discussion.fool.com/knowledgebase-2019-part-2-34381931.a…
Part 3 - https://discussion.fool.com/knowledgebase-2019-part-3-34381943.a…
Saul has picked several of his classic posts to aid you. Here they are:
3. How I pick a company to invest in, https://discussion.fool.com/how-i-pick-a-company-to-invest-in-33…
4. Why my investing criteria have changed, https://discussion.fool.com/why-my-investing-criteria-have-chang…
5. Why it Really is Different – (SaaS companies and subscription software), https://discussion.fool.com/oh-this-time-it8217s-different-33123…
6. Category Crushers, https://discussion.fool.com/category-crushers-and-my-portfolio-3…
7. Here is a recent example of how Saul evaluates and follows a stock:
part 1, https://discussion.fool.com/zscaler-a-deep-dive-into-my-notes-pa…
part 2, https://discussion.fool.com/zscaler-a-deep-dive-into-my-notes-pa…
You will also find many excellent deep dives by other investors on the board.
8. Saul’s End of Month Portfolio Summaries, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yF_lLGs3pI4SPcYOfIvpO5FY…
OTHER HELPFUL LINKS FOR FINDING YOUR WAY AROUD THIS BOARD
1. How to find out if a stock has already been discussed, see the search tools below, also to be found on the right-hand panel:
1.1. Datahelper Search (Mark’s multi-board Search), http://www.datahelper.com/mi/search.phtml
1.2. Easy Stock Search (Greg, sarksnz, Board Member’s Saul-only Search), https://easystocknumbers.com/search.html
2. How to present a new growth stock in a format that will generate lots of engagement. Tossing out a simple “What do you think about XYZ” onto this board won’t cut it. You have to tell us about the company, what it does, and why you like it. Here are a few examples of SaaS companies and other fast-growing companies currently not the focus of this board:
2.1 Discussion of SaaS-type companies currently the focus of this board:
a. Introductions to a Stock, examples:
• PagerDuty (PD), https://discussion.fool.com/pagerdutypd-a-deep-dive-34191497.asp…, and
• Slack (WORK) IPO, https://discussion.fool.com/slack-ipo-a-first-look-34208321.aspx…
b. Earnings Follow-up Notes, examples:
• Alteryx (AYX), https://discussion.fool.com/alteryx-q120-and-its-new-apa-platfor…, and
• MongoDB (MDB), https://discussion.fool.com/mdb-quick-and-dirty-34223901.aspx?so…
2.2 Fast-growing companies not currently the focus of this board but welcome if presented as follows:
a. Introduction to a New Stock
• Peleton (PTON), https://discussion.fool.com/introduction-to-pton-34527814.aspx?s…
• CarGurus (CARG), https://discussion.fool.com/cargurus-carg-a-2017-ipo-winner-3401…
b. Earnings Follow-up Notes
• DocuSign (DOCU), https://discussion.fool.com/docu-q2-34609983.aspx
• Carvana (CVNA), https://discussion.fool.com/my-ongoing-case-for-cavana-34213744…
3. CMF_muji’s Distilling Knowledge, a summary of accumulated wisdom from many of this board’s members, outlining the investing criteria for hypergrowth stocks, https://discussion.fool.com/distilling-knowledge-34529397.aspx.
4. If you are an investing novice and you are looking for basic information, we have prepared a list of good references for you. It is posted on another board so as to not clutter up this board. I have linked to it here: https://discussion.fool.com/for-investing-novices-34193680.aspx
5. List of Discussion Boards for Topics not suitable for Saul’s Discussions, https://discussion.fool.com/i-thought-it-might-be-useful-to-prov…
6. How to send an EMAIL off-board
Hit the “post reply” button, un-check the box "Post this Reply to the Boards,” then check the box “Email this Reply to the author.” The boxes are beneath the text field. Note that when you send such a private reply, the other person will then have your e-mail address.
We hope that this was of help,
Saul and Assistant Board Managers