Dear Newcomers,
Welcome to Saul’s Investing Discussions,
To help you get oriented and not run afoul of Saul’s Rules, we request 1) that you do not post until you have followed this board for a while and 2) that you read the guidelines and linked posts below.
First, A PLEA for some RESTRAINT and RESPECT for SAUL’S RULES
Despite of Saul’s weekly Monday Morning Rules of the Board, the assistant board managers’ patrolling efforts and this monthly sermon, we have again been inundated with repetitive, non-informative posts and non-contributory one-liners.
It moved fellow Assistant Board Manager Bear, aka PaulWBryant, on August 15, 2021 to post a plea for posters to slow down, to avoid duplicate and repetitive posts (like several insipid posts of My thoughts on UPST), to think before posting, and to not indulge in idle speculation and futile conjecture, https://discussion.fool.com/we39re-drifting-34904974.aspx. Bear also provided a link to his excellent Tips on board posts, and a request. I urge you all to read it, https://discussion.fool.com/tips-on-board-posts-and-a-request-34….
Only five days later on August 20th a thread Snow Research Report was started with this post:
I can’t find a link, but I’ve read that “Weakness Said Tied to Cautious Analyst Note - ClevelandResearch Report said partners are seeing sales cycles elongate on increased competition from hyperscalers, particulary GOOG BigQuery”. Thought this would be helpful to explain the price drop this morning. Can anyone find more about the contents of the report? That’s all, no link, no checking of facts, probably expects others to do the work. It was followed by another three unhelpful, short post, including a one-liner. A thank you to Fool RMTZP for reminding posters to keep on topic and not violate the rules, https://discussion.fool.com/im-not-going-to-claim-that-i-know-wh….
Some days later, this snippet appeared under Crowdstrike Q2 results: Kurtz just called Crowdstrike a “Ferrari” vs. Sentinel One’s “Fiero.” Burn. The subsequent apology (after the post was called out by Assistant Board Manager digout) was recommended by 37 people so far who obviously missed the point too:
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Saul does not want one-liners unless they really contribute to the discussion, see Monday Morning Rules of the Board below. And if you own the stock, you ought to subscribe to their Earning Press Releases and Earning Presentations anyway. There is no short cut to becoming a good investor. It takes a lot of time, effort and patience.
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Kurtz’ antipathy has been well documented on this board by BroadwayDan as recently as 2021-08-09, https://discussion.fool.com/crowdstrike-article-kurtz-intvvw-348…, and more extensively in other posts, including this one, https://discussion.fool.com/crowdstrike-competitor-sentinel-one-…. BroadwayDan always scrutinizes the CEOs of the companies he owns. To see what has already been posted on any given company, follow this board for a while or use the Board Search Sites to the right under Announcements.
— End of PLEA and Sermon —
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, 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-34…
Short version: https://discussion.fool.com/monday-morning-rules-of-the-board-34…
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
Rule Breakers, https://www.fool.com/premium/rule-breakers
If you are new to The Motley Fool, please note that the Fool does not have a functional mobile app at this time (they are working on it). It is therefore best to use a computer, not a smartphone. The latter use makes navigating the TMF website difficult and frustrating. Please be aware that the Fool is not Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo or a chat room were snappy little one-liners may be welcome.
The Motley Fool 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 how to write a post https://support.fool.com/hc/en-us/sections/360005717094-Disc…, including an article on 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, 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…
A compilation of the portfolio holdings of about 20 posters is found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15WYEG7cX2mdErck42Im4….
In addition to reading all of the above links, the following links may be helpful in finding your way around this board:
1. 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.
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. 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:
3.1. Datahelper Search (Mark’s multi-board Search), http://www.datahelper.com/mi/search.phtml
3.22. Easy Stock Search (Greg, sarksnz, Board Member’s Saul-only Search), https://easystocknumbers.com/search.html
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