At this moment, METAR has 23 of the 25 Most Recommended posts. True, low volume, but impressive nonetheless.
How many of them are actually about macroeconomics?
IP,
with a large number of OT threads, (not marked OT,) grayed out and ignored
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In short, they have morphed into just another stock pumping operation, for anyone stupid enough to pay for their hype? That is sort of implicit in the garbage I see on my MSN news feed daily “Motley Fool makes rare “all in” buy call”.
Sort of - but you can hardly blame them. There’s no business case for what they used to be, not any more.
Original Fool grew to minor prominence at a time when you had: i) huge numbers of people who were newly attracted to stock investing (and thus in the market for DIY stock advice); and ii) the internet was still largely website-based and financially ran on ads delivered on those websites.
All that’s gone now. The dotcom bust culled the target market of DIY stock investors. Content distribution moved from the web to apps. Advertising dollars moved to GOOG and FB. Etc. I don’t know much about the business of media, but even I can see that there’s little chance that having an audience of people who like to read articles on websites - or who like to communicate through long-form text on message boards - is going to be too valuable an asset for a business, because that’s not how content is distributed or ads are sole these days. Banners on blogs have moved to subscriptions and Substack.
Albaby
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“My Mom always taught me to not complain about the quality of the food when getting a free lunch.”
exactly. I’m pretty sure I’m much better off in financial life because of TMF. Had zero
exposure to finance/investing while growing up, although was exposed to the concept of saving,
and hard work as a young adult. TMF definitely got me interested in having a retirement goal, and
made it clear that it could be done, with hard work and saving being the key components.
TMF did use to make statements about “the wise” ( I think that’s how they referred to the
Wall St types ), and the hidden ways that “the wise” can take a bite out of you. And then TMF
became “the wise”. But that’s ok, I’m glad I’m not having my feet held to the fire for statements
I made when I was young. TMF is a business, they’ve evolved, and I still think TMF is offering
a good product. And I have honestly not missed the political posts. They were interesting, but
offered little in the way of actionable information. I disliked 1 side, and they disliked me,
and nobody’s opinion got changed, as far as I can tell.
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Did MF successfully kill their own community by eliminating so many boards?
That, and Saul’s recommending a toxic level of concentration in a handful of meme stocks ultimately bankrupting many followers of the Saul board. Of course his penchant for censorship didn’t help.
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My Mom always taught me to not complain about the quality of the food when getting a free lunch.
A variant of “don’t empty your bowels where you eat.”
(There was a simpler version of this aphorism, but I can’t recall it at the moment.)
Pete
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TMF did use to make statements about “the wise” ( I think that’s how they referred to the
Wall St types ), and the hidden ways that “the wise” can take a bite out of you. And then TMF
became “the wise”.
Indeed. I was thinking, this afternoon, how the Fool has become “the wise” (yes, that was the term) that they used to ridicule. You put it nicely. I would say, the Fool became “the wise” because that is the way to get the most money out of people.
Steve
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I’m a bit behind you. As of this writing, there hasn’t been a post on Saul’s board at all today. Strange.
Then again, the market in general has been trending down this year. That doesn’t bode well for the high growth stocks typically discussed there.
So fewer posts makes some sense.
—Peter
Captain
Thanks for the link to your excellent post over on Saul’s Board, with large scale long term solid investment psychology advice.
I’d shift from crashing aviation metaphors to “If you can’t take the heat then get out of the kitchen!” I’ve left quite a few kitchens that were fine for some and too hot for me, and found others where I love cooking, and that highly individual quest to find the right kitchen is the crux to successful investing. Saul’s Board and your style of options leveraged investing is waaaaay to hot for me.
I am having a happy time! right now in my kitchen.
david fb
I’d shift from crashing aviation metaphors to “If you can’t take the heat then get out of the kitchen!”
Harry Truman?
Talking about kitchens. Since my dad had hotels and restaurants, when we went on longer races I used to bring along a lot stuff. But you have to spiff it up a bit to serve it. So I started cooking. As time went by I got more adventurous. Image ceviche made with just caught grouper. I got a bit of a reputation and people would ask me to cook up something. My excuse? “I only know how to cook in galleys that sway with the waves.”
There is no one investing style for all but there is one fundamental requirement. Years ago I read a piece that discussed efficient vs. sturdy portfolios. Leverage makes portfolios efficient but flimsy. Sufficient cash reserves make portfolios sturdy enough to weather the inevitable bear markets. You have to find the right balance between greed and fear, between efficiency and sturdiness to build your ideal portfolio.
As an example, I hear people trying to squeeze an extra half percent interest out of their cash reserves. Bad idea. Find the safest place for your cash, it’s your insurance policy. You don’t want to buy insurance from a company about to go bankrupt!
On the other side, don’t buy investment so safe that they produce zilch! Understand why Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is so popular, the lower volatility of uncorrelated assets keeps your customers from bolting! It’s great for fund managers but not great for fund investors.
Maybe most important of all, don’t aim to beat indexes. Three out of four investors will underperform the index thanks to the Pareto Distribution through no fault of their own. Concentrate on making your port cover your needs! Some of us need growth, some need income, some need capital preservation. The most expensive mistake I ever was trying to double my port just one more time. Now I concentrate on covering my expenses and surviving bear markets which led me to split my port in two, one part to cover expenses and the other LTBH. That was a big improvement!
The Captain
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{See how much easier your post is to read if you PROOF READ it before posting?}
“My Mom always taught me to not complain about the quality of the food when getting a free lunch.”
exactly. I’m pretty sure I’m much better off in financial life because of TMF.
Had zero exposure to finance/investing while growing up, although was exposed to the concept of saving, and hard work as a young adult.
TMF definitely got me interested in having a retirement goal, and
made it clear that it could be done, with hard work and saving being the key components.
TMF did use to make statements about “the wise” ( I think that’s how they referred to the Wall St types ), and the hidden ways that “the wise” can take a bite out of you.
And then TMF became “the wise”. But that’s ok, I’m glad I’m not having my feet held to the fire for statements I made when I was young.
TMF is a business, they’ve evolved, and I still think TMF is offering
a good product.
And I have honestly not missed the political posts.
They were interesting, but offered little in the way of actionable information.
I disliked 1 side, and they disliked me, and nobody’s opinion got changed, as far as I can tell.
{Tru dat!}
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I’m a bit behind you. As of this writing, there hasn’t been a post on Saul’s board at all today. Strange.
There hasn’t been a post on Saul’s board since 7/21/22 at 11:10AM. Strange indeed. Something is up.
Did MF move it behind a paywall?
AW
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Thank you for recommending this post to our Best of feature.
You put it nicely. I would say, the Fool became “the wise” because that is the way to get the most money out of people.
Tru dat!
BUT that’s mostly what business is all about.
BUT if you want to stay in business you’ve got to provide goods and/or services the people want.
Do that and you’ll have’em coming back for more, and more, and …
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Thank you for recommending this post to our Best of feature.
Three out of four investors will underperform the index thanks to the Pareto Distribution through no fault of their own.
Pareto Distribution
The Pareto distribution, named after the Italian civil engineer, economist, and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, is a power-law probability distribution that is used in description of social, quality control, scientific, geophysical, actuarial, and many other types of observable phenomena.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
“If you can’t take the heat then get out of the kitchen!”
Harry Truman?
Yes.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
- Harry S Truman
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/harry_s_truman_162028
BUT that’s mostly what business is all about.
BUT if you want to stay in business you’ve got to provide goods and/or services the people want.
Ayup. The point is, what is the point of paying for the advice I see touted on my news feed “Motley Fool issues rare ‘all in’ buy alert!” (for a while those “rare alerts” were coming almost daily), when I can get that sort of hype for free from Bubblevision?
Steve…fired Comcast, and Bubblevision, in 2010
TMF did use to make statements about “the wise” ( I think that’s how they referred to the Wall St types ), and the hidden ways that “the wise” can take a bite out of you.
And then TMF became “the wise”. But that’s ok, I’m glad I’m not having my feet held to the fire for statements I made when I was young.
I have to disagree with most of this thread. “The Wise” was, as I remember, a knock on the Wall Street types and mutual fund managers who took a slice of your investment - and usually underperformed the market to boot.
The Fool, you’ll recall, began as a DIY project, and to most onlookers remains so today. Their marketing hype aside (I’ll get to that) it’s still a “here’s what we think, do what you want” organization. This is entirely different from load mutual funds, which you cannot escape even if the fund manager changes (personnel, direction, everything). This is pretty different than going to an investment counselor who meets with you once-a-year, pushes you into “his” recommendations for which he is often compensated through kickbacks or vacation trips to ‘conferences’ or whatnot. It’s certainly different than the 2-and-20 hedge fund model.
I note that the Fool has weathered many complete changes to their business, something many companies never manage. They began with AOL, remember, on the “pay by the hour” model. Then that reversed, and while I don’t know the intricacies of the deal, presumably their compensation changed. Then they migrated to the web, complete with board strollers and “systems” (RuleBreakers! RuleMakers!) of their own. Then people asked for other boards for systems: mechanical investing and so on. Banner advertising cratered across the web, and they came up with paid newsletters, and along the way tried their own fund and I can’t remember what else.
The fact that they are still around (and thriving, by most reports. Wikipedia says they have 300 employees) is, I think, pretty remarkable given the sector they are in. Think about how much the web has changed in 30 years. Think about how much investing has changed! (Free commissions! TV ads! RobinHood!)
These boards are an artifact, a past history of the company which doesn’t hold the same luster as before. GE with lightbulbs. NBC with radio. It happens. I, for once, am grateful the boards are still around, clunky and disheveled as they are. <I*> <HTML!) </I*> I hope that this long heralded “upgrade” makes them more user friendly, but then I have no place to complain, so I don’t. But neither do I enjoy people who have taken the free ride for 25 years complaining that everything isn’t just perfect to their liking, especially when they have no skin in the game - or ever had.
OK, I said I would bop them for their marketing, and I will. I cringe when I see the screaming headlines in the ads, too, but then I have bought (and received) tens of millions of dollars in ad monies in my media career, and I know that when you find something that works, you keep doing it. It’s viciously difficult to break through the clutter and reach new people, and if you don’t find new targets you are already dying because consumers inevitably drift away. Since I am at a loss to tell the overlords how, or what their advertising should be, I shrug and let it pass. It’s not like it hurts me, or frankly most people who fall for it.
A newsletter that costs a couple hundred is probably good education for people who need it, just as the AOL boards were for me in the 90’s, even though I had been investing (sucker! Dean Witter!) for 20 years prior. If people learn, enrich, amuse (or whatever the slogan is/was) at that cost they’re far ahead of the game. It’s certainly better than the public.com app or RobinHood pushing crypto and penny stocks, and it’s fairly harmless.
So: thank you Fool, for your years of service to me. I’d like to see a few of the less contentious - but non political boards reopened, and perhaps that will happen, meanwhile here I sit at the keyboard, enjoying retirement, life, and my investing education thanks to you all and to the Fool. It ain’t so bad, if you choose to look at it that way.
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MF sold a key true message 25 years ago: the investment industry is taking you for a ride.
Bless them forever, even after they joined the investment community as they settled into senility.
david fb
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MF sold a key true message 25 years ago: the investment industry is taking you for a ride.
Bless them forever, even after they joined the investment community as they settled into senility.
This is an old complaint about TMF. They started launching premium investment subscription services back in 2002 or so. And folks were criticizing them here on the boards for joining “the Wise” for just as long. So I don’t know that they really waited for senility to make that move.
For a while, TMF retconned their definition of “the Wise” to really mean the folks that charged you lots of money to manage your investments for you - mutual fund managers and high-fee brokerages, and the like. Nothing “Wise” with giving some expert advice in how Fools could manage their own investments, especially since what they were charging (a few hundo) wouldn’t be a big percentage of most folks’ portfolio. Not many on the boards really agreed when TMFVariousandSundry would pitch that talking point, but it never changed their mind - and once TMF staff all-but-abandoned their public board presence, it became a bit of a moot point. Plus, it’s been years since that “Fool vs. Wise” dichotomy was any sizable part of their branding.
I’m not sure they had all that much of a choice - changes in the business environment for online media companies and the dotcom collapse probably destroyed the viability of their old business model, making a turn from ad-based to subscription-based a necessary move. And once they made that move, our quaint little text-based message-board community because irrelevant to their business. It’s been nice of them to let us hang out in the metaphorical unused store room of their shop for so long, but it’s not surprising that they eventually got around to pulling the plug.
Albaby
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There is a new post as of 7/23/2022 2:49 PM
MF sold a key true message 25 years ago: the investment industry is taking you for a ride.
Bless them forever, even after they joined the investment community as they settled into senility.
Between the first and the second they almost went broke and discovered that charity begins at home, to remain a business they must be profitable.
The Captain
there is no such thing as a free lunch
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