The Sneak Peek: Fool Portfolios

Investing Strategies Abandoned Arctic Outpost #13
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For those who may not have yet received the email notice:

The gist of it:

10 + stock recommendations each month

WEEKI TUESDAY • Firecrackers & Digital Explorers
THURSDAY • Stock Advisor & Hidden Gems
WEEK2 TUESDAY • Trends & Global Partners
THURSDAY • Dividend Investor & Value Hunters
WEEK 3 THURSDAY • Stock Advisor & Rule Breakers
WEEK THURSDAY • Stock Rankings

  • Access to 35 real-money portfolios, currently backed by more than $30 million of The Motley Fool’s own capital

  • Full access to a suite of real-money portfolios managed by Tom Gardner — from the Everlasting Portfolio (which contains the only publicly traded stocks he personally owns) to our proprietary AI Playbook portfolio

  • Monthly “best of” rankings across 10 distinct investing strategies — including small-cap and microcap, digital assets and crypto, growth, value, dividends, international, and more

  • Specialized microcap recommendations with Firecrackers and digital asset and crypto recommendations with Digital Explorers

  • Our new Trends scorecard, which combines several timely investing trends (including 5G, biotech, fintech, augmented and virtual reality, energy, and many more) in one powerful scorecard with ongoing monthly recommendations, stock rankings, and fresh coverage and research

  • Value Hunters (value stocks), Global Partners (international stocks), and Options (options strategies) for even more diversification

  • Special access to the “Vault” — comprising 16 locked Motley Fool scorecards that have completed their investing journeys and are now exclusively available in this archive

KEY Features:

  • FOOL IQ
    The most powerful tool we’ve ever created for researching companies. Fool IQ+ offers a snapshot of each company and its financial highlights, quant projections on a stock’s estimated risk and returns, comprehensive access to historical financial statements, advanced charting, and more.

Note 1) Great to have a tool to research companies but - to be honest, isn’t that why we pay The Fool?

  • PORTFOLIO STRATEGIES
    Cautious, Moderate, and Aggressive model portfolios designed to match any risk tolerance, using stocks, ETFs, and cash management.

Note 2) Saul has this covered

  • MONTHLY STOCK RANKINGS
    from each investing style as well as across Fool Portfolios.

Note 3) Same Ole Same Ole

  • GAME PLAN+
    (coming soon!) is your source of financial planning content and tools, featuring our top ETFs as well as tools and resources to support portfolio management and more.

Note 4) Could be useful.

  • PREMIUM ACCESS
    to coverage, programming, and Analyst Insights from our Fool Portfolios team of advisors and analysts — including Epic Opportunities , a members-only podcast.

Note 5). Well… if someone ponies up the premium bucks then they shouldn’t be all that surprised to get premium access.

  • QUANT 5YR
    a proprietary rating designed to communicate our conviction in an investment’s ability to outperform the market over the next five years, available across stocks recommended within Fool Portfolios .

Note 6) Ho hum

  • THE PGI INDICATOR
    an indicator used by some Foolish investors (including Tom Gardner) to gauge investor sentiment and help inform cash management decisions.

Note 7) Investor sentiment is self explicatory via share price and movement. I have the All-Too-Lovely, the bank, and and accountant for cash management decisions

  • SIMULATORS
    an interactive tool showing the probability that a portfolio would have made money over different time periods while holding a given number of stocks, based on the historical performance of random Motley Fool stock picks.

Note 8) I put Selma Hayek in the darn thing and nothing happened.

  • EXPANDED UNIVERSE
    of stock recommendations and rankings, coverage and analysis, and AI-driven scores and research.

Note 9). Way too much sugar for a dime.

I am not sure what to think about all this but the comments by folks that received the email have been brutal. Someone needs to perhaps reach out to The Fool and run over the old KISS system. Or something like that.

The Rest of The Story:

Service Transition Specifics:

As you can imagine, this upgrade and product suite transformation involves a lot of moving parts — so if you’re curious about how specific Motley Fool services will be expressed in Fool Portfolios, read on.

As part of this upgrade, the rich track records and ongoing research from the investing brands listed below will live on within the upgraded Fool Portfolios experience. In addition to Stock Advisor, you will gain access to investing brands only available as a group within the Fool Portfolios membership — they will no longer be offered for individual memberships:

Dividend Investor
Everlasting: 10X
Everlasting Portfolio
Everlasting Stocks (now Hidden Gems)
Firecrackers
Global Partners
Hidden Gems 2023
IPO Trailblazers
Moneymakers
Options
Ownership Portfolio
Partnership Portfolio
Rising Stars 2020
Rising Stars 2021
Rising Stars 2022
Real Estate Winners
Rule Breakers
Value Hunters

So - you can no longer just subscribe to Rule Breakers?

More:

As part of this upgrade, the services listed below will be combined into our new Trends scorecard in Fool Portfolios. Trends is designed to combine timely investing trends (including 5G, biotech, fintech, augmented and virtual reality, energy, and many more) in one powerful scorecard — featuring ongoing monthly recommendations, stock rankings, and fresh coverage and research. Put differently … instead of just one trend, you get all of them!

Artificial Intelligence
Augmented Reality
Next-Gen Supercycle
Biotech Breakthroughs 2023
Blast Off
Energy Insiders 2.0
Fintech Fortunes
Interconnected Opportunities
Virtual Revolution
Future of Entertainment
Trend-Spotter

And More:

As part of this upgrade, we’re bringing all of the content and investing IP from the bundles listed below into your new, upgraded Fool Portfolios experience. Consequently, these bundles will no longer be offered — because we believe they serve members better as a group and paired with the additional benefits in your new Fool Portfolios membership. As a result — instead of just two portfolios, you’re getting a whole lot more as part of your new Fool Portfolios membership!

AI + Boss Bundle
Augmented Reality + Artificial Intelligence Bundle
Boss Mode
Digital Explorers + Augmented Reality Bundle
Fintech Fortunes + Artificial Intelligence Bundle
Hidden Gems 2023 + Everlasting Portfolio Bundle
Market Pass + Backstage
Market Pass + Firecrackers Bundle
Market Pass + Next-Gen Supercycle Bundle
Market Pass + Interconnected Opportunities Bundle
Market Pass + Platinum Bundle
Market Pass + Virtual Revolution Bundle
Market Pass + Value Hunters Bundle
Market Pass + Artificial Intelligence Bundle
Platinum

All the Best,

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Sounds…overwhelming. But hey with all of that “stuff” I can bet they find at least one good stock.

Andy

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I never would have imagined that the Fool would spend so many years flailing around with gimmicks instead of maintaining their prior focus. I just scanned the stuff you listed and thought “blah, blah, blah” in terms of the past offerings… and I didn’t pay enough attention to what their new direction might be. Why? I haven’t seen more than minimal useful content from the Fool for a long time… and re-packaging the poo isn’t going to make it smell better.

Look at this excerpt:

What do you want to bet there is 80%-90% overlap there? I know when I was wearing the TMF, I compared some of the services and the overlap was enormous. Just silly. And it seems to me to just be designed to separate money from rookie investors instead of helping them… which would help the Fool in the long run.

Just Stock Advisor for me. Maybe they’d be better off offering some of the old stuff. “Inside Value” had a happy following… and they discarded them. Maybe one or two other old time services would be good too.

Rob
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

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Somehow - someway…The Fool just lost its way, easy dollars/profit manufactured on the back of its original soul banked by the trust of a large and growing customer base: Have success with a couple of core services? Why just create a bunch more, piggy backing writ large - as many as the customers would pay for. Undoubtedly the brothers have made book, a lot of book, on all - or at the very least, most of them. Until - overload, overlap and the creative marketing, well oiled, think-up-brand-new-services well went dry. All in all sad really: Say it ain’t so Tom?..David?

Now having said that - you have to give the Fool its due. It has helped a great many ordinary every day people become proficient and sometimes knowledgable investors. And perhaps all is not lost - perhaps we - as long time Fools and customers simply don’t know the whole story…the vision. Could well be - after all, we weren’t smart enough to create a Fool enterprise that was revolutionary and truly needed. They were. And even though it appears that the Fool is operating on only one engine with the loss of David - it hasn’t totally crash landed. However, on the off chance that, unless they are simply blinded by the desire to make more and more - they may yet turn what appears to be a huge mess… around. Moreover…in some way that visually and logically escapes me - perhaps the looming changes are the very beginning of righting the ship. Having said that - the overall Fool construction schematic I reviewed and posted is at its best an honest effort and at worst perhaps just setting the dumpster on fire.

Deep down - I fear that consolidating all the various fairly new subscription services under the Fool Portfolio umbrella simply frees up space for future subscription services yet to be named or revealed - which; at some later date in the not to awfully distant future, get conscripted into another self contained storage bin labelled something like: Fool Portfolios #2.

We’ll see I suppose, but I suspect that for now I’ll just take the next available exit ramp - step aside a bit (Maybe stick with Stock Advisor also and only) and take a wait and see approach. Maybe.

All the Best

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I’m sorry that I have to agree with you XMF Rob. There are so many different “services” now, it is hard to keep track. They seem to come and go so quickly. What happened to holding stocks for a very long time. It seems that portfolios are created, and three years later, poof, it goes away. Who treats their portfolio that way?!

As you say Rob, there is an awful lot of overlap, much more than in the day when Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Hidden Gems (the old one), and Income Investor were around. Why would you get rid of Income Investor (invest in ‘top-quality income stocks’) - it was rolled into Market Pass in April 2018 and, honestly, I don’t even know if Market Pass is still there. But now there is a new Dividend Investor, that looks and sounds remarkably like the old Income Investor.

Change for change’s sake is not beneficial, and it seems that MF has lost its way with all the change.
As a Motley Fool One subscriber and one who has benefitted greatly by subscribing to MF, it is just a little frustrating to see this happening. I continue to use MF for the foreseeable future - with my portfolios containing > 200 stocks, dropping it would create its own set of problems.
Cheers,
Mark

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hey Rob,
well said…I remember when I first came across TMF in 1999, and the idea was to get…stock ideas! I just want some stock picks and some explanation around each pick.

I never understood this weird/side spinoff of the message boards. Although I don’t seem to see them as much, I pointed out as they were approaching the change-over, that there are a lot of TMF “articles” on stocks, yet no way to comment on those articles.

I suggested that they merge things, and if you had to be a subscriber that was fair, but idea would be I belong to Rule-Breakers (for example) and a TMF article pops up on XYZ stock. I mentioned that every article should be a new thread under that stock’s message board ticker, and the writer of the article should look to reply to any posts to that thread, at least for the next couple of weeks. You would encourage interaction and engagement with the articles and build up that “exclusivity” feel in knowing you couldn’t reply or add your two cents or ask a question unless you were a subscriber of something. Win win win.

Instead you have fool.com completely separated from these message boards…huh?

Twitter/X is a cesspool of bots all encouraging people to follow them on discord, seemingly no matter which ticker you search for. Stocktwits is amusing but essentially a modern day RagingBull cesspool. SeekingAlpha was ok, if not just for the ER transcripts, but they want too much at the moment, imo, for what you get.

I think there is a real opportunity out there for TMF to reestablish that 90’s/2000’s vibe of being the go-to for stock picking. I think they just need more cohesion between mssg boards and articles and the main site, and need to cut down on all the fluff and get back to basics with a couple of basic stock picking strategies.

Pull a Bezos and steal the best ideas from the past and current sites out there and repackage it up!

Dreamer

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I truly wish that all the “powers that be” at the Fool just read your post.

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I’ve had good success with them. I follow certain podcasters and related guests on those 'casts. As a result, I understand TSLA far better than the yapping on the Fool board… and I was introduced to a multibagger battery company.

SA led me to APP, which has been >10x for me this year as well as CLS. (I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest anyone should invest in either of those two. APP is VERY highly valued right now and CLS has a tbd growth future.

Rob

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Hi Rob, always good to hear from you. Can I just ask if you have given up on SMCI or do you still see value? At one time you said you would be going in big into TSLA, has the day arrived? Value your opinion, hope I’m not being pushy.

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I was about 70% NVDA for much of the year… and much of the rest was SMCI at one point. I watched SMCI go up to $1200 and sold a chunk at $800 (all pre-split obviously). I finally eliminated most of my SMCI position after the auditor left and most of the profits I had with the company were lost. Tsk, tsk.

Since then, SMCI got the new auditor and I bought a single call option (Jan26) that is now in the loss column but I have a lot of time to see it turn profitable. In my OPINION, the auditor will see some significant issues that need to be addressed in terms of ethics… but I don’t know if the company will adequately address them. As for the business, it appears to be doing very well. So what should be done?

That’s a bit of a tough one. Potentially a very profitable investment with an ethics deficient company? On the surface, it seems to be one to avoid, but I’m continuing to hang around with my single call option and I’d be willing to invest more heavily IF they can convince the auditor and Wall Street that they’ll clean up their act.

In the meantime, I have alternatives!

My expectation for 2024 was to ride NVDA up to $160-$180, then shift a big chunk of that NVDA position into TSLA right about NOW… when a first tranche of my NVDA position became long term capital gain (December 18). I knew TSLA would be taking off due to closely following developments at the company.

Whoops!

As it turned out, TSLA started rising a bit sooner than expected, so I changed my plan. I liquidated a lot of NVDA call options within three IRAs and started buying TSLA call options. A large amount are Jan26 $230 calls and then I went back to those IRAs and sold almost all the remaining ones in the IRAs and got Jan26 $320 calls. TSLA calls are now around 64% of our portfolio.

Those changes have been VERY profitable. I still expect NVDA to rise in 2025… expecting it to hit $200 or so sometime in the next 12 months. The remaining tranches of NVDA call options become long term capital gains in February and March, so I’ll have a lot of flexibility next year and the tax hit will still be a bit eye watering when the time comes to close them.

Where will that money go? Maybe I’ll roll some/most of the options over. We’ll see what happens. I could well just buy TSLA stock in lieu of the call options because we may enter a TSLA share price plateau… or not. $500 for TSLA is higher than I expected for December 2024, but it’s quite possible to see it double by the end of next year with new models, FSD, robotaxi, new Megapack capacity, Semi and Optimus. No doubt, that will seem a bit delusional to some folks, but I guarantee you that 99% of serious investors DO NOT REALIZE what is happening at Tesla. Those crazy Tesla initiatives might seem to be unlikely… and many of the products are late… but they are coming.

Bottom line, the Tesla car business will continue to grow… but it will look like a rounding error in terms of it’s significance in coming years. In the absence of a macro event like societal collapse, Tesla IS the future and one of the very best investment opportunities for coming decades. As a reminder, I am not an “investing professional” and none of my thoughts should be relied on as individual investment advice… and do your own due diligence.

Disclosure: As of mid-December, my portfolio is up a bit more than 800% for 2024, much exceeding my expectations for the year. I expect 2025 to be quite profitable, but not like 2024 in percentage terms for the portfolio. Current holdings: TSLA, NVDA, EOSE, APP, CLS, SMCI and PGY. The last three positions about 2% of the total. I may dump APP and CLS and may make changes in any of the others as well and perhaps will find new ones too. Most of our personal cash flow comes from investing, with a small amount from good 'ol Social Security.

Rob
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

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Dear Rob
Sincerely appreciate you taking the time to respond and explain your actions so clearly. I have learnt a lot from you and am in your debt. Sincerely

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And the World Record for 2024 goes to…

Congrats, Rob!

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I just got carried away. I benefit myself as well when I explain what I’m thinking… it forces me to be more clear.

I closed that first tranche of NVDA call options this morning. The stock was down a bit and now… naturally… it’s up. Coulda made a good amount more if I had hit it better, but that’s the way it goes! lol

Rob

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