The Motley Fool
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | July 1993 |
| Founder(s) | David and Tom Gardner, and Erik Rydholm |
| Headquarters | Alexandria, Virginia, United States |
| Slogan | To Educate, Amuse & Enrich |
| Website | http://www.fool.com http://www.fool.co.uk http://www.fool.com.au |
The Motley Fool is a multimedia financial-services company that provides financial solutions for investors through various stock, investing, and personal finance products. The Alexandria, Virginia-based private company was founded in July 1993 by co-chairmen and brothers David and Tom Gardner, and Erik Rydholm, who has since left. The company employs approximately 200 people.
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[edit] The business
[edit] Investment advice
The Motley Fool offers a wide range of stock news and analysis at its free website, Fool.com, as well as through a variety of paid investment advice services. The services, many of which combine a traditional paper newsletter with interactive electronic discussion boards and other tools, cover a range of styles from small caps to international stocks to options to shorting.
[edit] Mutual funds
In June 2009, Motley Fool Funds launched its first mutual fund, Motley Fool Independence Fund[1].
In November 2010, Motley Fool funds launched Motley Fool Great America Fund.
[edit] History
The name "Motley Fool" is taken from Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It.[2][3]
In August 1994, brothers David and Tom Gardner parlayed their one-year-old investment newsletter into a content partnership with America Online. The Motley Fool gained renown for its early recommendations of stocks, such as America Online (AOL) and Amazon.com, and was featured in a cover story for Fortune magazine (1996) about the emergence of online interactive discussion as a new form of investment research. In April 1997, the "Fools," as the site's enthusiasts refer to themselves, migrated their home page off AOL and onto the Fool.com website[4] and established a site in the UK, fool.co.uk.
Motley Fool content is available to the public on Fool.com, in its Motley Fool Money podcast, and nationally syndicated newspaper column. The Gardners have written several bestselling books on investing, most recently New York Times bestseller Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio, published in December 2008. The best-known of these is The Motley Fool Investment Guide, which in 2003 was called the "#1 All-Time Classic" by investment club members of the NAIC.
When the plentiful financing dried up and the Dot-com bubble collapsed in 2001, the company, in common with its peers, ran into trouble, resulting in the loss of 80% of the staff in a series of three layoffs and the closure of its nascent operations in Germany and Japan. Following the 2000–2002 downturn of the stock market and the Internet, The Motley Fool started to offer more services, such as a range of investment styles from small-cap stock investing to growth and technology stocks to dividend investing.
A December 2005 Washington Post article detailed the Motley Fool's 10-year lease for new offices in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, taking over office space vacated by Time-Life.
In September 2006, the company unveiled its newest offering, Motley Fool CAPS, a service which monitors and ranks the most successful stock pickers amongst its members.
[edit] Premium services
[edit] Motley Fool Stock Advisor
In April 2002, the company launched the first of its premium subscription services. David and Tom Gardner pick one stock each month in a brotherly competition to best each other and the S&P 500. According to Mark Hulbert of The Hulbert Financial Digest, for the past five years the brothers have earned an average return of 22%, annualized, versus a comparable return of 7% for the Wilshire 5000.[5] They maintain a consistent buy-and-hold style, tending to let their winning stocks compound returns over longer periods of time.
[edit] Others
- Motley Fool PRO
- Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio
- Motley Fool Rule Breakers
- Motley Fool Options
- Motley Fool Alpha
- Motley Fool BIG Short
- Motley Fool Special Ops
- Motley Fool Inside Value
- Motley Fool Global Gains
- Motley Fool Income Investor
- Motley Fool Hidden Gems
- Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement
[edit] Community discussion boards
The Motley Fool hosts on-line discussion boards for the purpose of helping people make better financial decisions. Registered users can get access to all non-newsletter boards that cover a variety of stock, personal finance, and investing concepts. The discussion boards are used heavily to recruit future Motley Fool staffers, with frequent posters first awarded free subscriptions to their favorite newsletters, to eventually receiving a small stipend and "TMF" username moniker to patrol the boards. Some veteran posters have gone on to found investment newsletters and hedge funds of their own.
[edit] The Foolish Four
In 2000, the Motley Fool ran into controversy with its eventually discredited Foolish Four investment theory.[6] The theory had been constituted squarely on the shoulders of the Dogs of the Dow analysis popular at the time. In the same year, Motley Fool writer Ann Coleman admitted that the Foolish Four method "turned out to be not nearly as wonderful a strategy as we thought."[7]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ New mutual fund is both motley and foolish
- ^ Harold Bloom, Pamela Loos As You Like It 2007 p10 "Indeed, after meeting Touchstone, Jaques wants to change his own life, to take on the life of a motley fool himself."
- ^ William Shakespeare As You Like It Sparklesoup Classics 2004 p23 "DUKE SENIOR. Why, how now, monsieur! what a life is this, That your poor friends must woo your company? What, you look merrily! JAQUES. A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' th' forest, A motley fool."
- ^ About The Motley Fool:History
- ^ Grande expectations for Starbucks? - MarketWatch
- ^ "Dogs of the Dow" and the "Foolish Four"
- ^ Fool Four Moves On
[edit] External links
- The Motley Fool official site
- The Motley Fool UK official site
- The Motley Fool Australia site
- Motley Fool CAPS
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