Motley Fool Reviews

The Motley Fool is one of the biggest financial services companies worldwide. Their website covers everything from investing basics, stock market analysis, retirement planning, and personal finance. All this information is available for free, and they frequently publish new articles every day.

About 20 years ago, The Motley Fool began to offer premium services. Premium services are designed to help members to archive their financial goals. Currently, they offer 32 premium services with a pricing range of $79 to $13,999 per year.

In this Motley Fool review, we will guide you through the most popular and affordable investment and stock picking services. This includes investing trends like cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence, 5G, IPO- and real-estate investing.

We’ve also included various performance insights and discounts of up to $200 off* for new members of selected Motley Fool services.

Motley Fool Services

• Motley Fool Stock Advisor
• Motley Fool Rule Breakers
• Motley Fool Everlasting Stocks
• Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement
• Motley Fool Millionacres and Mogul
• Motley Fool Options

1. Motley Fool Stock Advisor

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor service is the most popular service created by Tom and David Gardner. It was incepted in 2002 and has beaten the S&P 500 benchmark significantly. But what does that mean?

For example, if one would have invested $10,000 in 2002 in the S&P 500 index, the portfolio would be worth about $52,000 now*. But if one would have invested in the Motley Fool Stock Advisor stock recommendations, the portfolio would be up from $10,000 to $220,000*.

That means that members could have archived a higher return on investment based on the calculated by time weighted return.

Members receive two stock picks as a Motley Fool Stock Advisor member every month, always at the same time on Thursday. That means that members can easily prepare for the next investment recommendations members receive. The fool stock picking service sends trade alerts via email, and the stock advisor picks also get published on their website.

Motley Fools motto is “Smarter Happier and Richer,” and to archive those goals, they let their team of in house-analysts analyze the market to come up with recommendations of companies that already have positive earnings per share but also have potential in price movements.

Fool Stock Advisor stocks are picked with the intent to be held over the long term. It is not necessarily a buy-and hold strategy because some stocks are being sold once the company’s financials indicate that it is better to sell a stock. That means all in all that a member can easily handle the buy and sell transaction in the stock portfolio with a minimum of time effort.

But there is more for Motley Fool Stock Advisor members. The advantages of a membership are not only limited to the bi-weekly stock picks. As a member, you also get access to stock rankings, service updates, news, analysis, the video library and various tools and watchlists.

Within the member dashboard, there is the entire history of all stock recommendations ever made. That’s pure gold since its possible to immediately build a portfolio based on the recent recommendations. In addition, members see the exact price and time when the service was added, the entire track record, and the purposes of each transaction and stock pick.

There are only a few investing services out there offering similar levels of transparency. Investors need approximately 15 minutes every 2 weeks to adjust the brokerage account based on the most recent Motley Fool stock picks.

The Motley Fool also offers a 30-day membership fee back guarantee for the Stock Advisor service and a discount* for new members in the first year.

Special Offer: Click here to become a member of Motley Fool Stock Advisor for $79 ($120 discount)*.

For more information about this service, go on reading the detailed Motley Fool Stock Advisor review.

2. Motley Fool Rule Breakers

The Motley Fool Rule Breakers has some similarities to the Motley Fool Stock advisor service. First of all, members also receive two stock picks every month. Members also gain access to the member dashboard, the starter stocks, and the complete stock recommendations history with all stock picks listed by data, stock ticker and prices.

Now let’s talk about the differences compared to Stock Advisor. Instead of Thursday, where the Stock Advisor stock picks are sent out to members, you will receive the trade alert two days earlier on Thuesday. Also, it will be another week.

Stock Advisor is sent to members on Thursday in the first week of a month, Rule Breakers members will receive their trade alert on Tuesday of the second week of a month, etc.

The Motley Fool Rule Breakers focuses on growth stock recommendations. That means that the Rule Breakers analyst team focuses on companies with a high probability of long-term growth. Those stocks can be from companies with currently negative earnings per share.

So, while the Stock Advisor picks are all about companies with a positive EPS, the Rule Breakers picks can currently have a negative EPS but with the potential to grow to a profitable company.

The investment return calculations for this service start in 2004. Therefore the comparison to the S&P 500 benchmark is a bit different since it starts with another year.

A $10,000 investment in the S&P 500 back in 2004 would have generated an excellent return and boosted the portfolio to over $50,000*. But the Rule Breakers market-beating returns are better. The $10,000 starting capital in 2004 would now have grown to over $80,000*. That’s also a significant outperformance over the last 15 years.

The track record is visible in detail within the member dashboard.

Also, the Motley Fool Rule Breakers subscription is currently available with a high discount for new members.

Special Offer: Click here to become a member of Motley Fool Rule Breakers for $99 ($200 discount)*.

For more insights into this service, proceed by reading the in-depth Motley Fool Rule Breakers review.

If you are wondering how exactly Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers compare, consider reading the in-depth Motley Fool Stock Advisor vs Motley Fool Rule Breakers article.

Now, let’s have a look at Everlasting Stock in the Motley Fool review series:

3. Motley Fool Everlasting Stocks

The Motley Fool Everlasting Stocks offering is the newest lower-priced offer from The Motley Fool. Like The Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers, Everlasting Stocks is all about stock picks listed on U.S. Exchanges like Nasdaq and NYSE.

It is too early to talk about the performance since the service was incepted in 2021. But what we know is that the same successful team analyzes the stocks for this Fool stock recommendation service called Everlasting Stock.

Therefore we can expect to see another service that will outperform the S&P 500 in the long term. And by the way, this Motley Fool service is all about long term investing. To be more exact, members to this stock investing service receive immediate access to all previous stock picks when they sign up.

The picked companies are those that The Motley Fool believes any trader and investor can buy now and hold forever.

The Motley Fool team expects that it requires about 5 minutes a month to update the portfolio based on the new transactions made. As a new member, you instantly receive stock recommendations plus future stock recommendations.

As lined out in the Motley Fool Everlasting Stock review, members also have access to all previous stock picks within the member dashboard for further analysis or portfolio creation.

Special Offer: Click here to become a member of Motley Fool Everlasting Stocks for $99 ($200 discount)*.

For more information about this Motley Fool newsletter, go on reading the detailed Motley Fool Everlasting Stocks review.

4. Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement

If you are in retirement or planning for it, Rule Your Retirement is designed to archive the financial goals. The service aims to help navigate through all major financial decisions and learn how to retire sooner and smarter.

The lead advisor Robert Brokamp and his team attempt to take care of member questions, such as How much do I need to retire? How do I pay down debt and take control of my budget? Are How do I maximize my Social Security payout?

Once subscribed, members will receive an email digest on Thursday. Members also get access to the wealth of retirement tools on the RYR site with model portfolios structured to help invest in a cost-efficient way. The investments recommended are either indexed mutual funds or exchanged traded funds.

Therefore, the Rule Your Retirement service is all about conservative investments with the goal to grow the overall portfolio in the longer term. Three types of asset allocation models are offered to get the best recommendations based on where a member is in his life.

Members also become part of the Motley Fool community to interact with other members in the discussion boards, asking questions or providing personal insights. The Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement review includes further insights to the service.

Preparing for retirement can feel overwhelming. That’s why Motley Fool designed this service. It is a great resource one can rely on to plan retirement, archive retirement goals and objectives.

Special Offer: Click here to become a member of Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement for $99 ($50 discount)*.

The following service in The Motley Fool review series is about real estate investing. Is it worth it?

5. Motley Fool Millionacres

Millionacres is also a Motley Fool service and all about real estate investing. It is the only service on the list that is entirely independent of the classical fool.com website.

Millionacres.com features real estate investing guides on REITs, crowdfunding, house flipping and more. In addition, it covers real estate market trends and even financing insights and tax recommendations.

Millionacres offers two types of paid subscriptions, Real Estate Winners and Mogul.

Real Estate Winners is the more affordable service by Millionacres. It is a real estate and REIT investment newsletter. Therefore members receive specific recommendations about investment types to be part of an investment portfolio.

In addition, the Real Estate Winners analysts identify investment opportunities and send a minimum of one new recommendation every month. Members also receive updates on existing investments and essential events, access to educational content and the quarterly top 10 investment alerts.

Special Offer: Click here to become a member of Real Estate Winners for $99 ($150 discount)*.

Mogul is the second offer, and it is a real estate investment recommendation newsletter for investments in real estate equities, individual commercial real estate deals and REITs.

The Mogul team aims to provide the best possible guidance with honest recommendations and transparency. However, the service is more expensive than Real Estate Winners, and therefore the service is for more wealthy investors.

Here you find the most frequently questions to the Mogul service answered. In addition, its possible to provide feedback, and their customer service will take care of questions.

The Millionacres review includes further insights to the real estate services.

6. Motley Fool Options

Motley Fool Options is the options pick service by the Fool. Their options team created a tool that allows options traders to leverage their returns. Two types of options are traded. The first one are conservative call options with an expiration date of more than 1 year in the future. Those types of options are also called LEAPS.

The leverage comes from the way how options contracts work. One options contract gives the owner control of 100 shares of the underlying stock. For example, if an investor buys 1 call option of Apple, he controls 100 shares of Apple. The leverage results in the fact that an option buyer does not pay 100*the current share price. Instead, he only pays for the present value of the options contract, which is much cheaper.

In addition, Michael Douglass, head of messaging at The Motley Fool, added that various options trading strategies are utilized, including buying call options, covered call trades, selling put options for premium, diagonal calls, synthetic long trades, and synthetic covered calls, and bull call spreads.

Therefore it is more complex to follow the options picks than the stock picks, but members are ensured that The Motley Fool team provides insights and guidance on how to use the strategies correctly.

The track record shows that 86%* of the completed options plays made a profit. However, there is no performance chart available like it is for the stock picking service offers Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers.

The main advantage of the service is that users can profit in a bull market, bear market or even from sideway markets to generate steady income. In addition, options plays can also be used to protect the stock portfolio.

Click here to apply a $100 discount code for the Motley Fool Options service.

Motley Fool Review Summary

The brothers Tom Gardner and David Gardner belong to the most successful entrepreneurs in the finance sector. Similarweb estimates the monthly traffic on fool.com to about 50 million. The Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor was the first service and launched in 2002.

While Motley Fool Stock Advisor still has the highest number of active members and the best performance, the stock advisor picks from Motley Fool Rule Breakers. The stock recommendations from Motley Fool Everlasting Stocks have an outstanding performance since inception and consistently beat the market average and S&P 500 performance benchmark.

A stock picking service saves a lot of time. Instead of spending hours and hours analyzing stocks, you can directly rely on services from The Motley Fool to get stock picks worth the investment.

In addition, it is not that expensive to join one of their services, and the account can be set up quickly. New members only need an email address, credit card information for the payment.

The Motley Fool’s investing philosophy strongly relies on success by long-term investing with an investment horizon of 10 years and more. The cost average effect takes care of the long-term success by investing in the stock market.

The best buys now stock recommendations are an excellent way to start building a portfolio with a set of starter stocks. The Motley Fool Stock Advisor is most likely the best service to join. That’s because the Stock Advisor service has the best performance, and even short-term traders can make money by day trading the stocks when the stock picks are announced.

Another positive and yet not mentioned factor is that the stock picks are announced before market close, but they use the stock price at market close for the calculation of the returns. Therefore those members who act fast right after the announcement have a chance to generate even higher returns compared to the official tracked ones.

Is The Motley Fool Legit?

Is The Motley Fool legit? I think so. Over the past 20 years, Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers have continuously outperformed the Standard and Poor’s S&P 500. And this was not based on one lucky winner but on consistently profitable stock picks.

Think about this: over 100 stock recommendations led to 100%+ returns. Even super-rich people invest with The Motley Fool. Time magazine wrote, “Even billionaires get ideas from The Motley Fool.”

Twice a month, new stock picks will be sent to your inbox and your subscription dashboard. The team behind Stock Advisor takes care of the expert analysis of investing trends and market sentiments. It only takes five minutes a month to tune up your portfolio. Over 1,000,000 loyal premium members are already on board with The Motley Fool.

Is The Motley Fool a Reliable Source?

The performance proves that investors who followed their recommendations had a better return in their portfolio compared to the S&P 500 in the past. Yet, like with any other stock-picking service, The Motley Fool can only show past performance, and past performance is never a guarantee for the future.

One thing I like a lot is the fact that stocks are added to the portfolio to the closing price of the day when the alert is sent out to subscribers. This way, even copy trading is possible.

But instead of copying the trades right from the beginning, new subscribers should investigate the recent trades and current positions. I know this costs time, but it is crucial to understand how it works when a position is added and to what price. Also, monitor the first few trade exits. Make sure you understand the whole logic.

When Is the Best Time to Start WithTthe Motley Fool?

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor is all about long-term investing. That means that there is never a good or bad time to start investing in the way The Motley Fool does. Markets go up and down, as they did in the past and will in the future.

The key to long-term growth is consistency, patience, and picking the right stocks. Based on The Motley Fool’s success, choosing the right stocks is where The Motley Fool excels.

Related: Best Investment Newsletters

Motley Fool Stock Advisor Review Details

Motley Fool Stock Advisor is an excellent stock picking service focusing on long-term investments. Since inception the service had a return of +350%*. I have access to the program, all the historical data, the most recent stock picks, and I’ll share all my unfiltered impressions with you.

Everyone loves to be the first in line for special events. The thrill of being first makes us feel that boundless opportunities are in store for us. Wouldn’t it also be nice to be the first one to know, before everyone else, which companies might beat the average market performance?

If only there were a stock picking service with a powerful analytics team to help archive this goal; a system that could do all the work for you by analyzing 7,000+ stocks and reveal potential winners like Tesla, Amazon, and Netflix.

In this Motley Fool Stock Advisor Review I’ll take you by the hand and explain The Motley Fool stock advisor picks and subscription, and provide a discount for new members. The article is part of the comprehensive Motley Fool review series.

Motley Fool Stock Advisor Performance

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor performance is good. Since its inception, the stock picks have significantly outperformed the S&P500.

• +350% with Stock Advisor vs. +113% in the S&P500 since September 2002.

Copy Trading Opportunities

You may wonder if copy trading is possible by following The Motley Fool’s stock picks. And the clear answer is Yes. When a new trade alert comes out and a stock gets added to the portfolio, then the closing price of the current trading day is being used as a performance baseline.

That means every investor can build a portfolio in the same way by ordering the picked stocks with a market on close order. Those investors who already buy intraday may even get a better price and overall performance.

I’m sure by now you’re wondering what the price for Motley Fool is. Keep reading and you’ll soon find out.

Motley Fool Stock Picks

Motley Fools’ particular strength is the long-term success with market-beating returns. When looking at specific years, 2020 was terrific, and the performance of the 2020 picks is way above average. In 2021, Motley Fool Stock Advisor had a difficult time since most picks of 2021 are unrealized losses right now.

However, the average return of all stock picks combined still beats the market average returns. Here are the five latest picks as of February 1, 2023 with the performance insights.

The great thing about this service is the transparency. Within the premium subscription dashboard, you can see every detail. Which leads us to the feature section of this Motley Fool Stock Advisor review.

The stock picks are the main feature. The Stock Advisor investment research team analyzes thousands of stocks every week and send out new trade alerts weekly. While it might be hard to pick a stock like Amazon again (they did it back in 1997), the most recent stock picks also look promising.

Platform Navigation

Once you’ve logged in, you’ll find six navigation items:

• My Portfolios: Visualize your real portfolio positions, or create model portfolios to simulate hypothetical performance. Alternatively, link your broker account if you have a One or Backstage member subscription).
• Rankings: Here, you find a list of the top-ranked stocks in Stock Advisor based on proprietary algorithms by The Motley Fool. The list includes the ticker, trends, last recommendation, current price and return figures.
• Recommendations: The recommendations are arranged in a list with information about the company, various filters, fundamental data and the latest recommendation dates.
• News & Analysis: The news and analysis tab includes links to the latest analysis and coverage, video library, Fool live feed, reports and podcasts.
• Tools: Under tools, you find the allocator tools, indicators and portfolio simulator.
• Discuss: Join the discussion board and CAPS.

FAQs

Is The Motley Fool worth it?

Yes. We feel the long term performance for nearly 20 years clearly proves that it is worth it to join The Motley Fool services. Especially The Motley Fool Stock Advisor stock and investment recommendations worked well in recent years and outperformed the S&P 500 significantly.

Is Motley Fool a scam?

No. The Motley Fool is not a scam. On the contrary, it is a service one can trust and rely on. The customer service is there to answer questions. In addition, members have access to the entire stock pick history and get access to the starter stocks report once subscribed. Nonetheless, it is crucial to diversify the portfolio and to ensure to invest only money which one can afford to lose.

Is The Motley Fool good?

Yes. The Motley Fool has proven that the picked stocks perform by far better than the market average. The stock picking services are affordable, and each stock pick comes with a detailed explanation about why the stock has been chosen.

Does The Motley Fool subscription renew after a year?

Yes. The renewal happens every 12 months, and members will be charged with the amount that is then valid for the next 12 months. If you do not want to let the service renew, make sure to cancel the subscription before the next payment circle.

Is there a Motley Fool app?

No. There is no Motley Fool app for iOS or Android available. However, members can log in to the Motley Fool services from any device by using a browser like Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

• *Returns as of January 6, 2023. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Individual investment results may vary. All investing involves risk of loss.
• *$79 promotional price for new members only. $120 discount based on current list price of Stock Advisor of $199/year. Membership will renew annually at the then current list price.
• *$99 promotional price for new members only. $200 discount based on current list price of Rule Breakers of $299/year. Membership will renew annually at the then current list price.
• *$99 promotional price for new members only. $200 discount based on current list price of Everlasting Stocks of $299/year. Membership will renew annually at the then current list price.
• *$99 promotional price for new members only. $50 discount based on current list price of Rule Your Retirement of $149/year. Membership will renew annually at the then current list price.
• *$99 promotional price for new members only. $150 discount based on current list price of Real Estate Winners $249/year. Membership will renew annually at the then current list price.

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See Also: Zacks Premium Review