What mortals these Fools be
Written: Mar 27 '00
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Pros: Solid, well-written, and interesting basic financial information. Very good message boards (I'll write about these separately)
Cons: Hypocritical criticism of the financial establishment. Nearly cult-like atmosphere.
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| AuntieEmma's Full Review: Motley Fool |
Fools, they call themselves, inspired by Shakespeare's court jesters. Instead of kings, the Motley Fool's targets are full-service brokers, financial advisers, the mainstream press, and all other purveyors of conventional financial wisdom, who the Fools refer to, with irony, as the Wise. You don't need the Wise, the Fools say. "Think for yourself," they proclaim. And, indeed, for novices or the financially disorganized, there is a wealth of basic information on the Motley Fool site that will help them do just that. Get out of debt, TMF says. Pay off your credit cards. Learn how to be a savvy shopper. Stop paying high commissions on your investments. All solid, sensible advice, and while the information is nothing that you couldn't find elsewhere, it's nicely written and easy to understand, dished up with humor and style and an encouraging, "sure, you can do it" attitude.
And so it's no surprise that TMF became successful. Started several years ago by two young brothers, liberal arts majors, in a small corner on AOL, they now have a website with millions of readers, syndicated newspaper columns, and a radio show. And hundreds of employees. And an IPO in the works. They are, in short, becoming a media empire.
And ay, there's the rub. For if a fool, whose role is to see through the grandeur of the king, aspires instead to become a king himself, can he still be relied on to tell potentially painful truths?
The Gardner brothers now regularly appear as expert guests on financial shows. They sell research reports on stocks which can be distinguished from "Wise" reports only by using hair-splitting logic. Their stock picks are sometimes influential enough to move the market. And yet, even as they become more and more a part of the Wise establishment, they continue to criticize the Wise, as if they were still the naive outsiders they used to be.
Their stock picking methods are the truly sexy part of the site -- that's what appears to be fueling TMF's growth, not the basic financial information, valuable as it is. In particular, their Rule Breaker portfolio has had astonishing returns, riding the wave of the "new economy" stock mania. But is their investment success based on skill or on luck? If it's the latter, if we're in a bubble, and the bubble bursts and the model portfolios go "poof" -- then the entire Foolish empire, resting as it does on the portfolio's returns and relying on faith to justify them, could very well come tumbling down. And that would be a fascinating story -- a story about people who rose to great power, only to be brought down by their own weaknesses and flaws -- the kind of tragic story Shakespeare himself might have found a worthy subject.
Recommended:
Yes
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AuntieEmma
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Location: San Francisco
Reviews written: 46
Trusted by: 67 members
About Me:
Get back! Get back! Get back to where you once belonged.
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