The Motley Fool

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Motley Fool
MotleyFoollogo.png
Type of businessPrivate
Type of site
Financial advisory services
FoundedJuly 1993; 25 years ago (1993-07)
Headquarters
Alexandria, Virginia
,
United States
Area servedUnited States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong
Founder(s)David Gardner and Tom Gardner, and Erik Rydholm
Websitewww.fool.com

The Motley Fool is a multimedia financial services company that provides financial advice for investors through various stock, investing, and personal finance services. The Alexandria, Virginia-based private company was founded in July 1993 by co-chairmen and brothers David Gardner and Tom Gardner, and Erik Rydholm, who has since left the company. The company employs over 300 people.

Business[edit]

The Motley Fool, LLC offers stock news and analysis on its website.[1]

The services, which provide online stock analysis and research with interactive discussion boards and other tools, cover a range of styles from small caps to international stocks, to options, to shorting.[1] The Motley Fool has operations in the UK,[2] Australia,[3] Canada,[4] Germany,[5] Singapore,[6] Hong Kong,[7] and Japan[8] In 2013, the Hulbert Financial Digest ranked the performance of 200-plus investment-advisory services over the last five years. Three Motley Fool services ranked in the top 3 positions.[9]

History[edit]

The name "Motley Fool" is taken from Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It.[10]

In August 1994, brothers David and Tom Gardner parlayed their one-year-old investment newsletter into a content partnership with America Online.[11] An April Fool's joke designed to teach an investing lesson would put The Motley Fool on the map, and in The Wall Street Journal, for the first time.[12] Tom and David became the talk of the town (literally) after they were profiled in the "Talk of the Town" section of the New Yorker.[13] The story caught the attention of a talent agent in Manhattan who helped Tom and David land a book deal. The Motley Fool Investment Guide would go on to become a New York Times and Business Week bestseller.[14] Bloomberg wrote about The Motley Fool's "Fanatical following."[15] In April 1997, the site was moved from AOL to the Fool.com website.[16]

In 1999, Motley Fool ran into controversy with its eventually discredited Foolish Four investment theory, which had been marketed as a way to "crush mutual funds [in] only 15 minutes a year" by using a simple mathematical formula to find stocks likely to grow much more than average.[17][18] This stock-picking technique was referred to as "investment hogwash in its purest form" by Money writer Jason Zweig in an August 1999 article titled "False Profits." [19] Zweig also called it "one of the most cockamamie stock-picking formulas ever concocted" in his 2003 commentary in the revised edition of Benjamin Graham's acclaimed Value investing book, The Intelligent Investor.

Motley Fool writer Ann Coleman admitted in 2000 that the Foolish Four method "turned out to be not nearly as wonderful a strategy as we thought."[20]

During the financial crisis and the dot-com bubble collapse in 2001, the company ran into trouble, resulting in the loss of 80% of the staff in a series of three layoffs and the closure of its operations in Germany and Japan.[21]

Following the 2000–2002 stock market downturn, Motley Fool shifted from an advertising-based business model to a subscription-based business model. In April 2002, the company launched the first of its premium subscription services.

Over the years, The Motley Fool has testified against mutual fund fees,[22] in support of fair financial disclosure,[23] on the collapse of Enron,[24] and the IPO process.[25]

In 1999, the SEC proposed Regulation Fair Disclosure, which would require companies to simultaneously give important information to Wall Street analysts and the public at large. In December 1999, Bill Barker wrote an article titled "SEC Levels Playing Field" on Fool.com and told readers to go to the SEC's site and post a comment.[26] In the July 2, 2001 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Arthur Levitt former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman is quoted saying “Two thirds of our letters came from Fools. Without them, Reg FD would not have happened.” [27]

Company Culture[edit]

The company received the 2014 and 2015 nationwide honor for being "the No. 1 Medium-Sized Company to Work for in the United States" from Glassdoor.com.[28][29][30] In 2017, Washingtonian named The Motley Fool in their 50 Greatest Places to Work in DC.[31] In that same year, DC Inno named The Motley Fool one of the "coolest" places to work in Washington, D.C. Its employees are given significant flexibility, for example, unlimited vacation time,[32] in addition to numerous benefits, including traditional benefits such as health insurance as well as benefits such as haircuts and money specifically earmarked for investing in publicly traded companies.[33]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "The Motley Fool". The Motley Fool. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  2. ^ "Home". The Motley Fool UK. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  3. ^ "Home". Motley Fool Australia. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  4. ^ "Home". The Motley Fool Canada. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  5. ^ "Home". The Motley Fool Deutschland (in German). Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  6. ^ "Home". The Motley Fool Singapore. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  7. ^ "The Motley Fool Hong Kong | Helping the world invest. Better". www.fool.hk (in Chinese). Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  8. ^ "The Motley Fool Japan, K.K." www.motleyfool.co.jp (in Japanese). Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  9. ^ Hulbert, Mark (2013-08-03). "Look Who's on Top Now". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  10. ^ "About The Motley Fool". The Motley Fool. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  11. ^ "Who Needs America Online?". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  12. ^ Doward, Jamie (April 29, 2000). "If the jester's cap fits ..." the Guardian. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  13. ^ "What a (Motley) Fool Believes". The New Yorker. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  14. ^ "The Motley Fool Investment Guide". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  15. ^ "Terms of Service Violation". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2018-10-01.
  16. ^ "About The Motley Fool". The Motley Fool. Retrieved 2018-10-01.
  17. ^ Graham, Benjamin (2003). The Intelligent Investor. http://webcontent.harpercollins.com/text/excerpts/pdf/0060583282.pdf: Harper Collins. pp. 44–45. ISBN 0-06-055566-1.
  18. ^ "Investor Home - Dow 10, Foolish Four and other Dow Dividend Strategies". www.investorhome.com. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  19. ^ JasonZweig.com, info AT (June 24, 2015). "False Profits". Jason Zweig. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  20. ^ "Fool.com: Fool Four Moves On [Foolish Four] December 29, 2000". August 16, 2013. Archived from the original on 2013-08-16. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  21. ^ "A Wake for the Motley Fools". Washington Post. February 10, 2001. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  22. ^ "Fool.com: Mutual Funds -- Costs -- Mr. Gardner Goes to Washington". zing.ncsl.nist.gov. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  23. ^ "Testimony, Sept. 13 Hearing on Auditor Independence Proposal". www.sec.gov. Retrieved 2018-10-01.
  24. ^ "Financial Collapse of Enron". C-SPAN.org. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  25. ^ "Initial Public Offering Process". C-SPAN.org. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  26. ^ Barker, Bill (March 21, 2000). "Fool.com: The SEC Needs Your Help (Special)". zing.ncsl.nist.gov. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  27. ^ Journal, Ianthe Jeanne DuganStaff Reporter of The Wall Street. "Followers of the Motley Fool Are Suffering, and Not Gladly". WSJ. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  28. ^ "The Motley Fool Named the Best Medium-Sized Company To Work For in the US". The Motley Fool. December 11, 2013. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
  29. ^ Nycz-Conner, Jennifer (December 10, 2014), "The Motley Fool Tops Glassdoor's List of Best Places to Work", Washington Business Journal Morning Edition, retrieved December 12, 2014
  30. ^ Glassdoor (December 9, 2014), Glassdoor: Motley Fool Repeats as #1 Best Small & Medium Company to Work For 2015, retrieved October 1, 2018
  31. ^ "50 Great Places to Work in Washington, DC". Washingtonian. March 7, 2017. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  32. ^ "How a "Foolish" Culture Became a Recruiting Powerhouse for This Finance Company". business.linkedin.com. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  33. ^ "Compensations & Benefits". Careers - The Motley Fool. Retrieved July 10, 2018.

External links[edit]

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