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I clicked on a link and was taken to a video, which troubled me a bit and is a bit different from what I expect of the Motley Fool, of which people have presented as offering advice like "Live below your means." The video, masterfully presented to be grabbing and engaging, offers a free lunch by revealing the revolutionary new secret sauce technology powering possibly the next Apple Watch and some of its competitors, and while it makes no direct claim (at least in the portion before I closed it down) about what your ROI will be for following this stock tip, it keeps telling how it is riding on the coattails of perceptive investment decisions that have returned a hundredfold.

I looked and did not notice any statements that this was a paid advertisement and did not represent Motley Fool.

Has Motley Fool jumped the shark, or is this something separate from what I understand to be a good source of financial advice? (Is this a classy pump-and-dump?)

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  • I don't know the answer, but IMO, the idea of a teaser is to actually get to the point at some point. I lost interest around the 8 minute mark.
    – InbetweenWeekends
    Sep 25, 2015 at 13:16
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    For what it's worth, I recall that video. 2 minutes in, I decided I'd never click on a Fool link again. Jumped the shark is right.
    – JTP - Apologise to Monica ♦
    Sep 25, 2015 at 16:45
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    24 seconds in they have "BI Intelligence"... BI stands for Business Intelligence. So whatever market insight they supposedly have they haven't quite mastered acronyms yet.
    – Dave
    Sep 25, 2015 at 16:48
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    I think they mis-stated it. It should have been "BS Intelligence". :-(
    – Peter K.
    Sep 25, 2015 at 18:12
  • I seem to recall that even 20 years ago when I was active in their forums, their main source of income seemed to be selling their newsletters. It's sad that they're using those stupid "avoid getting to the point" videos to do so now, but sadly not surprising.
    – stannius
    Apr 16, 2019 at 18:32

2 Answers 2

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The Fools have a range of advice from common-sense to speculative, aimed at different audiences (one hopes). As always, don't take anyone's word for it; think it through and decide whether the risk/reward ratio is really in your favor and how much you can afford to risk. They're good on the basics, but the more advanced they get, the more risk there is that they've got it wrong. That last is true of any advisor unless they have information that the rest of us don't.

You can learn some things from their explanations of their reasoning without necessarily taking their conclusions as gospel.

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These advertisements try to take advantage of the short term memory loss of older people. If you keep an old person watching long enough they will forget why they started watching in the first place. Yet they trust themselves and assume that it was for a good reason. So the long winded salespitch succeeds with older people who tend to have more money to invest anyway.

Yes, I think that Motley Fool has jumped the shark.

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    I am 71 so just to answer the old person statement; I am not stupid! Still angry at former $ advisor for not buying Apple when Jobs was out. Says never to buy individual stock! Dision time!
    – user33950
    Oct 10, 2015 at 18:10

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