Just for fun, the other day, I signed up for Motley Fool subscription, because I had never done it before. It was only $89 for a year. I subscribed knowing I could cancel in 30 days and get a full refund.
It's only been a couple days but wow, I've known they like to try and pick "disruptive innovation" companies like Cathie Wood does, but it seems like that "sector" is over-saturated! Selling off quite a bit the past few months in comparison to S&P 500 etc..
Yesterday, May 9 2022, VTI dropped 3.54%, QQQ dropped only 3.91%.. but ARKK dropped a whopping 9.86%. Motley Fool's top 10 Timely Stock picks dropped 7.35% as well -- equally weighted.
So it seems like the subscription is just a complete waste and I'll probably get a refund before the 30 days are up.
I find many of the companies Cathie Wood picks aren't truly disruptive. E.g. Zoom, Roku, Coinbase, Robinhood, etc.. really? Zoom and Roku have TONS of competition. A small team of developers could write a competitive product to Zoom in probably 6 months at most. Roku has competition from Apple TV, Amazon Fire Stick etc., along with the plethora of streaming services which have also been declining in value lately -- heck CNN+ had to cancel their streaming service in less than a month of it going live. Regarding, Robinhood? It was disruptive at one point but it sure isn't now with most big brokerages offering free commissions, including the ability to designate beneficiaries to individual accounts, avoiding probate -- with Robinhood it has to go through the estate/probate. Coinbase.. really? She pushes cryptocurrencies and there are several Motley Fools which like crypto as well. I think it's a complete joke and agree with Buffet and Munger: Tulips & Turds. Square/Block is also another big holding of her's. Jack Dorsey just recently praised Elon for wanting to purchase Twitter.. all three are crypto lovers and to me just like to really hype things up. To me ARKK, Crypto, Tesla are just huge speculative bubbles which are now starting to pop -- Tesla dropped 9% yesterday. Cathie Wood needs to own up to her mistakes instead of blaming passive index funds -- Jim Cramer has said so on his show as well. Her ARKK fund almost 4x'd in one year from Mar 2020 to Feb 2021.. it was PUMPED and now for the past year it's been DUMPING. I looked at the fundamentals of her top picks in ARKK and even now after a 75% drop, they look horrific! Incredibly high P/E and P/S .. horrible cashflow, value, profitability etc.. IMO, they need further correction. To think they were many times higher in price a year ago, makes me just shake my head.. especially since many (or most?) aren't that innovative, with the exception of perhaps Tesla (still overpriced though if you ask me).
I'll wait for a truly disruptive stock to actually become disruptive before purchasing.. and not speculate. Companies like Apple, Amazon and Netflix. All of which I was BLOWN away by when they came out and adopted them early on. If I had invested in those companies I'd be rich. But I didn't have money back then mostly due to blindly overspending without tracking expenses. Now when something like this happens again I'll buy into the company. I don't know what it is yet but we'll see. Last thing that impressed me was AT&T's fiber in my area.. was stuck with Cox Cable for years and the AT&T offering is at a much better price but has 30 times faster upload speeds and twice as fast download speeds.. no equip fee, no upping fee after 12 months and no data cap. But I know AT&T is a big dividend company now.. we'll see what happens. They had good earnings recently. Not much else has excited me.
But anyways, VTI all the way for me is the best bet. And if a new company ever does come around which truly is disruptive, and not currently way overvalued, Ill buy into it.. maybe make it like 20% of my portfolio or something.. A company which I truly believe in like I did with Apple, Amazon and Netflix.
So anyways, yeah I am gonna cancel the Motley Fool subscription. To think people spend 5+ hours each day watching the market, charts and financial videos .. only to see their actively managed portion of their account to deplete by 75% over the past year; compared to someone spending only 15 minutes per month investing in VTI only to lose 18.8% in comparison.