Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Our friend and New York Times best-selling author Morgan Housel recently commented on the beginning of his investment career: I think the worst thing that can happen to you as a young investor, is to do well early-on because of luck. It increases your confidence more than your ability. ... The best thing that happened to me [as a beginning investor] is that I lost a lot of money. There's a name for this phenomenon: The Dunning-Kruger Effect. Humans... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Over the past decade, all three Brians have held many roles at The Motley Fool. One of the most challenging tasks we've ever faced was to vote on which stocks should be called "Best Buys Now." The assignment was to sift through hundreds of past recommendations and nominate five compelling opportunities each month. At first, this was a daunting task. How was it possible to sift through hundreds of stocks each month to pick out just five? While... …

Reading Time: 5 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Jim Grant once said the key to successful investing is "having everyone else agree with you....later.” That sounds good, in theory. But it's maddeningly frustrating to execute in practice. That's because the "later" part is crucial. If everyone agrees with what you're investing in right now, you're buying at bubble prices. As investors learned in 2021, that doesn't end well. The reverse is also true. If you like a stock that no one else does, you'll... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, One of the best ways to become a better investor is to study topics that have nothing to do with investing. If you find themes that apply in multiple disciplines, you've found a "cheat code" to use in all areas of your life. Take parenting as an example. Two years ago, Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff published the best-selling Hunt, Gather, Parent. Doucleff is an NPR reporter and researcher who was fed up with her own "failings" as a parent to …

Reading Time: 5 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Last week, Tesla's stock fell 10% after reporting earnings. All three of us are shareholders, so we took no pleasure in watching the price plunge. However, the report was underwhelming, and the stock is richly valued. Wall Street's reaction makes sense. That said, we've noticed a lot of misunderstanding about changes in Tesla's strategy over the past year -- namely, its price reductions. Some investors think it's a bullish sign ("Tesla is playing... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, The world has changed a lot over the past month. While a war still rages in Europe, the Middle East has once again entered the headlines for all the wrong reasons. You'll never hear us argue that economic concerns are more important than human ones. We consider ourselves to be phenomenally lucky. The three of us have never had to experience what many in those regions are dealing with right now. But we know you come here for investing …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Over a decade ago, all three of us made the most consequential financial decisions of our lives. And yet, they were ridiculously anti-climactic at the time: we hit the "BUY" button in our brokerage. No trumpets sounded; no parties were hosted. We went about our day. However, with the passing of time, the significance of those decisions has exploded. For Feroldi, it was the 2012 purchase of Tesla (up ~12,000%); for Stoffel, the 2017 purchase of... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Despite being down 65% from all-time highs, Shopify remains one of the best investments you could have made over the past eight years. Since January 2016, shares are up 2,000% -- turning $10,000 into $200,000. All three of us have been holding Shopify for several years. Yet, at the time of our initial purchases, Shopify was producing large bottom-line losses. So, why did we all decide to invest? It all rests on one important factor: Shopify was... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Carvana's business model is pretty simple. It aims to buy used cars for the lowest possible price and sell them for the highest possible price. Last year (2022) was not kind to that model: it spent billions obtaining used cars when prices were at all-time highs, then tried selling them right as interest rates started rising and demand tapered off. Adding insult to injury, the company had to devote nearly 40% of its gross profit to interest payments... …