Continuing my lamentations on this thread, the Motley Fool has composed and sent another promotional mail of dubious quality. First, some background. The Motley Fool originally began by advocating a deliberate, long term investing style, centering around the theses of the Gardner brothers. They claimed they weren’t pumpers, and didn’t appear to be from the evidence of the time. They disdained the so-called “technical” style of investing, a style in which the behavior of stocks are thought to be predictable independent, more or less, of the company they represent; nor did they have any use for “market timing.” There’s was the fundamental approach, in which the companies are appraised in many facets, from financials to products to leadership. It was all done in a very open manner. And communications were very … they had a style of communication that was very much on the level.
So on to the missive.
It starts with this:
In exactly 24 hours, CEO Tom Gardner is going to reveal an incredible discovery he and his team of researchers have made in recent months and how it led them to a small group of stocks he’s calling “the single greatest buying opportunity” he’s seen in more than a decade.
While I won’t object to the content, I will say that I find the style of communication dismaying. Full of high-magnitude exclamations, it lacks only a few dozen exclamation points to really jam their point home. In fact, it feels like the slickest of promotional mails, meant to suck the wealth right out of elderly retired couples who have lost their mental acuity. Rather than appeal to folks’ rationality, it’s really a poke at the fight or flight mechanism by implying that, absent instant action on your part, you’ll lose out on a marvelous opportunity.
Mercifully, this is not one of their missives that resembles an Atlas rocket, but is fairly short. But in the wrapup, I was surprised to see this:
IMPORTANT NOTE: After Tuesday night, a replay of the event will not be made available. You must attend on Tuesday if you want to hear from Tom and his team of investors.
We sincerely apologize if you are unable to fit this time into your schedule, but because the specific strategies and recommendations we’ll be discussing are extremely time- and market-sensitive, we are simply unable to offer access to this information beyond Tuesday night. No exceptions will be made. We hope you understand.
No, I don’t understand. Really? Tom Gardner has abandoned his long held belief that buying well run companies in growing markets is the best way to build wealth, and that this can be done without market timing? Unless they’ve picked out some ultra small stock to buy, which is always highly risky, I can’t really understand this.
And no replay? What, really? And you don’t think someone else will record it and make it available? This is rather like shooting oneself in the foot.
But let’s think about this some more, because reading this straight on seems incoherent.
A sizable number of investors WILL have something planned for Tuesday, because Americans (who I assume make up the bulk of the membership of The Motley Fool) are simply a busy bunch of people these days. So the way I see it, if you can entice them into breaking plans and commitments in order to see this “opportunity”, then they have already made an investment in this “opportunity”. For the Sales/Marketing team, this may seem like a winning strategy – the suckers are already on the hook. Add to this the obvious fact that those who are watching are investors interested in scoring BIG … well, get out the live fish well. And, of course, the mystery about something being so time and market sensitive – it’s all quite alluring, isn’t it?
But I’ll tell you what – I won’t be finding out. My Tuesday is already booked. And when some slick promotional material happens across my desk, I nearly always help it accelerate to the nearest waste bin. And then when it’s someone changing his spots, as Mr. Gardner sadly appears to be doing, well, only morbid curiosity would induce me to check this out. Of which I have a modicum, but not enough to break my own plans.
