Rule Breakers And Rule Makers By David And Tom Gardner via ratiman, Corner of Berkshire & Fairfax Message Board
[timeless[David Gardner’s podcasts can be found here on Motley Fool Podcasts.
Here is a sentence that ratiman thinks nicely frames the problem with the focus on brand:
“Whether you’re talking about CPG companies like McDonald’s or Nike, computer companies like Dell, or service companies like FedEx, brand is often the powerful differentiator that enables companies to attract, habituate, profit, and protect.”
That seems wrong. Dell had no brand. For a brief moment it had monopoly profits due to a new distribution model. FedEx might at one point have relied on a brand, but now it has a duopoly with UPS. The only powerful brand of the four is Nike.
The Gardners argument is circular. Companies succeed because they have strong brands. And we know they have strong brands because they succeed. But in many cases the brand is secondary to other factors.
The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, Rule Makers – Description
The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, Rule Makers: The Foolish Guide To Picking Stocks by Tom Gardner, David Gardner
With four bestselling books, a wildly popular web site, and a portfolio that consistently and significantly outperforms the Standard & Poor averages by more than 30 percent, the Motley Fools have attracted a dedicated following. And now those Foolish financial whizzes — with their impudent but right-on money advice — take their investment guidance to the next level. In The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, Rule Makers, the Gardners show investors how to define and identify the two best investment possibilities in the market — the small companies that have historically offered the greatest investment returns (the “rule breakers”) and the companies that are legal monopolies (the “rule makers”). Most investment books are designed around getting investors into and out of stocks at the best time, while most business books tell how best to manage people, ideas, and profits. The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, Rule Makers focuses on linking these two ideas, relating the strength of a business over time with the performance of its stock. The newest entry from the creators of today’s hottest on-line investment site is proof anew that, as the Detroit News has said, “The Motley Fool is special”.
The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, Rule Makers – Review
For the past eight years, the U.S. stock market has been on a bull run the likes of which few have ever seen, making and breaking records almost every quarter. And for the last four of those years, David and Tom Gardner’s self-described market-crushing stock portfolios have made the market’s own incredible performance pale by comparison. In their third book, The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, Rule Makers, the brothers reveal the methodology behind their stock-picking success, which is impressive. The Rule Breaker Portfolio (formerly known as the Fool Portfolio on their Web site) has risen some 650 percent since its inception in 1994, thanks to stocks such as America Online, McAfee, and Wal-Mart, while the Rule Maker Portfolio (formerly known as the Cash King Portfolio) has risen 440 percent on the backs of investments in Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Intel. Fans of the Motley Fool, who with luck have prospered from the Gardners’ timely advice, will no doubt love The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, Rule Makers. The book is written in their usual humorous and self-congratulatory style–not only educational, but often aimed at making the pros on Wall Street wince, as they should. However, if you’re new to the Motley Fool or to stock picking in general, you may do well by first considering one of their earlier books, You Have More Than You Think and The Motley Fool Investment Guide. –Harry C. Edwards
The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, Rule Makers: The Foolish Guide To Picking Stocks by Tom Gardner, David Gardner
