Dear Fools,
As many of you know, The Motley Fool confessed to the world Wednesday that
we had made a huge mistake and that we had rethought our investment philosophy.
Our hope is that, by now, everyone has looked at their calendars and realized
that Wednesday was April Fool's Day! The Motley Fool couldn't let the day
pass without at least one prank. That's right, Wednesday's "apology" was
our annual April Fool's joke.
"Folks, I haven't laughed that hard in ages.
I laughed until I cried..."
"THIS IS WHY THE BUSINESS SHOULD BE RUN BY
PRO'S..."
That said, humor was not our sole motive. Our aim has always been to educate
as we amuse. The truth is, according to Lipper Analytical, 91% of the managed
mutual funds out there have indeed UNDERperformed the average performance
of the S&P 500 index over the past five years. This is simply a staggering
figure, and one that really should underscore the fact that the best person
to manage your money is YOU. By highlighting the number in reverse, we hope
we've drawn more attention to it. Our Foolish investing philosophy remains
intact, as do our books. (We hope yours do, too. It's not too late to rescue
those torn pages from the trash!)
One of the greatest lessons that can be learned from the Fool and our April
Fool's joke is that you should never take anyone's word as gospel. Always
rely on your own hard work as a basis for all of your investment decisions.
We received more than 1000 responses to our April Fool's Day shenanigans.
Some folks chuckled along with us, some were a little upset and disillusioned,
and some were initially Fooled but then figured things out and had a good
laugh. A special note to those who were really Fooled by this: Thanks for
being good sports. About half of the responses we received were from Fools
who thought we were serious. Some of those notes were incredibly supportive
and even quite touching. This whole thing has made us realize once again
what a great base of readers we work with every day.
To everyone who read and responded to our April Fool's collection, we want
to thank you all for having fun with us. If you never read the original letter
and our fake "13 New Steps to Investing Foolishly," you might want to have
some fun and read the original joke.
Also, you might enjoy reading excerpts
from all the e-mails we received. And if you'd like to comment on the
gag, or share a funny anecdote, post a message in our
April Fool's
Messsage Board.
Finally, our human resources department did ask us to clarify one further
point: all of our interns have been treated with utmost respect.
Fool on!
"What happened to that
guy you fired? This person deserves severance pay, an apology and
reimbursement..."