What If We Told Everyone?
By Tom Gardner
Pause for a moment, Fool, and consider the industry with which we're all intimately familiar now: Da Stock Market.
There have been nearly 16 months of The Fool online, and whether you think Foolish investors---numbered in tens of thousands today---should be beaten mercilessly around the ankles or embraced, you have to admit that some damned interesting things have transpired here since August, 1994.
In today's Fribble, I'm angling to focus on one exciting outgrowth from Ye Olde Printed Foole, and an old root from our past---watered most aggressively by David (MotleyFool). It's an emphasis that has proved and will prove in the decades ahead more valuable to investors than any cut-and-polished precious stone, or 5,000 shares of Iomega at a cost basis of $6.25 per stub. (Ok, maybe I went overboard there.)
What's more dear to an investor than a rubbed jewel, what has David emphasized ever since first laying eyes on the universe of publicly-traded stock?
Accountability.
There's nothing quite like it. Our ability to together track "celebrity" investors (e.g. the Dorfman Fund, courtesy MF DowMan) has to be one of the most attractive qualities of the service. Here in Fooldom, we've spent more than a year throwing bad numbers, a litany of broken promises, back at Wall Street. And you can expect some continuation of that behavior from us---with a little less scowling, perhaps. At some point, even Fools get less passionate about demanding bottom-line accountability from *anyone* who talks investing. After awhile, you just demand it and move on.
In our idle hours, though, Fools often toss together short "Yes-No" quizzes like this, just to keep us on our toes:
* Are 70% of all equity funds still underperforming the S&P 500?
* Do 90% of all newsletter publishers lose to the market each year?
* Is the phrasing "Prudent Investor" quantifiable?
* Is branding more important than performance in the financial world?
Yours for the answering.
But as wonderful as "online" is, let's not in the end make the mistake of confusing the medium for the underlying message. Much has been written in the past year here about the power of the new technology, our opportunity to play a small role in reforming that in the financial services world that begs reformation. But let's not lose our heads! Much remains the same.
The core principles of good business in the "analog" world are central to doing good business in the digital world. No change. Great brokers, great fund managers, great financial writers, great investors won't have a lick of trouble hopstepping from off- to online. Quite the contrary. Does anyone think Walter Mossberg's job is in trouble with paper prices rising? We don't.
But just as good business will translate over, so will bad. And all of us will have to uncover some of the silliness that we've seen on financial television and in financial print as it resuscitates itself here online. The gooroos notorious for oversimplifying problems, underperforming the stock market, and badly overcharging customers will be, are being and have already been dressed up in digital garb, smothered in rouge, and sold as the next darling. But if you look closely, you can see past the powder; they're quite the same as ever.
To end this Fribble quietly and with a big stick, let's look past the historical performance of The Fool Portfolio, and focus on two backbone investment approaches held dear here:
The Foolish Four Dow Stocks: 25.5% annual growth (25 years)
DowMan's Investing for Growth: 28.8% annual growth (15 years)
I ask: What if we just went out and told everyone about them? What if no "deer-in-the-headlights" individual investor, beaten up by guru advice for a decade, now resigned to long-term, mediocre fund performance was left to puttering ahead in the breakdown lane, or another trucksquashing? What if basic business principles, decipherable and sophisticated stock valuation models, and the art of long-term investing were passed from Fool to Fool to Fool? What if everyone came?
Honestly, what if. . . what then?