You’ve probably figured it out already, but we’ll be clear: none of the logos we revealed yesterday were actually our new logo here at The Motley Fool. (More on that later).
However, they were tributes to some of the most successful and visually distinctive companies in the world. In celebration of The Motley Fool’s birthday today, we hope that these fake Foolish logos will help impart three invaluable investment lessons we’ve learned over our 27-year history, lessons that are possibly more important than ever in these turbulent times:
1. Great returns require great strength
Image Source: The Motley Fool.
Our first fake logo created the extreme neon style of Monster Beverage Corporation. Known for its highly caffeinated energy drinks, Monster has been the best-performing stock on the market for the past 25 years, rising 233,000% and turning $ 10,000 into more than $ 23 million. But it is unlikely that many investors will be able to capture those incredible gains.
Monster endured extreme volatility on its journey to the state of the hundreds of thousands of baggers, and enduring the rocky journey was not for the faint of heart. As our silly friend Morgan Housel pointed out in her excellent article “The Agony of High Yields,” Monster’s stock suffered four separate declines of 50% or more. It lost more than two-thirds of its value twice and more than three-fourths once. “
The lesson? Successful investing involves more than simply identifying large companies. We must also have the courage, conviction, and temperament to sustain those great companies in turbulent times, such as the impressive volatility we have experienced in recent years. weeks.
2. The winners keep winning
Our second fake logo faked the red letters of the king of streaming entertainment Netflix. Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner first recommended that our members purchase Netflix in 2004, when the company was a simple DVD mail-order rental service. But while that initial recommendation has produced incredible returns, what’s most remarkable is what came next.
Image Source: The Motley Fool.
Over the years, David continued to recommend that our members invest in Netflix, even as the company strengthened its competitive advantages and its share price skyrocketed further. In 2013 David recommended Netflix once again, priced 13 times higher than its original cost! It is difficult for many investors to average a position, especially one that has appreciated so significantly. But our members are happy that David has done so: Netflix’s share price has risen 1,200% since that point.
The lesson? We must keep our focus on the future, not the past. When an action has enjoyed a great climb, it is easy to feel that we have lost the boat. When the entire market has been affected, it is difficult to know from which companies we want to buy more. But David believes that winners tend to keep winning, and truly exceptional companies like Netflix can grow to much greater heights than most investors can imagine.
3. Optimism pays off, especially in the most difficult times.
Image Source: The Motley Fool.
As you certainly noticed, our third fake logo was a parody of Amazon.comSmile the yellow arrow. Amazon started in 1994 as a simple online book seller based on Jeff Bezos’ garage. Today, the company is a giant in online retail, with a fast-growing, high-margin cloud computing business and a market capitalization of more than $ 1 trillion. Looking back, it seems that Amazon’s success was inevitable, but that was not always the case.
On an infamous May 1999 cover titled “Amazon.bomb” Barron’s He listed a litany of reasons why Amazon would fail. The most terrifying threat of all came from Walmart. “Once Wal-Mart decides to go after Amazon, there is no competition,” said retail trend expert Kurt Barnard Barron’s. “Wal-Mart has resources that Amazon can’t even dream of.”
The point here is not to mock Barnard and Barron’s so it turned out to be a very poor prediction. Walmart probably could it would have crushed Amazon if it had made a concerted effort to do so. But Walmart did not believe that the fledgling online book market deserved their attention.
The mistake that Barron’s And Walmart made Amazon see what it was at the time, not what it could become. No one could have predicted the metamorphosis of the Amazon business model in categories like cloud computing and artificial intelligence. But it wasn’t difficult to see that Amazon was fanatically focused on customer satisfaction, with a brilliant and entrepreneurial CEO. Those attributes gave Amazon a choice: multiple ways to earn when the world went online and consumer needs evolved.
The lesson? Both in business and in life, it pays to be optimistic. The “experts” couldn’t see that Bezos had a vision for Amazon beyond selling books. As the CEO of your life, try to stay focused on your long-term vision for yourself, your family, and your wealth, especially during these difficult times..
The silly end result
Let’s recap: these are tough times for markets, the world economy and humans in general. But the lessons of long-term buy and hold investment remain true:
- We must have the courage, the conviction and the temperament. continue to invest in large companies in turbulent times.
- The winners continue to win. We found that companies that have performed well in the ups and downs of the market will likely continue to do so, and will come out stronger on the other side.
- Optimism pays off, especially in the darkest moments. Our promise to you here at The Motley Fool is that we will stand by you, offering you the same silly guide that has helped millions of people stay invested through the uncertainty of the market and increase their wealth when the dark clouds inevitably parted.
As investors, our dumb community for the past 27 years has weathered the dot-com crash, September 11, and the Great Recession. We are now facing a global pandemic, unprecedented economic disruption, and a national movement to fight and resolve structural racism that has plagued many Americans for far too long.
Through all of these changes, we remain the same fools we have always been. We still believe in working constantly and patiently to achieve good things, even if it takes a long time. When the world looks bleak, we continue to look for opportunities to build something positive. We still support those who speak harsh truths to powerful people who need to hear them. And we still strive to break down the barriers that were designed to keep people scared and in the dark, so that everyone can benefit from greater knowledge and understanding.
As always: stay silly.
PS: us do I have great news to announce today, and this time we are serious.
