Great place for new retail investors to start in the market
The Fool is getting bad rap on here and it's probably from a big misunderstanding.
if the Fool has a major weakness is that it's probably trying to be too many things at once, stock-picking newsletter, investor education, investor community, news wire, and the the wisdom of the crowds stock analyst game CAPS.
Each component has varying value
The News Wire-
basically front page news articles- this is probably why people don't like them. These used to be purely educational articles back in the Fool's glory days in the 90's but now they all end with a salespitch for their newletters. That is hyper annoying, but they usually have interesting comment. Maddeningly though there seems to be no in house Fool investing philosophy so the articles will vary wildly by author to author in terms of quality and opinion
The Newsletters-
The stock picking as a result is all over the map. The Stock Advisors is service is the bets known and possibly one.
With the newsletters you do great customer service and in depth explanations of why they choose what they did. Great handholding for those who want and need it. And perhaps most critically the Fool is ethical they will admit mistakes and even discontinue newsletters if they discover it to be ineffective.
But that is their main weakness and why I can't give them a 5 out of 5. The Fool no longer has a unifying investment philosophy and it really sends mixed messages to their subscribers unintentionally.
The Discussion Boards-
This is what makes the Fool a great place and the true value of the site for investors.The boards are very newbie friendly and have tons of great content for all experience levels. Many well respected names have participated on the board or come from (Mike Shedlock comes to Mind). While the GUI is badly outdated the content, civility and light hearted humor that permeates the community is hands the best on the web for investors.
The CAPS game-
CAPs is still in its infanc yand poorly understood by some of it's players. But it's a very good place to get decent research on companies. While the star ratings are somewhat valuable the pitches are where you will find the most value. The CAPS blogosphere is young and is going through growing pains. Quality is very inconsistent there as it can be filled with useless partisan rants about politics, but it also can produce superior ideas as well.
Investor education-
This used to be the Fool's strength and has fallen by the wayside lately. But between their new wiki and the archives content there is a lot of great educational material for investors
and more importantly unlike IBD or Value Line they include methods on many styles..
So the Fool is a very big place and it can be what you make of it. If you just go there and only read the fluffy news articles you aren't experiencing what makes the site truly valuable. At it's best it's an elite resource for investors, especially inexperienced ones.
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This review is the subjective opinion of an Investimonials.com member and not of Investimonials LLC.
