Rule Breaker Investing: A "Secret Weapon" for Investors

In this installment of Essays From Yesterday, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner revisits four Rule Breaker essays written between 2006 and 2014 -- spanning market sell-offs, forgotten drawdowns, early buyouts, language that shapes behavior, and the enduring power of mindset.

Along the way, we're reminded that sharp declines happen more often than we remember, that short-term scorecards mislead, and that a handful of great winners can overwhelm many mistakes.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Jan. 07, 2026.

David Gardner: I got a secret for you. Actually, it's a secret weapon for you as an investor, today, one word for you. No, it's not plastics. It's history. History. It's secret because most people don't have much of it. They follow financial media outlets which through TV and social media display and promote such a short memory, quoting stocks minute to minute, throwing the bells and whistles of our attention at whatever is just happened. As a fool, I love to look back. The lessons we really learn, learn and earn are a consequence of observing and living through history measured in years, not hours or days. Well, for years, I wrote short essays to kick off our monthly Motley Fool issues that were mailed back in the day snail mailed out to members. Today, the Motley fool is pretty much fully digital. We don't do paper copies anymore, and we don't do opening essays. But I put a lot of time into those essays, and they occurred over a long narrative arc of history, 2002- 2017. Fifteen years worth of investing lessons in Motley Fool Stock Advisor and Motley Fool Rule Breakers. So in this world of now, I say you and I open up 2026 by getting smarter, happier, and richer today for the lessons learned yesterday. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back Happy New Year. I hope I'm not the first to share that with you. Let me introduce myself at the start of a new year. My name is David Gardner. I helped start the company The Motley Fool. I also recently wrote a book, my ninth or so, but really my first in a lot of ways, because the book Rule Breaker Investing is the first that I've ever written all by myself. All my previous books, Hass with my Brother Tom, our CEO at The Motley Fool but Rule Breaker Investing is what I'm all about. That's also the name of this podcast. By my count, this is the 550th consecutive new weekly podcast for Rule Breaker Investing. We're kicking off 2026 with Number 550. I'm the guy who was there from the first one back in July of 2015. I think 549 of them have been hosted by me. One of them was hosted by Chris Hill, longtime fellow fool who interviewed me Authors in August last August about my book, Rulebreaker Investing. Well, as I mentioned at the top, it's time for some essays from yesterday, and this is the eighth in the series. We last brought you the previous episode nine months ago. It was the day after April Fool's Day of last year. A couple of ground rules about how this particular series works. First of all, I completely randomize which essay I will be sharing with you. I don't know ahead of time until we plan this podcast, what I'll be speaking about, and I randomize it. Now, I wish I could cherry pick my best and favorite essays from the past. I mean, I guess I like all of them. It's just that some of them were more right than others. You never know how right or wrong I'll be with any of these since it's completely randomized. Often I'll refer to some stocks, so we get to look them up. We get to see how they've done, and we'll always have some doozies both ways. That's the first ground rule, complete randomization of what I'm sharing with you, whether I want to or not. The second ground rule is they're in chronological order from earliest to latest. For example, this particular episode, I'll be starting off with an essay from 2006. That's 20 years ago. Then we'll jump forward to 2010, 2012, and 2014. What matters isn't so much what I was saying back then, although that is fun, what matters is what we can learn from it right now today. The purpose of the Motley Fool is to make you smarter, happier, and richer. I'm looking to do all three every week, but we're especially focusing on smarter, this one. Let's get started essays from yesterday. Volume eight Happy New Year, fellow fool. Bart, if I could get, please, a little bit of our way back music as we go back in time now. To the year 2006, way way back. Essay from yesterday Number 1 comes from Motley Fool Rule Breakers. The month was July. The year was 2006. The title of the essay, we didn't really title our essays back then, so it's officially entitled Introduction to July 2006 Issue. Here it is about 450 words in full.

Essay Number 1 starts, Dear fellow Fool. Nothing that I write can change the pain of the recent market sell off, but maybe something I write can make it clear how you should proceed. In the face of a dramatic growth stock sell off, a little recent history. Longtime subscribers open up your May 2005 issue of Rule Breakers and take a look at that scorecard. The numbers were not pretty. Our average stock return at the time, the bottom line number of our scorecard was -14.53%. The sky was falling a year ago, eh? That was one heck of a time to buy. Now open up your May 2006 issue and take a look at that scorecard. Our average stock return was up 28.95%, more than 20 percentage points ahead of the S&P 500, comparable return of 7.01% one year from a loss of 15% to a gain of 29%. Same investment approach. Now the pendulum has swung back. As I write, rule breakers, since inception is up just 7.88%, the market is up just 3.16%. The hard work of the past two years has outperformed the S&P 500 by only 4.72 percentage points. Spring 2006 wiped out 25 percentage points of average profit per stock. For those who initiated new positions, you haven't given away profit in many cases, you're brand spanking new investments made proudly or with fingers crossed only days or weeks ago are outright losses. It's easy to live in the past. All the numbers I'm talking about have already happened. They say nothing about what's next. But in my experience, anytime you see a sell off of this severity, it's a great time to buy. We may not be at market bottom, but if your dollar-cost averaging into our PIC every month from a salary check or if you're still waiting to fill out some positions, or if you've just joined our service on a 30 day free trial, get fired up. Because when the market inevitably recovers, whether it's next month or next year, it'll be our stocks that will zoom past the averages again, a diversified group of rule Breakers held patiently. Despite the recent zig zag, the market's long term graph is not a sine wave. It's a linear uptrend, a 10% gradient that looks steady and smooth when looked at over the long term. Don't quit. Quite the contrary, most of our picks are at this point, 25% lower than they were at the end of April. You can buy the outstanding growth stocks of the next generation. Intuitive Surgical, Akamai, Blue Nile, PDL BioPharma, and others like a kid in a candy store.

Right now, these summer doldrums are providing you a very attractive entry point into the market's most dynamic growers. I'm where you are. My scorecard and my portfolio have given me the metaphorical, bloody nose. Nothing I say or do can make the past two months disappear. But I can remind you that most of the people who make real money in the stock market, when the tide from time to time inevitably turns against them don't run. They rally. That was introduction to July 2006 issue. For each of my four essays from yesterday this week, I'm just going to give you a few quick notes or thoughts afterward. Let's start off with thought number one here. Who even remembers the 2006 sell off? We tend to only think of the biggies, 2001, of course, 2008,9, of course. But there are meaningful downdrafts that don't feel great every few years on the market, and I have personally no recollection of that brutal spring sell off in 2006, do you? Note Number 2, I'm just going to re quote a few key lines from that essay. It's easy to live in the past. All the numbers I'm talking about have already happened. They say nothing about what's next. Well, now here in 2026, I want to say, that's just as true of up markets, by the way. Don't be surprised when the market gets hit hard at some point this year or next year, or the year after a 15% drop for the market overall faster than you might have expected and or your own favorite stocks all down 25% in one quarter. It's going to happen. It's happened before. Oh, and after it happens, please remind yourself that it will happen again. Again and again. If you're a rule breaker investor, playing the only game that counts, and that's, of course, the long game. From the first day we launched the Motley Fool, I and my brother Tom were sharing the same language. This is my version of it. Make a whole life commitment to the stock market. Make a whole life commitment to your portfolio and your financial future. Don't jump in and jump out. That's the single biggest mistake most people make. I had the pleasure of briefly appearing on Kcal, Los Angeles dot CBS Los Angeles TV this week, and they asked here at the start of the year amid financial New Year's resolutions, they said, What is the biggest mistake most people make? I said in so many words, jumping in and jumping out. The single biggest mistake most people make is jumping off the train of compounding returns, interrupting that magic of compounding at nine or 10% annualized, I would say as rule breakers, we can and have outperformed that nine or 10%. But anybody who jumps off the train, who's worried about the next market and reacts accordingly is making a huge mistake, in my opinion, if they are anywhere below the age of let's say 65 or so. Once we get past the age of 65, market drops start mattering more as you approach retirement, or I hope you're reallocating as an older person, maybe getting away of too much stock market exposure or moving more into dividends. But for those of us younger than those years, you are making a huge mistake if you're not regularly investing even in those hard dark times of the spring of 2006.

One or two more notes before we move on to essay number two, speaking of your favorite stocks dropping 25% in one quarter, which I just challenge you to think might happen in some upcoming quarter. Well, that was exactly what I was observing in this essay. I wrote the essay in July of 2006, and if you just heard me read it, I'll read it again. Most of our picks are at this point, 25% lower than they were at the end of April. April. That would be three months before July. Then finally, I tagged some of our top picks back then, now 20 years ago, and I called them in the essay, the outstanding growth stocks of the next generation. By the way, growth stock is not a phrase I use anymore, just like I don't like the phrase value stock. I don't actually think those phrases mean anything. And so it's nice to see I think I've matured a little bit and become a little smarter in the 20 years since. You won't hear me use the phrase growth stock or value stock anymore. But anyway, back to the four stocks I mentioned, you're probably curious what the performance has been. I mentioned Akamai, Blue Mile, PDL, biopharma and Intuitive Surgical. Well, in that order, Akamai, we had recommended at $12 a share in 2005. We would eventually sell it at $24 a share in 2011, so not bad a double, even through the great financial recession, but not a fantastic stock. Blue Nile would end up getting bought out as a loser for us, and PDL BioPharma disappeared. It was a biopharma that never really worked and just kind of fell apart over the years, wasn't worth much as it bought itself out of the market. But the fourth company I mentioned was Intuitive Surgical, which we'd recommended a year before in March of 2005. It's now 120 times in value for rule Breaker members. Just from that position, July 2006, it's a 53 bagger from there. It's reminding me to remind you that Rule Breaker Investing at its heart, often has a few big winners wiping out all of your losers and leaving a lot of money on the table after that. Here we go. It's kind of like some of my five stock samplers. Here we are just one stock blowing away the losers and making us forget all about them as we hoot and holler to market crushing gains. Venture capitalists call this the power law where a few of their big winners in each of those venture capital funds are surrounded often by a lot of also RNs and some outright losers. But venture capital works and rule breaker investing works because we have a knack for finding gigantic winners, and I'm happy that I called out Intuitive Surgical in July 2006 in our first essay from yesterday. Let's move on now.

Essay from yesterday Number 2. The month was October, the year 2010. The title of this essay is the Tim Beyers issue. And here's what I wrote at the start of Rule Breakers, October 2010, and I quote. You have in your hands an historic and commemorative issue for at least four different reasons. First, this issue kicks off the seventh year of our service. Lucky seven. Second, we celebrate here another all time high for the performance of stocks in our service. The 144 recommendations we have made over the past six years, average a gain of 28%. That's versus a directly comparable loss for the S&P 500 index of -5%. That's another way of saying that an average person picking an average stock at random from our service over the past six years would have beaten the market by 33 percentage points. For perspective, a year ago, that gap was 16 percentage points. Third, the size and scope of our Rule Breakers membership and community are also at all time highs. So take that market jitters. And the fourth reason this is an historic issue is also the focus of my introduction. This is the first Rule Breakers issue containing two stocks picked by a single member of my team who is not me. That's right. New selections Acme Packet and Click Tech are both the recommendations of Tim Beyers. That's why I'm calling this our Tim Beyers issue. Rule Breakers from the outset has been a team-based service, where each month, our two new selections come from a posse of stock pickers, a team I've built over the years. The performance numbers listed earlier are my Exhibit A testimony to the excellence of our Rule Breakers team. Signs of this began to appear early. Go back and reread the November 2006 issue, when you'll see me celebrating a telling achievement. Two years into our service, we had just watched three different stocks rise 200% or more, and all three of those triples had been picked by a different member of my team. Tim had a hand in one of those, Akamai.

Back then, it was a triple. Today, it is a quadruple. Since then, Tim has brought another four bagger to our community, Salesforce.com, selected in early 2009. And a few months after that, he tapped Rackspace hosting, which has more than doubled our money since. Tim's had his losers, too; haven't we all? Why did I listen to him on Alvaron and secure computing? But as we've demonstrated again and again in Rule Breakers Investing, our winners' gains far outweigh our losers' losses. I like to think of Rule Breakers as our most motley service. Motley was, of course, the many colored garment worn by court jesters. In the same way, this beautiful patchwork quilt of a scorecard we're building up here has been a truly collaborative effort, different colored ideas from several foolish sources. The team is diverse, but our focus is singular. We pick exciting and dynamic companies that are building the world of tomorrow. In contrast to so many professional money managers and analysts, we show these stocks patience. Turns out that's been a pretty profitable way to invest, even in sleepy markets. So a few thoughts now after the Tim Beyers issue essay from yesterday. The first one is, I'm remarking there in October 2010 that we were at all-time high. Now, whenever I talk about all-time highs, it always sounds like some remarkable moment in time and something that we've all worked hard to get to and something that feels rare like climbing a mountain and finally getting to an all-time high, but anybody who's invested for any meaningful amount of time will recognize that all-time highs are actually normal. Typically, the market going up over time, two years out of every three, and on average, 9% to 10% a year, but some years up 38%, other years down 18%, but all-time highs are frequent. You should not be afraid of them. When a great stock hits an all-time high, that doesn't mean you should stop buying it. It means, in my experience, especially if it's a Rule Breakers, a classic true blue Rule Breakers, you should probably be buying it right then, and you should expect to hit more all-time highs over time. After all, the only way we ever get graphs to go from lower left to upper right is constantly hitting all-time highs. It's not continuous, of course. It's continual. The big difference between the words continuous and continual is continuous means constant, whereas continual means recurring. Of course, all-time highs are not constant. They never will be for investors; otherwise, it would be a very easy game to play, wouldn't it? But they are continual. Let's remind ourselves of that, looking back now 16 years ago at 2010, where I'm just calling it out. I'm not crowing about it because it's something you should expect. Here we are again in 2026, looking at all-time highs. That's not weird. That doesn't mean everything's about to fall apart. That's just if you take a whole life approach to the market; that's just what happens recurringly. Note Number 2 about this essay: The directly comparable S&P 500. For Rule Breakers members there in October 2010, keep in mind, we launched the service in October 2004. That's why I'm calling out the sixth-year anniversary of the start of the service. The directly comparable S&P 500 at that point was negative.

That is quite remarkable. That doesn't happen over many six-year periods. Especially when I think our for-profit business, the Motley Fool, which we started in July of 1993, so now some 32 or 33 years ago, it's incredible for me to think that we were getting people to pay for our advice during a period of time where the S&P 500 was actually negative. On average, it was down over that six-year period. I'm not making any big point about it other than to call that out. I'm glad to say it hasn't been negative for most of the years since, and overall, of course, playing the long game, it's going to be wildly positive, but it's really interesting for me to get back in those shoes to put on that lens again and to think about where we in October 2010, six years into our service with a stock market that overall was down. A third thought reacting to that essay, I'm mentioning in that essay that we'd made 144 recommendations thus far in the history of the service. And that just makes me think in some ways of my 35 stock samplers that I've done with you on this podcast over several years, where if you do the math with me, 35 stock samplers means I picked 150 stocks. Again, pretty big volume, very comparable to the 144 I'd picked at that point for Motley Fool Rule Breakers. And by the way, for our new episodic series 10 Years Later, where we let 10 years pass, and we look back at each of those five stock samplers, the next one I will be recording on February 10, that will be exactly 10 years to the day after my 3rd five stock sampler, which was entitled Five Stocks to feed the Bear. Again, just about a month from now, in February's second week, we'll be doing 10 years later, five stocks to feed the bear. Now, for this essay, back then, I could only review six years of results because that's how old Rule Breakers was. For my five stock samplers, of course, we initially only looked at about three years of results. It is an eye-opener. How badly you can crush the market by simply holding stocks and reviewing results from 10 years later.

We hadn't had the good fortune yet in October of 2010 to have been running that service for 10 years, but it's been well more than ten years since. I also want to mention the two stocks that I called out the timid picked in that particular issue. As I read those company names again with 2026 eyes, are you like me going, I'm sorry, what? Who? Acme Packet and Click Tech were the two new picks in October of 2010. You're probably curious what happened to them? Where did they go? Well, Click Tech was bought out six years later in 2016, I was bought out at $30 a share. Our two positions in Rule Breakers from the six years before were both at cost basis of about $23 a share. There we were six years later in the Rule Breakers service, seeing Click tech, by the way, that's spelt with a Q. This is really bad. QLIK was how they spelled their company name, but it ended up not being a great stock pick, unfortunately. Bought out at 30 when we recommended it at 23 six years before. The other stock, I'm sorry to say, did even a little bit worse. Acme Packet, which was an Internet telephony company, was bought out by Oracle three years after we recommended it. In that episode, it was bought out at a lower price than our cost. Here we have two stocks that were picked that issue for Motley Fool Rule Breakers. Both of them were bought out within three to six years. Both of them underperformed. Neither was as awesome as some of Tim's other picks like Salesforce, which I called out as a four-bagger in that essay, today, it's now up 38 times in value. Tim also would go on around the same time to recommend Alphabet. Of course, it was Google back then when it came public, and today Alphabet is a 28-bagger for Rule Breakers members. Not to be forgotten, by the way, as we get ready for essay from yesterday, number three is that that team that I called out of course, highlighting Tim for understandable reasons in that essay, but Rick Munarriz and Karl Thiel, team members back then and all of them are still on the Rule Breakers team today. They're not even that old, by the way. I'm a little bit older than any of them, and I'm 59, but I'm absolutely delighted to note that our Rule Breakers team that we were building two decades ago, is right there picking stocks today at Motley Fool Rule Breakers. The last thing I want to highlight is maybe just a pull-up quote from that essay. I'm just going to read it again because it's so profoundly true of Rule Breaker investing. If you're a regular listener, if you've read my book, you already know this lesson. But there I was writing it in October 2010, and I quote, our winners' gains far outweigh our losers' losses.

Onto essay from yesterday. Number 3, we're going to fast-forward in time again. This time, alighting upon February 2012, the calendar page says, and the title of my February 2012 essay for Motley Fool Rule Breakers was greatest issue ever. Here we go. I picked up our greatest issue ever recently. Greatness here refers to the performance of the two picks made in any given issue. Our greatest issue ever was March 2009. Before I mention the stocks, I want you to remember where you were in March 2009. For me, that's easy. On March 1, 2009, I went to sleep at 2:50 A.M. I woke up at 8:15 A.M. Yes, I meticulously keep my iCal calendar, even noting my sleep and wake times. I said goodbye to my wife, who was flying to North Carolina that day, but never mind. As they say in the movie airplane that's not important right now. More important is where we were, where our heads were as investors. I'm pretty sure mine was nearly buried underground. At the time, things were so ugly. As I wrote early that year, not only did 2008 feature the worst drop in 70 that, s 70 years, but our average stock is down 33.5%, end quote. Do you have any idea how dispiriting it is to run a stock picking advisory service, call yourself a professional, and five years later to have your average pick having lost one third of its value? But the discipline of running Rule Breakers as a steady, long-term, buy-to-hold service forces us in the best way to keep making picks, keep up the act of investing. The March 2009 issue featured the debuts of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Mercado Libre. From that fateful day, Green Mountain has risen 426% a five-bagger. From that fateful day, Mercado Libre has risen 497% a five-bagger. That was one magical issue. Four reflections on our greatest issue ever. One, what a great month to be picking stocks. The March 2009 issue was the single best month to be picking stocks since Rule Breakers debut in October 2004.

As you can see at our recommendations tab, the S&P 500 from there has gained as of this writing, 73.9%. Two, It felt like the worst month to be picking stocks already covered. But please note the bullish implications for 2012 through 2014, especially for Rule Breakers like me who had a really difficult 2011. Most Rule Breaker stocks caved in from July to December 2011. In just those six months, our scorecard lost half its all-time gains. By December, once again, it felt really hard to pick stocks. Three, relative performance counts. Though the market is up 74% since March 2009, our two picks are up hundreds of percentage points higher. To have and to beat a benchmark are critical components to winning the game of investing in good times and bad. Four, persistence counts too. Indeed, without persistence, most investors will flee to the sidelines at all the worst moments, March 2009, December 2011. Don't flee. It's time in the market. The old saw goes not timing the market, but counts. Will this review issue, including our new revised list of the 2012 Core, be Another quotes greatest ever. Stay tuned and stay foolish.

A few thoughts back about that essay, greatest issue ever from February 2012 first. It's unbelievable times that we lived through. Just quoting again, do you have any idea how dispiriting it is to run a stock-picking advisory service? Call yourself a professional and five years later to have your average pick having lost one third of its value. Yes, that is exactly what I was writing there in February 2012. I was reacting to how it felt in the year 2009. It was incredible five years later to watch all of our stock picks on average being down one third of its value. But I do want to give myself props. I give them to you, as well. If you were investing with us, maybe you hadn't even started investing yet, but for those who were investing with us, that's exactly what you lived through. Yet there we were still buying, still holding the stocks we'd held from before, even on average, with each of them down one-third of its value. Double underline mindset or for me now with 2026 Eyes, those six habits of the Rule Breaker Investor, part one of my book Rule Breaker Investing, those six habits are so very valuable. It's really beautiful to use history here this week, essays from yesterday, to use history to see exactly where we were, how it felt, and to know what we did and what has happened since. Second note, of course, reacting, as I think back on that essay, hilarious, again, to me, to remember that horrible second half of 2011. Just as I was talking about the tough spring of 2006, do you, dear listener, personally remember how horrible that second half of 2011 was? Well, without this essay, I sure would not. But there it is. It reminds us that even in the midst of the epic bounce back and positive reversal that the stock market showed, post the great financial recession of 2008, 2009, our Rule Breakers scorecard in the second half of 2011 lost half of its all-time gains in just those six months. Again, just a great reminder of the benefit of history and here helping us remember why we do essays from yesterday to get back in that seat in those shoes and remember, the second half of 2011, which nobody talks about today, was really bad. For those of us who held our stocks, we watched half of our gains go away, and that was in the midst of the great bounce back from the GFC a couple years before. Two more thoughts about that essay. The first is, I highlighted four lessons. You can't see this because I'm reading it, but I bolded them. I'm just going to say the four lessons again very quickly because they're all so powerful. They remain just as true today as they were back in 2012, as I reflected on our so called greatest issue ever from March 2009.

Lesson 1, what a great month to be picking stocks. March 2009. Lesson two, it felt like the worst month to be picking stocks. Lesson Number 3, relative performance counts. You should be marking yourself against the market. Relative performance counts, and Number 4, persistence counts two. Don't flee. Time in the market, not timing the market that counts. Finally, at the end of that essay, I wonder aloud, rhetorically, because I couldn't know what would happen next, whether that issue itself might be one of our great issues ever. What were our two stock picks in February 2012? It was a review issue, so we made a point of re picking existing stocks, longtime rule Breakers will remember this when we would do review issues. We would specifically pick not new stocks. We would re pick from our existing favorite stocks. That issue, we picked Intuitive Surgical and Mercado Libre. Intuitive Surgical ISRG was at 51 then? Today, it's at 594. It's up 11 times in value. Mercado Libre, ticker symbol MELI, in that issue was at $86 a share. Today, it's $2,195 a share up 24 times. In answer to will this review issue be another greatest ever. Well, I'm going to say. Now on to essay from yesterday. Number 4, we're going to zoom forward in time a couple more years. Here we are landing in March of 2014. My intro essay for Rule Breakers that month was entitled Starter Stocks. What a year it's been for Rule Breakers. I'm referring to 2014. It's very rewarding to have the market confirm Cgusto the thesis for stocks that we were publishing well in advance of 100% plus rises. Check out our scorecard from May through July 2012. All six new picks from those months have already at least doubled. That fun fact is just one example of how remarkable this market has been. We're the first not to count our short term gains too carefully, but from time to time, it's worth remembering how enjoyable and lucrative Rule Breaker investing is counted over years, of course, not days or months. It's our annual review issue here at Rule Breakers, and I wanted to bring your attention to one change. As you'll see in our starter stocks page in the issue, we have a new phrase we're using in place of core. For the past few years, the intent of this feature has been to provide a solid list of stocks for new members. I'm on a fervent quest to get all fools from 0-15 in seconds flat, meaning from zero stocks to 15 different Motley fool holdings.

This speaks to the importance of diversification, gets members clear that they can improve their results and reduce their anxiety by getting truly invested with us, not just betting on one or two stocks. Our 2014 Starter Stocks list gives you a tasty menu of nine companies in addition to all our new PIs and our Best Buys now. We've previously called this the Rule Breakers Core, a phrase that increasingly became a misnomer, as our team fielded questions over the years about why a given stock that had been on the previous Core list was dropped. We explained, due in no small part to the core appellation that the list is not a persistently managed ongoing portfolio where we add and subtract based on changing preferences. It really is just an annual effort to identify for newcomers some of the simpler businesses that are easier to follow. The image we've always used to guide us in our discussions, recognizable to downhill skiers and snowboarders is the green circle, indicating beginner slopes at ski resorts. That's what we've done once again this issue. But now it's called more appropriately Starter Stocks. I hope it's clear. If not, ask away on our discussion boards. Finally, it is ironic, and I believe true, though we don't publicly track this that our past starter stock lists have tended to do pretty darn well held over the years. No promises in future, and that's not a special intention. Maybe it's just because, as our great RB member, Be with Bike has posted about his kids portfolios, outperforming his own that keeping it simple leads to superior results, a very capitalF foolish sentiment. That is essay from yesterday number four and just a few thoughts here at the close the close of that essay, and then the close of this week's podcast. First, I apologize if that was at all boring to people here in 2026. I did commit, as I mentioned at the top of the show in every single volume of this particular episodic series, that I'm going to read in full the essays that I wrote when I wrote them. When I wrote them, I was talking about a feature that we've had at Rule Breakers over the years, where we publish a list of stocks each year, an annual list and put it out to members.

Back when we first started it years ago, we called it the RB Rule Breaker Core. As we managed that list from one year to the next, again, just coming up with a new list of stocks each year, we would often carry stocks over from the previous year because we were looking specifically for what I was calling green circle skiers, green circle stocks. Those would often be some of the same stocks from one year to the next. But because we named them the Rule Breaker core, some of our members were interpreting that as a managed core portfolio. When we would refresh that list a year later, they would say things why did you drop stock XYZ off of the Core? Should I sell? Does that mean I should sell? I thought you guys like the stock. It's no longer part of the core. I would profusely apologize. We would talk about this on our Rule Breaker discussion boards at the Rulebreaker site. I would say, no, no this is just a list for new members as the core holdings to get started with from one year to the next. And so as you just heard from this essay, I was officially changing the name from Core to starter stocks. That would remove some of the confusion that people were feeling just realizing, hey, this is an annual list of stocks we think you should get started with if you're a new member of our service or if you don't have some of these starter stocks in your portfolio, an extra reason to look at it. I guess the main thought I have about this now is, I hope this will always be true of your experience for Motley Fool members that we're constantly continuously looking to improve our services for you. I hope you feel that's the case today. We're certainly working on our side to always continuously be relevant to you in our communications and the site features and our I hope that you feel that we are continuously improving. I have a friend who knows the very famous, very successful entrepreneur Michael Dell, of course, founder of Dell Computer.

This friend who is in and around Michael, I've never met Michael myself. But he said Dell uses a phrase pretty constantly, pretty consistently with people around him. Here's the phrase, continuous improvement. Michael Dell is looking to continuously improve the things around him personally and professionally, I'm sure, all the time. I hope we're doing the same at the Moltly Fool, and I hope that's your experience of us as a member. And I hope for all of my teammates who are hearing me, I hope they're hearing me say, even though I'm not as active in operations anymore, I think continuous improvement is a fantastic phrase, an ongoing goal for all of us at our company, and I would say for all of my listeners throughout life. It doesn't mean you can ever be continuously improving, but to hold that up as a goal, as an exemplar, as something to shoot for is very worthwhile. There I was in that essay from March 2014, changing the language, feeling like that is an improvement that we needed to make. A second quick thought, anybody who knows me knows I majored in English literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a lot of you have gotten know me over the years, know that I really love language. I think language deeply matters. Functionally, that list of stocks we came up with annually was the same. But the actual label that we were using to refer to that functionality changed, and that really made a substantial difference. I'm really glad we changed from core to the phrase starter stocks. Similarly, I look very carefully at the words that we all use as investors as we talk about the stock market, how the media covers it, what words you and I choose to use. That word is diction. By the way, diction is a beautiful word in the English language. It means your word choice. The words you're choosing to use. I think some of my best points are when I'm pointing out that we're using incorrect language or what I consider to be language that should be reframed or improved when we look at the stock market. Quick examples, I think the word correction is a completely wrong headed term I think people who routinely call stocks or companies this word names. I think that's not the best way of thinking about stocks, about the companies that we co own. Usually, people who are jumping in and jumping out, they just talk about names. They don't really care too much about the product. They're usually just looking at stock charts, probably. For them, companies are just names. I think that's the wrong word.

Of course, I believe the word investing, going right back to its Latin root is deeply important and should be respected. I also don't like the word bubble. I think that's the wrong metaphor. I already talked about this earlier. I don't say growth stock or value stock anymore. I don't really know what those phrases mean. Part of the reason I think I love so much writing my book and getting it published last year Rule Breaker Investing is because I got to pick so carefully from one page to the next the words that I used, much as, I would say, a painter picks her colors from a palette. This reflection on my Starter Stocks essay from 12 years ago is language matters, starter stocks. Finally, I did mention briefly be with bike in that essay, and it's fun for me to think back on that. That's Brian Withers. It's fun to see somebody like Brian who came to us, I think maybe he'd worked at Dell before, but he just came from the world of business. He was learning investing as he went. Eventually, Brian went from our discussion boards where I called him out there. By the way, the context there was he was mentioning on our discussion boards that often his children's portfolios were outperforming his own back then in his reflection. I think it's true of many of us. Probably, I have sometimes had this same reflection. Sometimes when we're investing for other people, we tend to do better than we do for ourselves, because for them, we want to be, I don't know, a little bit better version of ourselves. We're not going to do some silly, stupid stock or some silly risk. We want to fill their portfolios with strong core stocks to this essays point starter stock like stuff. When we do that for our spouse or for our kids, some of us, anyway, notice that we tend to consistently outperform our own stock market portfolios when we take that mentality. Given that Brian and David and others of us back in Rule Breakers, back in the day, we were reflecting, maybe we should be doing that for our own portfolios as well. But I also want to just put in a quick note because Brian Withers ended up becoming a great contract writer for the Motley Fool, and it reminds me of so many people who over the years started out as a message board, discussion board correspondent, somebody who was not usually a professional investor in any way, shape, or form. They just found their way to fool.com, and in time, they became published writers in some cases, very famous published writers.

Also became entrepreneurs themselves. That's something that we take some pride in at the Motley Fool. Having built up our Motley Fool culture for a few decades now is people who came and joined us at one modest place, and then over time, they've grown into something quite phenomenal on their own. That was a good example from that essay. Well, there it was essays from yesterday, volume 8. The four essays. July 2006, Introduction to July 2006 issue. Rule Breaker's opening essay in October 2010 entitled The Tim Beyers issue. Then fast forward to Rule Breakers February 2012, greatest Issue ever. We closed it out with March 2014 Starter Stocks. As always, whenever I do the series, we're going to acknowledge some obvious mistakes. Anyone remember, by the way, PDL BioPharma or Acme Packet. But also some heartwarming and inspiring facts like how frequently and how winningly we've pointed millions of people to Intuitive Surgical and Mercado Libre. Most importantly, at the end of this week's podcasts, I want to say all of these things happened. By actually using history as our secret weapon, harnessing the power of our wayback machine, we're having that opportunity together to reflect and take away some lessons that we can use this week, this month. This year, going forward, lessons learned this podcast, like Number 1. Markets routinely deliver sharp, uncomfortable drawdowns, and the people who win are the ones who don't quit when they arrive. Number 2, short term scorecards tell you almost nothing. Real understanding only emerges when you let years, sometimes a decade pass. Three, a few extraordinary winners will do vastly more for your results than a long list of mediocre or even failed picks can take away. Four mindset and language matter. More than most people realize the words you use shape how you behave when things get hard. Samuel Johnson once wrote, language is the dress of a thought. Five, history doesn't just teach humility. It teaches confidence because what feels unprecedented in the moment has almost always happened before. There you are. Lessons, all powered by essays from yesterday. Fool.

David Gardner has positions in Alphabet, Intuitive Surgical, and MercadoLibre. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Intuitive Surgical, MercadoLibre, and Salesforce. The Motley Fool recommends Akamai Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.