Why Rule Breakers Dig Stocks With Multiple Futures

Look back at the stocks that have delivered the biggest gains over the past decade -- including Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO), and Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ:AXON) -- and a pattern emerges: None of them won by nailing one single business and sticking to it forever.

• Nvidia built its name on gaming graphics cards. Today, those same chips run AI data centers, autonomous vehicles, and robots.
• Broadcom built its name selling networking chips; it now also designs custom AI silicon for the largest cloud companies and, since acquiring VMware, sells enterprise software.
• Axon's first product was the Taser. That single product funded the branch into body cameras, evidence-management software, drones, and AI tools for law enforcement.

Different industries, different products, same shape: a company with several genuine paths forward, not just one.

That shape has a name in David Gardner's Rule Breaker investing philosophy: "multiple futures." Motley Fool Chief Investment Officer Andy Cross once summed up the difference between David's approach and Warren Buffett's this way: Warren looks for companies with "one sure future" -- simple, predictable, forever businesses like insurance or candy -- while David looks for companies standing at a fork in the road with several plausible paths forward.

The average large-cap company, he estimates, has two or three futures. The best Rule Breakers have eight, 10, 20, each one a different combination of risk and reward.

MercadoLibre (NASDAQ:MELI) and Coupang (NYSE:CPNG) are running that same playbook in the same industry on two different continents.

MercadoLibre: The Playbook That's Paying Off

MercadoLibre started in 1999 as essentially the eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) of Latin America. But it didn't stay there. Mercado Pago, launched in 2003, turned the company into one of the region's largest fintech and consumer-credit players. Mercado Envíos, its proprietary logistics network built out starting in 2013, turned it into a delivery company. Mercado Ads, formalized in 2020, built an advertising business alongside the marketplace. MercadoLibre now operates in 18 countries, and its future depends on how far each of those businesses can still scale.

Rule Breakers first recommended MercadoLibre in February 2009, about a year and a half after its August 2007 IPO, at $14.13. Shares trade around $1,900 at the time of writing, so that first pick alone is beating the market by more than 12,100%. The 2012, 2014, and 2017 picks are beating the market by roughly 1,450%, 1,070%, and 460%, respectively.

Rule Breakers has recommended the stock five more times since, and Team Rule Breakers has also called it twice in Stock Advisor. However, MercadoLibre isn't immune to timing; The September 2023 Stock Advisor pick is lagging the market by nearly 37%.

Eight total recommendations, prices ranging from $14 to nearly $2,000, and only the two newest are trailing the market so far. That's what a multiple-futures thesis looks like 15 years in.

And MercadoLibre isn't slowing that expansion down. It just committed $4.6 billion to build out fulfillment centers and hire 8,500 workers in Mexico alone, rolled out AI-powered search and an AI seller assistant across its top five markets, and raised $1 billion in bonds to help fund it.

Coupang: Same Playbook, Earlier Innings

Coupang is running the same playbook in South Korea. Its Rocket Delivery logistics network was the wedge, the same role MercadoLibre's original marketplace played. On top of that core, Coupang stacked a Developing Offerings segment -- restaurant delivery, video streaming, fintech -- and, since 2023, the Farfetch luxury marketplace, a bet on going global in high-end retail. Its future rides on expansion in Asia, whether Farfetch becomes a real second act, and whether the newer offerings ever turn a profit.

None of that has shown up in the stock yet. Coupang trades at $15.11, below every price at which either Motley Fool service has recommended it. Team RB recommended it in Stock Advisor at $17.69 in October 2023 and again at $26.84 in May 2025, trailing the market by roughly 101% and 75%, respectively. Rule Breakers recommended it at $15.85 in November 2023, trailing by roughly 81 points, and at $42.81 in April 2021, within weeks of the IPO, trailing by nearly 165%. Four recommendations, four entry points, all four badly behind the market.

Coupang's recent headlines are messier. A breach exposing 33 million users' data has triggered regulatory fines, and the company just formed an outside security advisory committee to rebuild trust. Even so, it opened its fourth automated fulfillment center in Taiwan, part of an attempt to export its South Korean logistics playbook, and spending on its WOW membership program is holding up despite the scandal.

What Patience Buys You

Same region-of-the-world logic. Same build-a-core-then-branch-out strategy. Same multiple-futures framing. Fifteen years of Rule Breakers picks in MercadoLibre have beaten the market almost every time. Four years of picks in Coupang haven't beaten it once. (Yet.)

Multiple futures describe optionality, not a guaranteed outcome or a fixed timeline. A company can check every box David looks for, and Wall Street can still take years to notice. MercadoLibre needed the better part of two decades. Coupang is four years into what might be the same climb or might not be.

That's exactly why Fools invest with a minimum three- to five-year horizon and, ideally, hold for decades. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) funded Waymo, DeepMind, and its cloud business for years before any of them moved the stock. The market only started crediting those bets once they'd had years, not quarters, to prove themselves.

The newest MercadoLibre and Coupang recommendations are lagging the market today, but the thesis was built to pay off over a decade or more, not a single earnings cycle. The real question is how much runway -- and how much patience -- converting Coupang's multiple futures into results is going to take.

The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Axon Enterprise, Broadcom, MercadoLibre, Nvidia, and eBay. The Motley Fool recommends Coupang. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.