Here at The Motley Fool, when it comes to matters of money, we believe in transparency and accountability. Day in and day out, we dedicate ourselves to delivering responsible investing ideas and sound financial education. That's why, when it comes to talking about stocks, we think it's important that you know exactly where we're coming from.

With this in mind, we have developed a company-wide disclosure policy to guide our business and communications. We call it Fool Disclosure. We invite you to take some time to read through it, and we hope it helps inform your experience with The Motley Fool.

Investors Communicating With Investors

The Motley Fool is a company that represents investors teaching and learning from other investors. Many financial publications do not permit their writers and editors to own stocks. The Motley Fool, however, not only permits but also encourages its staff to invest in common stock. Why? For two reasons:

  • First, we strongly believe the most effective way to create wealth is through the long-term ownership of stocks. The US stock market has compounded 10% average annual returns over the last century. We believe in using the stock market as a savings bank, and we strongly encourage treating money management as a lifelong endeavor. Therefore, we think it would be downright mean of us to close that avenue of investment to our employees.
  • Second, and more importantly, we don't consider our personnel to be journalists, but rather communicators and teachers of financial matters. It's a subtle but critical difference that affects our entire service—from our online site at Fool.com and our investment books to our live streams, premium newsletters, and portfolio services.

As a company, we utilize every available medium to teach people of all ages, income levels, and backgrounds about money and its applications in modern life. Therefore, we believe our staff's involvement in managing their own money is critical to their learning more about the subject and succeeding in their own lives. And who better to write about investing than those who do it themselves?

The Motley Fool writes about stocks in both free and paid content. We make stock recommendations in our various premium newsletter services and actually hold some of these shares in our portfolio services. We will disclose our recommendation or ownership until we cease to recommend the stock or we sell our entire position. Of course, in both free and paid content, we will continue to disclose whether the author(s) has an interest in the stocks mentioned.

Internally, the Fool has always strived to operate with the highest levels of integrity and transparency. As such, here are the key components of The Motley Fool's disclosure policy:

Disclosure

  • When a writer writes about a stock that he or she has a position or beneficial interest in, that fact is disclosed at the end of the article.
  • Some premium services’ recommendations include a counter or alternative perspective on a recommended stock. In such cases, if the individual providing the differing viewpoint holds a position or beneficial interest in the stock discussed, this fact is disclosed at the end of the article.
  • If The Motley Fool recommends or holds a position in a stock, that fact is also disclosed at the end of the article.
  • All Fool employees and contractors -- that's anyone with a TMF prefix on their screen names -- are required to disclose their current positions, including stocks, mutual funds, and cryptocurrencies. We aggregate and display these positions for the entire company here. (We do not disclose the individual stocks that might be in a Fool's mutual funds.)
  • Affiliates of The Motley Fool provide investment products and services. These companies may recommend or hold securities mentioned in our publications. Editorial personnel have no knowledge of any affiliates' holdings and/or specific recommendations, and the affiliates' personnel have no knowledge of any editorial content before it is published. Our affiliate companies may also have their own disclosure policies, which they may make available on their respective sites.

Trading Restrictions

In addition to the above disclosure requirements, Fool employees work under additional trading restrictions and guidelines. These restrictions require that they:

  • Must hold any stock they own for at least 10 full market days.
  • Cannot write about a stock in the period spanning 2 market days before to 2 market days after purchasing or selling the stock.
  • Must clear trades with our compliance department prior to any transaction.
  • Must promptly notify our compliance department every time they buy or sell a stock, regardless of whether they have written about it.

Business and Technology Partners

We have business relationships with an ever-changing assortment of companies, including technology vendors, payment processors, content distribution partners, data providers, banks, distribution channels, advertisers, and accountants. Many of these companies are public companies operating in industries that we follow.

There may be instances in which one of our services recommends a company with whom we have a business relationship, or we may write an article about such a company on Fool.com. These occurrences are unintentional and coincidental, as the business end of The Motley Fool has no input or influence on the editorial side of things.

Investing Advertisers

As a general rule, if you see ads or sponsored content from a company on our site and emails, that company is paying us for such placement. Additionally, companies pay us for inclusion in specific areas of our site such as our Registration Page.

Motley Fool Money

A portion of our site, branded as Motley Fool Money, writes reviews of personal finance products, including credit cards, mortgage offers, and brokerage accounts. We may receive compensation for offers that appear on Motley Fool Money, including compensation related to placement.

We may issue recommendations for preferred partners that we believe in and/or use ourselves. But keep in mind, this site may not include all available offers from our partners. For example, there are thousands of credit cards available. We’ll highlight a fraction of them. All picks are made at the sole editorial discretion of Motley Fool Money editorial team.

For a list of major advertisers on Motley Fool Money, click here.

In Conclusion

We have designed our disclosure and trading guidelines to serve our community, our customers, and our personnel fairly. As always, though, you should remember to consider every piece of investment information you receive, here at the Fool or elsewhere, not as a de facto recommendation, but as an idea for further consideration. Even the strongest disclosure policy in the world does not excuse individuals from taking responsibility for their own decisions. Due diligence, critical thought, and use of the most extraordinary device in the world (the human brain) are crucial to your financial success.

Last updated July 7, 2026