Sixteen years after its initial launch, Motley Fool co-founders David and Tom Gardner have completely revisited and revised their New York Times best-selling book The Motley Fool Investment Guide: How the Fools Beat Wall Street's Wise Men and How You Can Too. You can order your copy of their new investing classic by clicking here now.
Or, to learn more about the book, check out the video below.
A transcript immediately follows the video.
The Motley Fool: What's the most rewarding thing about investing?
David Gardner, Motley Fool co-founder:
What I find to be most rewarding in investing is making money. I think that's the reason a lot of us do it. Now if you're somebody... You think that you're socially enlightened or conscious about your money, you want to make sure that the dollars you're investing are the things that you believe in; great. If that's you, then welcome to The Motley Fool because that's how I've always thought and that's what our book talks about.
Tom Gardner, Motley Fool co-founder and CEO: The most rewarding thing about investing in stocks for me has been learning about the world. Every new investment I make is a new book that opens up for me, and it may be about semiconductor wafer design. It may be about wireless charging of cellphones. It may be about biotechnology and the attempt to cure type 2 diabetes. Each one of these companies opens up a story that we can all learn from.
David: As these companies take over the world or their industries and dominate and really improve the world for all of us (products and services you and I know and love), you actually get to be a part owner of these companies, as well.
And when their stock goes up 50x in value, which is what Netflix has done (actually more than that over the last 12 years), you also watch your money go up 50 or more times in value; so I'm not sure I can think of something much more rewarding about investing than that.
The Fool: Who is The Motley Fool Investment Guide for?
David: The Motley Fool Investment Guide is aimed very squarely at anybody who wants to make their own decisions with their money. I think a lot of people these days are just using index funds, they don't really have a lot of sense of individual companies or how to read financial statements.
Tom: It used to be you'd get pitched on the phone by a broker. You'd be sitting by yourself in your den. You didn't have anyone to talk to about it. You couldn't ask questions of anyone that you didn't think was just trying to sell you a product. Now there are so many ways to learn. And really The Motley Fool Investment Guide can teach you this in a couple of hours.
David: The gift of understanding the stock markets and investing is one of the most valuable gifts that we can give anybody that we know, if you really think about the next 20-60 years of their life.
The Fool: Who should buy The Motley Fool Investment Guide?
Tom: You should buy The Motley Fool Investment Guide if you're excited about learning and having some fun while doing it.
David: As you start to read the first few pages, you start to realize the story of the Fool, which is that the fool was the character in Shakespeare that we love. I know we've all read Shakespeare, right? You have to in school. Maybe you loved the most the court jesters. The ones who could tell the king or queen the truth. Who did so with humor. And so you start to see what The Motley Fool stands for.
Tom: Everything about our company has been established to represent the interests of an individual sitting at home trying to figure out, "Should I buy this investment product that's being pitched to me? Should I own shares of Facebook or should I not own shares of it? How many stocks should I buy? How many mutual funds? Should I be in the bond market? What's the game plan for my savings in life?
And the truth is that the gap between knowing what to do and not knowing what to do is a gap for the average American in hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout their life. So the book and The Motley Fool are really there to help represent the interests of an individual trying to figure out what to do.
David: We're trying to speak -- as Shakespeare did -- in the lingua franca; we're trying to have -- as Shakespeare did -- common people fill the theaters and watch what is going on onstage, and learn and be amused. Or to be educated, amused, and enriched, as we have often said. Our Motley Fool watchword.
So I think that that is really important to us. That we're speaking in a way that you feel welcomed, that we make things accessible, and that we help you get educated about this most important subject.
The Fool: What will I learn from The Motley Fool Investment Guide?
Tom: The Motley Fool Investment Guide is going to teach you how much you should be paying. What types of returns you should expect and how to improve on those returns. How to really understand what it is that you're doing with your money.
It's a very serious subject, we're very competitive in what we do. We're always trying to innovate. We love working together. After you read the book, come online and ask us any questions about it. The goal is to work together to help you succeed as an investor and to have some fun with it, as well.
David: If you've never heard of The Motley Fool before, you're clicking through the internet, you're sitting through the video right now going, "Who are these guys? I may have heard the name, but what is this all about?" I think the book gives you the best a-to-z sense of what The Motley Fool talks about, how we think about investing, how you can become an investor and a very fine investor.
The Fool: What are you most excited about with The Motley Fool Investment Guide?
David: You know, looking back, it's funny to think that when this book first came out in 1996, Amazon.com was not yet public. And some of our best stock picks and winners here at The Motley Fool -- companies like Netflix, and like Priceline, even more recently companies like iRobot or NVIDIA -- those companies either didn't exist or in many cases were not public, yet.
And then think about the last 20 years. Well, that gets me excited about this book, this edition of the book, and thinking about the next 20 years there will be companies that you and I haven't heard of that come public a year from now that over the succeeding 10 to 20 years will go up 50 to100x in value.
Tom: We're going to help some people achieve financial independence a lot sooner than they thought they could because of The Motley Fool Investment Guide.
