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Hi, I'm Tom Gardner, co-founder of The Motley Fool. I understand I only have 120 seconds to make my point. I don't even need that much time.
How would you like to make 16% per year on your investment -- beating the stock market by 6 percentage points per year? And how would you like to get that money without taking on any risk -- removing the volatility from your returns, just the steady 16% per year? How would you do it? Anyone got any ideas?
Here's how you'd do it. You'd launch a credit card company in America, and you'd charge consumers 16% interest every time they borrowed a dollar and didn't pay you back at the end of the month. Furthermore, you could so mismanage your company, taking on so much leverage and paying yourself such outrageous bonuses that the U.S. government -- also known as the taxpayer -- would have to give you capital at a 0% interest rate so you could turn around and lend it back out to them at 16% per year.
Anyone who is a Motley Fool knows that you don't give Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Citibank (NYSE: C), and these other clowns any of your hard-earned money. You pay your credit cards down at the end of every month, and no matter your age, no matter your income level, you learn to live within your means so you don't fund the ridiculous behavior that's happened on Wall Street over the last 20 years, and you don't put yourself behind the eight-ball as an investor.
If you want 16% a year? Start a credit card company; start a bank. You might not feel good about yourself in the morning, but you'll make more than you will in the stock market. If you want to be a Motley Fool, pay your credit card down and invest in the stock market for the long haul. I think I have a few seconds left. Fool on.
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