Who Is Tom Gardner?

Tom Gardner and his brother David are the entrepreneurs who launched The Motley Fool. It began as a print newsletter where they shared their investing advice, and now it reaches an audience of millions every month. In this profile, we'll cover what Tom does at The Motley Fool, some of his most successful stock picks, and the investment strategies he uses.

Primary roles

Primary roles

Tom Gardner is a co-founder of The Motley Fool and serves as the company's chief executive officer (CEO). He also makes stock picks for The Motley Fool's subscription services.

Strategy

Investment strategy

Tom Gardner is a long-term investor who focuses on finding great businesses and regularly adding to his positions in them. He believes that the worst mistake an investor can make is to lose any of their big winners, because there's no limit to how much an investment can grow.

To find the best long-term investments, Gardner follows a framework he built. It involves looking at the following five tenets, which are ranked in order of importance:

1. Culture: The way companies treat their key constituents, including employees, clients, suppliers, and shareholders. A positive company culture is what Gardner values most in an investment.
2. Strategy: A company's plan for winning in business or widening its lead. Examples include pricing power or a unique competitive edge.
3. Financials: The strength of a company's balance sheet and its income statements. Key factors here include sales growth, high returns on capital, high profit margins, and a healthy balance between cash and long-term debt.
4. Safety: The level of risk facing a business. Gardner considers the ways a business could experience issues, the likelihood of these issues, and how prepared it is to handle them.
5. Valuation: The price the market is currently putting on a business. While important, a high valuation isn't necessarily a dealbreaker if a company nails the first four tenets.

Tom and David Gardner have similar investing styles, and they came up with The Motley Fool's investing strategy, which also helps explain their overall approach. It values diversification -- The Motley Fool's recommendation is a portfolio of 25 to 30 stocks -- and emphasizes the importance of not overreacting to market volatility or short-term price fluctuations.

Career highlights

Career highlights

Tom Gardner started The Motley Fool with his brother David and Erik Rydholm in 1993. It began as a newsletter, but a year later, Tom promoted it on America Online (AOL).

The web presence, combined with stock picks that outperformed the market, helped The Motley Fool build a large following and established both brothers as well-known investors. In 2002, the company launched Stock Advisor, its first subscription service, with stock picks from Tom and David Gardner.

Here are some of the top investments Tom and David Gardner have recommended on The Motley Fool:

• They recommended Nvidia (NVDA -3.38%) in 2005. It traded at a split-adjusted price of just $0.16 per share at the time. Nvidia would go on to become the most valuable company in the world by market cap.
• They recommended Tesla (TSLA -3.45%) in 2012. It traded at a split-adjusted price of $2.12 per share at the time. Tesla has since become one of the top electric vehicle (EV) companies.
• They recommended Amazon (AMZN -1.16%) in 2002. It traded at a split-adjusted price of $0.77 per share at the time. Amazon is now the world's largest e-commerce company and cloud provider.

Those are a few of the big winners. As far as how the entire portfolio has performed, Stock Advisor has returned 1,070% from its launch in 2002 through Aug. 17, 2025. The S&P 500 had returned 185% over that same period.

Philosophy & legacy

Philosophy and legacy

Tom Gardner's investment philosophy ultimately boils down to finding great companies and sticking with them for the long haul. He has even pointed out that extending your holding period is the simplest way to get better returns from your investments.

If you'd like to learn more about Tom Gardner's approach to investing and personal finance, he has co-authored quite a few books on those subjects with his brother David, including:

• The Motley Fool Investment Guide: How the Fool Beats Wall Street's Wise Men and How You Can Too (first published in 1996, third edition published in 2017)
• The Motley Fool: You Have More Than You Think -- The Foolish Guide to Personal Finance (first published in 1998, second edition published in 2001)
• The Motley Fool's Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: The Foolish Guide to Picking Stocks (published in 2000)
• The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens: 8 Steps to Having More Money Than Your Parents Ever Dreamed Of (published in 2002)
• The Motley Fool's Money After 40: Building Wealth for a Better Life (published in 2004)

Tom Gardner has also played a role in shaping financial industry regulations. He has testified before Congress regarding corporate governance and internet securities fraud and before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding financial auditor independence.

Gardner and The Motley Fool as a whole were instrumental in getting the SEC to pass Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD). The Motley Fool's readers sent about two-thirds of the letters the SEC received regarding this proposed regulation, according to a 2001 interview with former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt. He also said that without the letters from those readers, the regulation wouldn't have passed.

Related investing topics

Awards & honors

Awards and honors

Tom Gardner graduated with a bachelor's degree from Brown University. He also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Strayer University.