How can The Motley Fool claim a return with no sell signals?

C

craigthinks

Hi I was looking for a stock signal service and get back into trading. Motley Fool is offering a 50% discount, but noticing some red flags to the point of lies. The graph below show a 100K or 1/3 draw down in 2018 (ouch), not 2020. I have heard good things about them for years. But under further investigation they have suggested buys but not sells. Or not a true suggested portfolio of Stocks holdings. I am correct? Yet they claim a 10,000 dollar return would beat the S & P 500 with a graph.
So if you started with 10,000 dollars you could only buy 20 stocks at $500 each position. Then to take up new positions, you would need to sell some positions or a portion of the positions to buy new positions. But no sell signals to buy new positions.
The only honest way would be to sell some of all your positions equally to buy new positions. (Which would add a selling cost every month.) The dishonest way would be to sell your position at their peak high and buy the new positions. That is a classic scam.
Also, they claim if you bought some positions for $500 it would be worth 1000% more. But you would not have held those positions as you would have to sell some to buy new positions. Again just does not add up. You would need a time machine to know which ones to hold and not sell.
Has anybody ask them these questions? Or similar ones. Does 2 + 2 = 6?

Here is a graph, notice the over 100K (1/3) draw down in 2018 wow, no not 2020...
upload_2021-1-5_10-13-38.png
 
The returns they show are based on buying when they recommend buying and selling when they recommend selling. In terms of a real portfolio this is not possible as you mentioned since there are limited funds and a maximum number of stocks you may want to hold. I've had subscriptions to various Motley Fool services over the years and I can tell you from experience that they are honest and don't misrepresent their investments or returns. The disadvantage of an advisory service is the question to how to allocate funds. A portfolio service fixes this problem by starting with a fixed amount of capital and working with that capital to build a portfolio.
If you're interested in stock ideas and research to back up the recommendations, the advisory service is good.
The target audience for their services is the LTBH investor, not short term swing trader or scalper.
 
i have a subscription to the motely fool for part of my portfolio. they are not going to tell you to sell unless they see the long term growth is not there anymore. what i have done is taken a small portion of my portfolio and bought a couple of stocks that they seemed very excited about. yes, there were big drawdowns and the temptation to sell was very strong but thankfully i resisted. and what can i say, the returns in the long run were remarkable.
 
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