The Motley Fool's Rule Breakers, Rule Makers: The Foolish Guide to Picking Stocks

by David Gardner, Tom Gardner

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom the bestselling authors of The Motley Fool Investment Guide and its successful, savvy prequel, The Motley Fool's You Have More Than You Think, here's an engaging, humorous, and practical stock-picking guide, packed with Foolish insights, that caps off this invaluable personal finance trilogy from David and Tom Gardner.The Motley Fool's Rule Breakers, Rule Makers presents the sophisticated, yet easy-to-understand stock-picking methods that have kept the Motley Fool portfolio beating the Standard & Poor's averages by more than 30 percent. The key is investing in small start-up companies that have historically offered the greatest investment returns (the "rule breakers") as well as huge companies that maintain legal monopolies in their fields (the "rule makers"). The Gardner brothers explain* How to identify the best investments in today's public the rule breakers and the rule makers* The definition of a "tweener" -- a maturing rule breaker -- and how to detect the Tweener Death Rattle* When to buy and when to sell, and how to manage your portfolio on a regular basisIn their first two books, the Fools got you started in investing and freed you from the fees and worries that Wall Street's Wise Men have been imposing on investors for decades. Now, by sharing their methods for picking rule breakers and rule makers, they guide you through a stock market that has seen company valuations soar to unprecedented heights and that promises to continue providing roller-coaster thrills. The Motley Fools are the ultimate companions to bring along for a safe, fun, and profitable ride.

Genres: Nonfiction, Finance, Business, Personal Finance, Money, Economics

501 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Tom and David Gardner cofounded The Motley Fool, a multi-media financial education company, in 1993. Since then they have co-authored four New York Times bestsellers, including The Motley Fool Investment Guide and The Motley Fool's Rule Breakers, Rule Makers.


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Reviews

[alexander burrus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this book came out in 1999. I feel as I have a new understanding of what propels growth stocks to unreasonable prices. This book talked about how Steve jobs will turn apple around now that he has came back to apple! This book gives microsoft a 59/60 point scale. This book picked out Amazon as a good company to buy I believe. And lastly this book had yahoo has the leader in search engine, in 1999 I was using yahoo, as this book says you want the leader in a field. Google got big and started taking over and if this book had come out 4-5 years later it would have told you google was the leader in the search engine field with yahoo in second instead of excite.

Warren Buffett say you only need a few winners and when this book came out it was willing to tell anyone who would read it Microsoft Apple Amazon.

[Adam L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book was written 20+ years ago, the principles laid out in this book are still insightful. Many of the equations used likely need updated, but it is interesting to read about certain stocks they say will continue to do well come to fruition, and other stocks they are concerned about are no longer functioning companies. I will definitely incorporate some of the principles laid out in this book for my personal investing.

[Tim Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think they have a valuable say in the world of finance, yet for most of us, it just isn't practical if you don't have spare income to invest in stocks or if you do invest, you have a social conscience and do not want to put your money where it will do harm. If those items are cleared, the book is helpful.

[Chrissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book could have been so much shorter and I would have liked it that much better. However, I think it has some good ideas, particularly on some of the metrics for the "rule maker" stocks. I'm going to give it a go and see what happens.

[Francis Lau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ultimate Way of Successful Investing

This book shows us how to rightly implement the ‘buy and hold’ investment strategy. Once you follow this strategy, you can surely outperform the mutual funds you can find and invest. Thanks for writing this book for us.

[Brian]

This book blows. I made it through the rule breakers section and couldn't continue. I'm prepare to believe that the Fools have written better books for the novice investor, but this one wasn't it. The investment philosophy they espouse seems to be "invest in companies which will make a lot of money". Alright. Thanks for the tip, guys.

[The · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Rulemaker section (the second half of the book) is more quantitative, and thus, more to my liking. Something that I don't like - the book does not look at valuation, because the authors believe that a great company is worth owning at any price. I just don't subscribe to this perspective.

[Nate E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book when it was first published, it was very relevant. It was written in a very straight forward manner and was easy to understand. I still have it on the bookshelf to this day. Good Read.

[Mike Nilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tells the difference between the steady blue chips and the real money makers which are the small stocks. Fun read

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Companies can be loosely classified as potential rule breakers, until they die or become tweeners, at which time they either die or become rule makers.

[Keith Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice read but not so useful in any other way.

[Marco den Ouden · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my review here: Rule Breakers, Rule Makers

[Trung Nguyen Dang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't enjoy the book. Can't tell if the author was lucky or good. Lots of bad picks of companies have disappeared and occasional great picks.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda funny since it was written in 1998. Some good tips and timeless ideas but I will not be putting half my portfolio in AOL. Thanks anyway

[Loren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long on blather, short on info.

[Alberto Lopez · Rating 1 out of 5]

Soft.