David Gardner, co-founder of The Motley Fool, is among the most respected and trusted sources on investing. As a best-selling author, hugely successful stock picker, and financial authority, David has led The Motley Fool’s growth into a worldwide investment and financial advisory services company. Each week David shares his insights into today's most innovative and disruptive publicly traded companies -- and how to profit from them by following his signature “Rule Breaker Investing” principles.…
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Why do we work? A paycheck matters, of course. And, when so much of life is spent working, might we reasonably hope for something more?Closing out the ninth year of Authors in August, David welcomes Dave Ulrich, one of the world’s leading thinkers on organizations, leadership, and human capability. Using the longtime favorite The Why of Work as a jumping-off point, their conversation ranges widely…
Artificial intelligence may feel suddenly everywhere, but AI pioneer Vasant Dhar has had a front-row seat for more than four decades—teaching AI, building companies around it, and bringing machine learning to Wall Street long before ChatGPT entered the conversation. For the second week of Authors in August, David sits down with Dhar to ask not merely what machines can do, but how humans can think…
Authors in August is back! It’s our 9th year featuring authors of books that David loves and thinks you’ll love too. So for the third time, philosopher and game scholar Thi Nguyen joins back with Rule Breaker Investing—and this time the conversation reaches far beyond games. What happens when the scores we invent to measure success begin quietly reshaping what we value? Together, in an incredibly…
As Rule Breaker Investing enters its twelfth year, it is fitting to hand the microphone back to the people who have helped shape it from the very beginning: our listeners.This month’s Mailbag spans investing, artificial intelligence, financial freedom, World Cup soccer, custodial Roth IRAs, Rule Breaker stock selection… and even a soundtrack for Foolish living?! Along the way are a heartbreaking…
It’s become something of a midsummer tradition on Rule Breaker Investing: set aside the markets for a week and simply follow curiosity wherever it leads.This year’s sampler wanders through technology, sports, business, demographics, literature, and a few unexpected places in between. Along the way are thoughts about how to get the most out of AI, a few tweaks that could improve the world’s biggest…
In the anxious days following Brexit, rather than predict the future, David asked a different question: Where are the opportunities? The result was a five-stock sampler built not on politics, but on optimism.Now a full decade has passed. Joined by longtime Fool Karl Thiel, we crack open the time capsule, revisit the original investment theses, score all five stocks against the market, and ask what…
Every so often, five quotations come along that don’t merely make you nod. They make you stop, put the book down, and think.This week we explore why the best investors first become students of themselves, why our minds work better when they’re surrounded by rich ideas, why business is one of humanity’s great engines for creating value, why prosperity may make societies not just wealthier but…
Each Independence Week, Rule Breaker Investing asks a simple question: What have you done over the past year to create financial freedom—for yourself or for others? This year’s answers feature a listener’s Declaration of Financial Independence and a young woman whose very first stock purchase turned out to be… Nvidia. Along the way, we revisit three favorite moments from the first three years of…
This month’s Mailbag ranges from Washington, D.C. to Germany, from the SEC to the moon, and from individual stock ownership to the deeper question of what freedom is actually for. Along the way, fellow Fools write in about transparency, curiosity, market caps, parenting, AI, adding to winning investments, and what can happen when decades of patient investing quietly compound into opportunities to…
The Market Cap Game Show returns for its 42nd installment, with longtime Motley Fool personalities Charly Travers and Jason Moser battling for a coveted spot in next March’s Market Cap Madness Final Four.But this episode marks something new. For the first time, players can invoke the King-Sharon Rule, adding an extra layer of strategy, risk, and reward to the game. Agree or disagree is no longer…
For the twelfth time, we gather around the campfire for one of RBI’s favorite traditions: Stock Stories. Five Fools. Five investing lessons. This summer’s tales share a surprising common thread: A biotech shell company that refused to die. An old gift of IBM stock quietly compounding for decades. A Fool who finally bought Alphabet nearly twenty years after he first meant to. A company called…
Why do some organizations seem unable to solve the very problems they were created to fix? Why do seemingly rational people end up chasing the wrong goals? And why does one innocent purchase so often lead to five more? In this new volume of RBI’s recurring cerebral series, David explores a handful of memorable laws and principles that help explain how people, businesses, markets, and institutions…
What happens when Nvidia’s annual dividend suddenly exceeds David’s original Motley Fool cost basis—six times over? This month’s Mailbag brings back a Foolish old term, “divvy-pop,” while also revisiting the power of doing less, holding more, and letting great companies keep surprising you.Also inside: a Buffett-meets-Rule-Breaker reflection from British Columbia, a jellybean contest gone…
To mark his 60th birthday, David delivers what may be the most distilled episode in Rule Breaker Investing history: 20 thoughts about investing, 20 about business, and 20 about life—gathered from decades of entrepreneurship, stock-picking, reading, losing, winning, and trying to stay Foolish along the way. From the “Ship of Fools” and the spiffy-pop, to optionality, fads that weren’t fads, the…
Once a year, around David’s birthday, listeners send in notes sharing what they’ve learned from this podcast over the years—about investing, business, and life. This year’s volume includes reflections on “dips wait for dips,” learning to appreciate mistakes instead of fearing them, the surprising power of simply doing nothing during market volatility, and why optimism itself may be one of the…
What happens when you actually do the thing most investors only talk about… and hold stocks for a full decade? This week, David welcomes The Motley Fool’s Tim Beyers and together they go back exactly 10 years—to the week—to revisit five companies picked in May 2016, scoring how they really did and, more importantly, asking why. From biotech to big data to media to real estate, this episode is…
From buying in thirds instead of waiting for dips, to a dishwasher hack that still requires the humans to remember the hack, to one listener’s beautifully rebalanced “harbor-and-horizon” portfolio, this month’s mailbag is as motley as ever. Along the way, David cleans up a long-used reference to Heisenberg vs. Hawthorne, hears how Magical Athlete has become a family hit, and considers a pair of…
What happens when you bring together three storytellers, three themes, and a podcast devoted to making you smarter, happier, and richer? You get Three Fools, our continuing episodic series! This time ’round, David is joined by superstar guests Bill Burke and Mahan Tavakoli as they each share three stories—one to educate, one to amuse, and one to enrich. From investing lessons that last a lifetime…
Some financial terms sound scarier than they are. Others sound familiar… right up until you realize you don’t actually know what they mean.This week, David returns with Volume 8 of Gotta Know the Lingo, welcoming Fool analysts Alicia Alfiere, Amanda Kish, and Nick Sciple to help translate the language of investing for the rest of us. Some terms are simpler, some more advanced, all of them…
Can you quickly decide which AI companies deserve your attention—and which to skip? What do you believe that most people don’t? And is there a simple trick, learnable in one afternoon, that can delight kids (and maybe yourself) for a lifetime? This week, David returns with Volume 11 of one of our OG episodic series: Mental Tips, Tricks & Lifehacks. He shares seven small ideas that punch above…
Some truths are too good to say only once. This week, David re-blasts five timelessly powerful ideas from the past—about identity, investing, serenity, frameworks, and questioning—and brings them together in a fresh 2026 mix. One quietly powerful idea runs underneath: What you do, repeatedly, becomes who you are.Along the way: A single line that might rewire how you think about your own habits…
March Madness may be over, but the Mailbag is just beginning—and as always, you’re the star of the show. This month we hear from listeners who tracked the data on our Market Cap Game Show strategies (does “always disagree”… really work?), revisit a thoughtful challenge from Professor Jason Corso on whether Rule Breaker Investing is built on habits, recipes, or something closer to an algorithm,…
The bracket is complete. The stakes are highest. And now… it’s time to crown a champion.This week on Rule Breaker Investing, defending champion Emily Flippen faces off against Cinderella challenger Loren Horst in the March Market Cap Madness World Championship. As always, you’re not just watching—you’re playing along. Ten companies. Ten chances to test your market cap intuition. Range it… and…
The Madness continues! This week on Rule Breaker Investing, the second semifinal of March Market Cap Madness tips off as defending world champion Emily Flippen faces long-time Motley Fool advisor Bill Barker for a place in the championship round. It is a rematch of the epic Final Four game they played this very week one year ago. As always, the real game is for you: ten companies, ten market-cap…
March Market Cap Madness tips off its Final Four this week on Rule Breaker Investing, and you’re not just watching—you’re playing. Past world champion Andy Cross (6–1 lifetime) squares off against Cinderella contender Loren Horst (1–0) in our first semifinal matchup, with a spot in the World Championship at stake. Grab a pencil, set your ranges, and see whether your market-cap intuition can…
This week’s Mailbag picks up where Pet Peeves left off—and then some. Listeners write in with their own linguistic grievances, from “10 straight unanswered points” to the curious inflation of words like “countless,” to the conversational reflex of “Right?” that may or may not actually validate anything. Along the way, we touch on Evernote in an AI world, foreign exchange risk from a Fool down…
It’s been 27 months since this series’s last installment, which means David has had time to quietly bottle up a fresh batch of entirely new irritations—all original, no repeats. This year’s edition takes aim at the slippery phrase “Buy Now, Pay Later,” the suspicious preface “If I’m being honest…,” and the curious cultural surrender embedded in “In my day…“.Along the way, there’s a certain…
Ten years ago this week, in the teeth of a downturn, David picked five stocks under the banner “5 Stocks to Feed the Bear.” This week, he and longtime Fool Rick Munarriz revisit that full basket—not after a month, a quarter, or a year, but after a much better, truer timeframe for the Rule Breaker Investor: 10 years. To the very day.Which stocks did David get really right? Which ones really wrong?…
Kevin Kelly—founding editor of Wired magazine and a lifelong observer of technology in motion—returns to Rule Breaker Investing for a conversation about how the future actually shows up. We don’t trade in predictions here. Instead, Kevin shares ways of noticing long arcs, understanding why certain platforms and ideas compound, and staying optimistic without getting swept up in hype. From AI…
This week’s Rule Breaker Investing Mailbag brings together beautiful questions and stories to start the new year. We wrestle with a values-alignment dilemma around owning Robinhood, explore what it looks like to turn investing into a real, score-kept game for kids (including outperforming Dad), consider a mischievous strategy for the Market Cap Game Show, and close with an inspiring note from a…
Risk gets talked about a lot in investing—and often defined poorly. This week on Rule Breaker Investing, David is joined by Motley Fool analysts Alicia Alfiere and Yasser El-Shimy to walk through his full 25-point risk rating system, a framework he’s used for more than a decade to replace vague labels like “medium risk” with something concrete and measurable. Using Etsy and Duolingo as live 2026…
This week on Rule Breaker Investing, David is joined by Raj Sisodia and Nilima Bhat, co-authors of Healing Leaders, for a conversation about leadership burnout, meaning, and why wholeness may be a strategic advantage. Rather than treating healing as a “soft” idea, Raj and Nilima walk through the book’s seven steps and explore how inner state shapes judgment, patience, courage, and long-term…
As we open 2026, David looks backward to get clearer about what really matters going forward. In the eighth installment of Essays From Yesterday, he revisits four Rule Breaker essays written between 2006 and 2014—spanning market sell-offs, forgotten drawdowns, early buyouts, language that shapes behavior, and the enduring power of mindset. Along the way, we’re reminded that sharp declines happen…
It’s the final Rule Breaker Investing podcast of 2025, and the year ends as it always does—with your Mailbag. David shares his annual year-forward market call, then works through listener notes that capture the heart of the Foolish journey. We hear from a father investing alongside his seven-year-old son, an investor who audited his own selling history and discovered just how early he’d stepped…
It’s time once again for the Market Cap Game Show Holiday Edition, where intuition meets valuation and everyday life meets market caps. Bill Barker and Matt Argersinger take the stage, vying for the final spot in our 2026 March Market Cap Madness World Championships, as they test their mettle—and yours—across ten public companies. From Bubble Wrap and sidewalk robots to semiconductors, ski…
t’s the 50th week of the year, which means it’s time once again for the Besties—a celebration of the episodes that educated, amused, and enriched us most in 2025. David highlights ten standout episodes from this year, revisiting the ideas, stories, and lessons that lingered long after the microphones were off. And all of the voices behind those moments return for brief cameos, reflecting on the…
This week, David returns to one of his favorite flexible formats: Old, New, Borrowed, Blue. In this tenth volume, he brings back a few personal lifehacks, peeves, and perks from past episodes; introduces a new financial holiday—“National Share Day”—imagining a country where every American becomes an owner; borrows a passage from his free downloadable book chapter to explore how AI may (or may not)…
It’s that time of year again—our annual tabletop gift guide returns with Games, Games, Games, Vol. 7. From family-friendly favorites to rich, strategic adventures, David shares five “in case you missed it” classics and then moves through a curated list of 12 games, arranged from lightest to heaviest. Expect quick, joyful picks like Wavelength and Dorfromantik, followed by deeper journeys into…
As November comes to a close and Thanksgiving arrives, our Mailbag is brimming! From Gratitude Challenge triumphs to a brand-new five-stock sampler, from Winter Soldier fortitude to navigating concentrated positions, inheritance questions, regrets, and remarkable investing wins—this month’s notes run deep and wide. David is joined by Andy Cross and Robert Brokamp to explore strategies for…
David is joined by George Khalaf, executive director of the Fool Community Foundation, for a special Weekend Extra featuring Gooding — musician, storyteller, and founder of Funding the Future. Together they explore Gooding’s mission to reach young people across America with dynamic, music-driven performances that make financial literacy not just understandable, but unforgettable. From inspiring…
As the final months of 2025 ebb away, it is time once again to pause, reflect, and openly acknowledge the gratitude we feel. From great companies that make great stocks possible, to the unifiers who build bridges instead of walls, to the quiet power of candles and the people who share their flame — this episode celebrates them all. David even offers five simple ways you can build a bridge in your…
We’re back with the second episode of a new series—10 Years Later—where we blast through time to peek in on a 5-Stock Sampler from 10 years in the past, then zoom back to the present to see what really happened. On the marquee today are 5 Lesser Known Rule Breakers (from 11/11/2015) that feature a company providing commercial kitchen solutions, a few big name changes, a couple of even bigger…
In this 21st installment of one of our longest-running series, David shares five insightful quotes—really more like passages this time—particularly aimed at business and entrepreneurs. Whether it’s making your vision manifest, providing genuine help for free, or choosing the better story when faced with a decision, this episode offers food for thought on visualizing your goals, deepening your…
From Diwali’s lights in India to a “spiffy-drop” on Netflix, this Mailbag travels widely and thinks deeply. A listener celebrates the Rule Breaker habit of lighting candles, not fanning flames, while others ask how to “Add Up, Don’t Double Down” in practice, what makes a business cyclical, and how to think about price momentum. Plus, a 67-year-old Fool goes all-in, a Boilermaker misses Investor…
By the pricking of my thumbs, something SPOOKY this way comes. That icy chill in the air tells us that it’s that season again. It’s that time of year when Robert Brokamp brings his ghoulishly chilling tales of frightful scams, legal guillotines, and savings depleting poltergeists. But, along with every tale of fright, comes a lesson and a warning, to help you beware these dark and malevolent…
Every stock tells a story. This week we gather around the campfire for five fresh tales—from silicon driving the AI era to supply-chain software that keeps retail humming, from a Latin American marketplace that became a fintech/logistics flywheel to a spicy franchiser scaling flavor by the bucket… and a legendary spiffy-pop that still makes us smile. Expect lessons in patience, optionality,…
Today is that day—once every two years—when this podcast goes back to basics and we restate and recommit to the eternal verities David sees in business, in investing, and in Rule Breaker Investing. So put down those oars, join us aboard our sailboat, and let the winds guide you back toward these valuable core beliefs. Whether you’re well steeped in Foolishness or at the beginning stages of your…
David slips on his Fred Roger’s cardigan to revisit five valuable lessons, intertwined with the theme of “how to win in life.” Pulled from classic episodes spanning the last decade of weekly podcasts, David spotlights lessons that light candles—at a time when too many are busy fanning flames. The five growth-minded blasts from the past: Roy Spence on being a “For” Person “Do you have a ________…
It’s a Mailbag of gratitude as the reviews are rolling in for David’s new book. A listener invests $100 for each of his daughters’ birthdays, positioning them for success in their financial futures, as another listener follows David’s advice: “Add up, don’t double down.” David also shares some Strat-o-matic memories and reminds us that the math is always against you when it comes to sports…
Welcome back to our quarterly Market Cap Game Show! Two past champions—Andy Cross and Yasser El-Shimy—take the stage to test their market-cap mettle (and yours) across ten public companies, vying for a spot in the 2026 March Market Cap Madness World Championships. From tech titans and international hotel brands to down home Texas fare and online car shopping, the matchups run from familiar to…