motley fool share advisor — and the dishwasher i never trusted

share advisor is a phrase that, parsed slowly, means a man who advises you on shares. my dishwasher, by contrast, advises nothing. i never trusted it. and yet, on a wednesday three weeks ago at the corner bar with mike, i realized — between the second pint and the third — that one of these two things has a much better track record with me than the other, and it is not the one with a website. the motley fool share advisor, to give it the full name, has been on my credit card for a year.

writing now from the desk, mid-morning, mid-week. the boss is downstairs signing for a delivery nobody asked for. carla has a calendar invite labeled “intake review” with no agenda, which is its own kind of agenda. the corner bar was three weeks ago. that was the memory. this is the post.

motley fool share advisor: a paid stock-picking subscription, sister product to the free motley fool newsletter and the broader noble tradition of the fool. you pay yearly. they send picks twice a month. you decide whether to act. the question this post answers: how does the motley fool share advisor stack up, on a scale i actually care about, against a kitchen appliance i refuse to operate.

A SUBSCRIPTION. IS NOT. A PROMISE.

why a dishwasher, and why this post exists

the dishwasher came with the apartment. the landlord said it worked. the landlord, in my experience, says many things on a thursday. the dishwasher hums. it leaks, occasionally, from a place i cannot find. the cycle takes ninety-eight minutes, of which the first forty are a sound and the last fifty-eight are an accusation. when it’s done, i open the door and inspect each plate as if it were a lottery ticket. about a third of the time, i wash them again, in the sink, like a man who has lost faith in industrial progress.

i bring this up because it is the cleanest comparison i can think of for a paid stock-picking service. both promise an outcome. both have a cycle. both occasionally produce a result, and the result is occasionally good, and you are never quite sure why. and you pay, in advance, for the privilege of doubting them.

the table, which is the whole reason you scrolled

i made it on a napkin at the corner bar, three weeks ago, between mike and the second pint. mike said “what are you writing.” i said “a table.” mike said “about?” i said “share picks and a dishwasher.” mike said “okay” the way a parole officer says okay. mike has a system for taxes. mike has not filed since 2019. on this evening, mike was not the audience. the napkin was. i transcribed it the next morning, at this desk.

this table cost me one napkin and one beer. mike says the napkin counts. mike’s tax positions are not, in my view, defensible.

frequency, or: the calendar versus the mood

the picks come on a schedule. that is, in fact, part of what you pay for — the schedule. you give them money once a year and in exchange they put a date in their calendar and on that date they email you a stock. it is, when you describe it plainly, a beautiful arrangement. somebody is going to do something on a wednesday and they are going to send it to you. the dishwasher, by contrast, runs when i tell it to, which is when the sink can no longer pretend.

my dad used to say, watching him not fix things, “a tool you don’t trust, you use less.” i think about that every time i load the bottom rack. i thought about it again when i logged into the portal and saw a list of tickers i did not recognize, beside percentage gains and losses that did not, individually, mean anything. dad was right. the principle, like the man, holds up.

signal-to-noise, or: what you actually receive

here is where the two products diverge, in my view, the most honestly. the dishwasher’s noise is, by design, the work. the noise is the cycle. the signal is silence. when the dishwasher stops, it has either finished or broken — and at the end of ninety-eight minutes, you cannot tell which without opening the door.

the share advisor inverts this. the noise is the product. each pick comes with a thesis, a chart, a competitive analysis, two or three risks listed in a smaller font, and a paragraph that begins, more or less, “we believe.” the signal — by which i mean the actual recommendation — is buried under prose. you can find it. you do find it. but you find it the way you find a fork in a drawer of forks, by feel.

this is not a complaint. it is a description. the prose is, in fact, why people pay. you don’t pay $99 a year for a ticker symbol. you pay for a story about a ticker symbol. wall street, the 1987 michael douglas film, taught us this. the line was “greed is good.” the line was not “two picks a month, on a calendar.” but it could have been.

consequence-if-wrong, and a brief visit from 4B

if the picks are wrong, the consequence is real money out of a real account. the account is mine. the money is also mine, technically, although a portion of it is currently spoken for by people whose calls i no longer answer. when a pick craters, i feel it in the bank app i don’t open. when a pick climbs, i feel it briefly, then i feel nothing, because nothing about climbing is haunting. only the falling is.

if the dishwasher is wrong, the consequence is i wash the plate again. that’s it. one pod, eight gallons of water, a small manageable shame. the dishwasher cannot bankrupt me. its worst day is a wet sock and a redo.

last sunday, mid-comparison, the 4B guy (logged in my running notes as the_4b_guy, neighbor with the drum kit) poked his head through my front door — which i had left open for the elevator man, who never came — and said “hey, you got a quarter for the laundry.” he did not wait for an answer. he saw the dishwasher running. he said “that thing still works?” and pulled his head back out before i could explain. the dishwasher, somehow, came out of that exchange with more credibility than the picks did.

verdict, or: which one i would re-subscribe to

here is the answer, from a desk chair that tilts unevenly. i am keeping the dishwasher. i am, this year, not renewing. it is not a moral judgment. it is a domestic one. the dishwasher, when it fails, fails small. the picks, when they fail, fail on my behalf, with my money, on a schedule. i already have enough things failing on a schedule.

if you read the broader tmf motley fool history alongside the question of whether membership is worth it at all, you’ll see this is the oldest argument in finance — pay for advice, or trust the appliance. neither side wins, exactly. one side just generates more content.

and you. if you have the money and the patience, it might be the right product for the right wednesday. if you have a dishwasher you don’t trust, run it twice and call it a hedge.

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