motley fool stock advisor reddit — the third advisor in the room — 1 brief investigation

motley fool stock advisor reddit is two phrases mashed into one. a third advisor enters the room: the thread. 4B begins music early. mike, later, weighs in. ikea waits in pieces. the good knife stays unused. HT30 implies that ignorance, with reddit, becomes a panel.

i am writing this from the desk on a wednesday at 3:47pm, while carla is upstairs at the annual planning meeting and the rest of the morning is mine to spend on something nobody asked for. the panel keeps growing. one advisor was already too many. now there are three.

i opened a thread last night, briefly, then closed it. then opened it again. by the count i keep running, that is two opens, one half-formed opinion, and zero dollars moved. the panel does its work in the background, like 4B does his music.

1. motley fool stock advisor reddit, the dual entity

motley fool stock advisor reddit is two things in a trench coat. one is a paid newsletter that picks stocks. the other is a subreddit where people ask whether the paid newsletter is worth it. you are supposed to read one. you end up reading both. you end up reading neither, because by the time you finish the comments you have forgotten the picks.

the foundational riff on the parent brand i already laid out in my investigation into the motley fool itself, which is the pillar this post hangs from. that one is the doctrine. this one is the panel that argues about the doctrine on a forum that never closes.

here is the thing i keep noticing about motley fool stock advisor reddit threads: nobody on them owns the picks they are arguing about. they are arguing about owning them. that is a distinction. it matters.

i am, for what it is worth, not subscribed. i looked at the page. i closed the page. i then read the thread about the page. i am, in this very specific way, the demographic.

2. mike at the corner is also a third advisor in his way

i went to the corner_bar last week and mike was at the end of the bar, which is where mike lives now, technically. mike has a system for taxes. has not filed since 2019. this is not financial advice. it is, however, a financial position, and positions are what advisors take.

i told mike about the panel. mike said: “the thread is just the bar, but typed.” mike does not know what reddit is. mike has, in this single observation, described reddit perfectly.

mike’s third-advisor energy is not stocks. it is the way he says “i’d just leave it” about every form of money management, which is, when you think about it, also a strategy. an unsubscribed strategy. the price of the actual newsletter i looked into separately, and the number was high enough that mike, hearing it, would have laughed for a length of time i would have had to time. by the count i keep running, mike has not paid for advice in his adult life.

3. the 4B guy banged the wall during the threads

i was reading the threads at home and the 4b_guy started his music at 7:42pm, which is early for him, and then banged on the wall when i did not respond to his music with my own. this is the 4B noise war. i did not start it. i will not finish it.

the 4b_guy is, in his own way, a fourth advisor. his counsel is: do not concentrate. his counsel is delivered through plaster. it is, as counsel goes, free.

i tried to go back to the thread. one user had written six paragraphs about a stock i had never heard of. another user had written one word: “lol.” i read both. i am not sure which one was the better investment of my time. probably the one word. four characters, full stop, total commitment.

4. the ikea instructions were clearer, briefly noted

last month i bought an ikea bookshelf and the instructions had eleven steps. i finished four of them. the bookshelf is in the kitchen, leaning against the counter at a thirteen-degree lean, and i have decided this is a feature. the instructions, while i was doing the four steps i did, were the clearest financial guidance i have received this year. they were free. they were illustrated. they were accurate.

compare this to the panel. the panel is not illustrated. the panel does not agree with itself. the panel does not even agree with itself within a single thread. one user’s “buy” is another user’s “are you serious.” the bookshelf, by contrast, is one shape. it is leaning, but it is one shape.

i mention this because the dividend stocks angle, which i have already gone after in another investigation, is the closest the newsletter ever gets to ikea instructions. it is at least step one, do this. the rest of it is leaning at thirteen degrees, much like my bookshelf, which is to say: it functions, but you would not invite people over to look at it.

5. the good knife i never use also offers advice, silently

i own one good knife. i do not use it. i use the bad knife. the good knife sits in the drawer next to the takeout menus, and every time i open the drawer it is there, judging me with the silent authority of a thing that cost more than it should have. this, too, is a form of advice. the knife says: you have already spent the money. you might as well use the thing.

the panel says the same thing about the subscription, in louder type. you have already paid. you might as well read the picks. this is, technically, a sunk-cost fallacy applied retroactively to a decision you have not yet made. the redditors are doing it on your behalf. you have not subscribed. you are reading the regret of people who have. the regret is, in many cases, more entertaining than the picks.

this is the part where i’m fairly sure there is a study somewhere, possibly in a serious magazine, about why we read reviews of products we will never buy. the magazine, if it exists, is buried under the unopened mail pile, which by my latest tally is leaning the other direction from the bookshelf, balancing the kitchen.

6. verdict, three advisors is two too many

here is what i think is happening with motley fool stock advisor reddit, and you can write this down. the original product has one job: tell you what to buy. the forum has one job: tell you whether the original product is doing its job. and the third advisor — the panel — has one job: contradict the forum, contradict itself, and exit before anyone asks for a name.

this is an issue i have explored from another angle: when ignorance becomes a system, that system gets a brand. ignorance about money, specifically, has many brands. a different one I treated in my brief investigation into the word moron, where the same kind of confident not-knowing also wears a uniform. moron, fool, advisor — the words rotate, the dynamic does not. you do not need to be a moron to be in the panel. you need to be loud and unaccountable, which is a much lower bar.

HT30 says that ignorance is, in this case, financial therapy. i think that is the cleanest summary of motley fool stock advisor reddit anyone could write. the panel is not advice. the panel is therapy. it makes you feel better about the decision you were going to make anyway, which is: nothing. nothing is, statistically, what most of us do. nothing is, also, free.

for context on the larger comedic tradition of confidently giving advice you have not earned the right to give, see frasier, a man who hosted a radio show about feelings he himself could not handle. frasier had credentials. the panel does not. somehow the panel is louder. that is the era we live in.

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