The Motley Fool Website
The Motley Fool is the name of a financial website that began in 1993, although it is now far more. From its humble origin as the idea of two brothers in Virginia, the Motley Fool has turned into a multimedia financial services concern which gets its message out via its web sites in the USA, the UK and Australia; books, newspaper articles, TV appearances and newsletters.
The publicity on their website says that the firm got its name from Shakespeare, who said that the king’s fools were allowed to tell him anything without fear of being beheaded, as long as it was in an amusing manner. The Motley Fool might have lost its head.
For while their personal investing advice is as helpful as anything else you will probably read anywhere, the humour can be a bit thin.
Nevertheless, the advice is sound and the organization of the web site with its discussion boards leads to many exciting, topical debates by well-informed (and far less well-informed) investors all keen to put in their two penn’orth.
There is info on most aspects of personal finance on the site, ranging from advances to investments like stocks, shares, bonds and mutual funds.
The web site is full of with hints and tips on how to make and save money. You will find advice on things like finance software, dividends, stocks, and how much you ought to become saving from your monthly earnings.
There are regular features on other aspects as well like which is the best electric or gas firm, getting out of debt and credit repair. Another feature is their interest in stocks, shares and mutual funds.
The team at Motley Fool are managing a ‘million dollar portfolio’ of their own real money on line and members of the web site are permitted to watch, discuss and copy each transaction.
Just a limited number of people are permitted in at any one time, so you may find this feature closed to you, but you can register to be told when a space comes up.
In the meantime, you could become a member of one of the CAPS Contests which mock up gambling on the stock exchange with pretend money in mock portfolios. That is, you play with make-believe money, but the awards are real enough.
These competitions are immense fun and the best fashion of being able to learn about the stock exchange and market movements without it bankrupting you.
All in all, it worth adding the Motley Fool to your list of Financial Favourites because there is such a lot of free financial knowledge there which seems to come from the heart of the managing, owner brothers and their colleagues. Sure, they get commissions on everything and attempt to sell a pro version of the web site, but there is still loads of free info there too.
One word of warning though: whilst the financial advice and suggested links are fairly decent, do not go there expecting to have a belly laugh, because the humour wears rather thin after about five minutes.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a range of subjects, but is now involved with Motley Fool. If you would like to know more, please go to our web site at Mutual Funds