Poetry of Rule Breaker Investing

In this podcast kicking off our seventh annual Authors in August series, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner pivots to a special “Poetry of Rule Breaker Investing” episode.

We’ve got a selection of eight original poems from fellow Fools inspired by market movements, Rule Breaker principles, and financial freedom, plus a surprise world-premiere musical tribute!

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on August 07, 2024.

David Gardner: Of Arms and the man I sing. Question Number 1, what epic poem translated into English begins with that line? Well, if you answered Virgil’s Aeneid, give yourself a golden Jester cap. Question Number 2, what epic podcast begins, Of investing and the Fools, I sing. Well, if you answer this one, this week, give yourself sure, a sparkly unicorn horn of investing and the Fools I sing only on this week’s Rule Breaker Investing.

This week kicks off our seventh annual Authors in August series on Rule Breaker Investing with a special surprise. It’s a surprise because I’d planned this week to be interviewing philosopher of games, Thi Nguyen, author of the book Games Agency As Art. But unfortunately, Thi had to cancel for this week. We will talk to him a few weeks hence. Which left a void in my August schedule. That’s the surprise part, but it’s also a special surprise because I’d wanted to do a poetry of Rule Breaker Investing special for years now. This plan B moment opens up that opportunity. Much fine original poetry has appeared on Rule Breaker Investing now in our tenth year of a new podcast every week. Many poems, in fact, far more than I could fit in one podcast, but how about a selection of them? Especially timed, I would say, coincidentally, but now intentionally, especially timed with a market sell off. That feels like this podcast was meant to be of Arms, and The Man I Sing, wrote Virgil. Well, this week of Investing and the Fools, I sing and sing. I won’t actually do that to you, but I get to sing the praises of numerous Fools who made these contributions over time, since poetry is with Virgil singing, so yeah, of investing and the Fools, I sing this special week to kick off authors in August. Now, a reminder next week, we will have John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods Market and his wonderful book debuting earlier this year, The Whole Story. John and I will talk about well, his life, but particularly his business life, some of his investing life, certainly his personal life too. I’m nearly finished the book, and it is a doozy. John Mackey next week. Then the week after Stanford neuroscientist, David Eagleman, whom I can’t wait to introduce you to if you’d not come across David before, and his book Sum as in S-U-M, Sum, a ripping, good short read if you’re looking for a beach book this month. But now without further ado of investing and the Fools, I sing. Poem Number 1. Five years ago, Ben Golland, @BenGolland, G-O-L-L-A-N-D on Twitter, X, wrote, Dear David, I was inspired today after listening to your 2018 year end podcast to Pen My Own poem. Ben writes, heavily inspired by Brian Bilston’s famous poem, Refugees. This is my own titled Fool. I hope you enjoy it. I’m just going to read Ben’s poem. It’s fairly short. It’s very well done. Here we go. It’s entitled Fool. But on a side note here in 2024, I want to ask you, as you hear this, have you heard any of these kinds of lines in the past week or so? Here’s Ben’s poem. The market is crashing, so do not tell me, suffer a Fool gladly. We need to see this for what it really is. Sell, double down, get out. This is no time to let winners run high. Add up. Take the long view. We should think short term. We cannot find top dogs, find sustainable advantages, find good management. Instead, let us try and time the market. It’s not correct to say these are people just like us. Investing is for the professionals. Do not be so stupid to think that you can beat the market. That was Fool by Ben Golland. Now, I’m sure some long time listeners are thinking, What was Ben thinking? Why did David just read that poem? It seems to go against everything that I stand for, and that we believe here at the Motley Fool and Rule Breaker Investing. Now, Ben is from London. Maybe he doesn’t really understand this podcast very well. In fact, it inspired me to look up the poem that he was referring to back then, that’s Brian Bilston’s famous poem Refugees. It was then that I started to figure out what was going on here.

Now, I know some of you already know Brian Bilston’s Refugees poem, which was published, I think, on Twitter, back in the day, as Brian Bilston was sometimes called the Poet Laureate of Twitter. Anyway, at the bottom of Brian’s poem Refugees, you can look this up. I’m not going to share it. But the last line of his poem reads in parentheses, now read from bottom to top. When you read his poem, Refugees that way, it reads very differently. Now let me do that for our friend Ben Golland’s poem, Fool. Because at the bottom, Ben wrote, now read from bottom to top, so here comes Fool the other way. Remember the last line? He wrote, do not be so stupid to think that you can beat the market. Well, you can beat the market was the last line. That’s now the first line of this rendition reading from bottom to top. Let’s go. You can beat the market. Do not be so stupid to think that investing is for the professionals. These are people just like us. It is not correct to say time the market. Instead, let us try and find good management. Find sustainable advantages. Find top dogs. We cannot think short term. We should take the long view, add up. Let winners run high. This is no time to get out, double down, sell. We need to see this for what it really is. Suffer a Fool gladly, so do not tell me the market is crashing. To that, I say, well done, Ben and thank you for sharing that. Poem Number 1. Side note before poem Number 2, on the January 30th, 2019 mail bag when I first read Ben’s poem, he wrote in separately with a little bit of his own story, and I shared that as a separate mailbag point. Here’s a portion. He wrote, during my second year of university. I realized I wanted my money to work as hard as I thought that I was. I reached out to a friend’s father for some help in starting to navigate the investing world as I knew he did something related. Well, it was my luck. That man was David Kuo. Some of you will know and remember, David Kuo, but David Kuo was then the CEO of Motley Fool Singapore, which no longer exists as a separate entity. Anyway, Ben goes on, David was working in London, and sent me starter books on investing links to the Fool website and offered me work experience. In fact, the two weeks I spent at Fool UK, presumably as an intern, were two of the most important weeks of my life. The team helped me understand what it was to be an investor, a part owner in a business, how to build a portfolio. Most importantly, Ben writes, gave me the confidence to act. That was seven years ago, which, by the way, is now 12 years ago. I was even a guest on David Kuo’s podcast.

For that week. David ended our podcast with a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” Ben closes, that’s how I felt at the time and continue to feel to this day, thanks to you, David Kuo and the Fool for stretching my mind. Well, thank you, Ben, again for your poem and your story and a shout out to longtime Fool David Kuo for one of so many acts of guidance and kindness on behalf of many Foolish investors. All right on to poem Number 2. The years 2020-2021 provided by far, the most short term volatility I have ever experienced in my adult investing years. Nothing like how August has started for the stock market. In October of the year 2020, fellow Fool John Flood wrote in saying at the time, and I quote, “I had the immense pleasure of visiting Fool HQ back in October 2008, a time of market gloom and opportunity boom, if you had the nerve,” John wrote, “Thanks to several conversations that day, I sold nothing. Dipped my toe into four battered, but still brilliant businesses. These were some of the best decisions of my financial life. You made me both smarter and richer with a few deft strokes that day. I love your podcast for its subject variety, the constant sense of learning, your unflinching enthusiasm, your equally engaging guests. I also want to say,” John, wrote, “that I really appreciate when you qualify a statement with, here in the United States, as you often do. You acknowledge that there’s a big world out there, and many of us are listening. I’m originally from Ireland,” John wrote, “but have been living in Switzerland for many years, a country where the tax rate on share capital gains is a big fat, and very lovely zero.” Not a bad advertisement for the country of Switzerland, John. “Like your podcasts,” he concluded, “I hope to finish this note with a flourish. Below, I’ve described my road to Foolishness and some of the core tenets of the Motley Fool in a short poem. I’ve taken a slight liberty with your surname, which I hope you’ll enjoy. A huge thanks to you, Tom and the 400 odd Fools making the Motley fool the model company it is today fool on John Flood.”

Well, John, I am honored to read your poetry again here on this week’s podcast as poem Number 2. Here it is Becoming a Fool by John Flood. It always begins with an inhibiting doubt. I could never invest with success or with clout. The market is only for pros, in the no, not for me, a mere ordinary Joe. Leave it to the experts. Hand over your cash. They talk with conviction. They cut a fine dash. At Christmas, they send you a card, a small gift as your investments lag the market in a downward drift. This cannot go on. This financial scam. It’s time to wake up, tell those posers to scram. But who to turn to? Who can I trust? What was presented as gold turned out to be rust. The solution is to buy individual shares led by a company who both guides and cares. Their three stated aims to make you smarter, happier, and richer, complete their charter. This is very kind, John. Take center stage, the Motley Fool. Two brothers indifferent to the current cool. In for the long haul, not today or tomorrow, using money, you neither need nor borrow. Gardner by name and boy, can they sow the seeds to sustainable portfolio wealth, finding companies disrupting the status quo. No magic formula, no slithery stealth, winners win. Seems an obvious fact, but here’s the rule breaking contrarian act. You buy. You love the spectacular rise, yet in order to win the ultimate prize, you must buy and buy some more. The sell refrain, you resolutely ignore. The market falls fast, makes the legs feel weak. Don’t sell in a hurry. Be steadfast, not meek. Doing nothing seems reckless. While panic holds sway, the market will recover and sellers cry in dismay. The index curve from left to right, over 100 years and upward slope. Where are those drops, those times of fright. Only visible under a microscope. If you’re still unsure, watching from the side, take that first step, you’ll soon find your stride at fool.com. Helping guidance await. It’s time you took control of your financial fate. That was becoming a fool by John Flood. It’s a little bit shameless of me to read. I’m very conscious. It sounds like product placement. I apologize for that. But what I most treasure are the good words of good people. That’s really what I’m after in this world and trying to raise up everything around me, and John Flood, boy, is it a delight to have your kind words. Thank you. A pleasure to read that once again. Let’s move on to poem Number 3. Long time Fool Kurt Ilia has written in many times to our mailbags. One of those times Kurt wrote in to Share to reflect upon his favorite poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Now, to be clear, poem Number 3 this week is the only one written by a famous poet. This is not by a fellow Fool writing in, but after I read Longfellow’s poem, I really want to share with you Kurt’s thoughts about the poem as applied to Rule Breaker Investing. I like to think Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is nodding his Fool head somewhere as we read his poem, and inspire you with Kurt’s thoughts. I should mention, by the way that Longfellow, who lived from 1807-1882 is considered by many as one of America’s earliest celebrities.

His poetry was so popular that he was the most popular poet of his time, and because poetry was a much bigger thing in the 19th century, I think it’s fair to say that in the 21st century, Longfellow had a huge relative following, think Taylor Swift, or maybe Missy Elliot. Here is a Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A Psalm of Life. Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream for the soul is dead that slumbers and things are not what they seem. Life is real. Life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art to dust returnest was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end or way, but to act that each tomorrow find us farther than today. Art is long, and time is fleeting, and our hearts, those stout and brave, still like muffled drums are beating funeral marches to the grave in the world’s broad field of battle in the bivouac of life be not like dumb driven cattle, be a hero in the strife, trust no future, however pleasant. Let the dead past bury its dead. Act. Act in the living present, heart within and God o’erhead. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and departing leave behind us footprints on the sands of time. Footprints, that perhaps another sailing o’er life’s solemn main, a forlorn and shipwrecked brother, seeing shall take heart again. Let us then be up and doing with a heart for any fate, still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait. Again, that’s the Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

And here are Curt Iles’s foolish thoughts. He wrote, dear, David. As I was walking along the beach here in Topsail, North Carolina this morning on a family vacation, one of my favorite poems came to mind, and as I recited it to the waves and the seagulls, it occurred to me, Curt says, that in addition to the timeless lessons it contains on life, a few of its passages are also strikingly meaningful from an investing perspective. Given your background as an English major and your foolish tendency to apply literary wisdom to your investing philosophy, I thought you might enjoy examining this classic from this new point of view. Here are a few passages that Curt calls out as speaking to his inner investor. Number one is the phrase, things are not what they seem. Curt writes, when stock prices rise or crash violently, it doesn’t mean the companies they represent are really worth more or less than they were the day before, stay focused on the business. Dido, the hyperbolic quotes, opinion and analyses offered by Pundits on CNBC or Bares or wherever ignore a lot of the noise. The second passage he calls out is that great line, be not like dumb driven cattle. That one jumped out to me as well Curt. Curt writes, be a hero in the strife. Don’t follow the herd. Most people, including professional fund managers lose to the market. Don’t do what most people do or try to follow conventional wisdom, rather break the rules and think for yourself. The third line he calls out, trust no future, however pleasant. Curt says, the big, comfortable, profitable companies of today will not exist in the future if they don’t proactively change. The only certainty is that new disruptive technologies and business models will make the future look different from today in ways we can’t even imagine. The market is forward-looking, we must be too. To that, I say, Amen, Curt. Love it. Thank you.

Point number four, there are, by the way, three more here. Point number four, let the dead past bury its dead. Curt, you said, don’t learn too well the lessons of your past investing failures, and certainly don’t dwell on them. Whatever a stock has done in the past, you need to let that go and focus on what it’s going to do in the future. Number five, that line, lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. Curt says, there are so many heroes out there to inspire us, not just remind us that it’s possible to beat the market, but also to see the better world we can create for ourselves, our families, and the world with the resources that a lifetime of investing will put at our disposal. Again, I say, Amen, brother. Number six, Curt you close with, and the poem does too, learn to labor and to wait. That Longfellow’s line. Curt says, work hard, save your money, invest in great companies, and then be patient. Time is our greatest asset. Well, that line learned to labor and to wait, also jumped out to me because I think so often in life we think that we’re going to be rewarded for efforts that we make, and rightly so in so many contexts in life. The more you do, the better you often do.

But so many of the biggest mistakes that we make as investors, especially when we look backward briefly and count the money we could have made had we not done what we did. Generally, had we not sold too early. How many friends do I say who had Apple at some point? It might have been the 1980s, the 1990s, or the Outs, and if they just, they say to themselves, held on, or maybe you sold Netflix during the Quikster debacle of 2011. Now 13 years ago. We’ve all made mistakes like this. We make those mistakes, but then we realize, I hope in retrospect, had we just with Longfellow waited, how much better things might have been? Well, to close, thanks again, Curt. It was my pleasure to share both Longfellow’s poem and your very foolish reflections pulled from that poem. You closed your note by saying, I hope these passages resonate with all of us as much as they did with me. Well, thank you, Curt. One of the things I love about every one of our monthly mailbags is it’s not my wisdom. It’s so often yours. My fellow listeners, my fellow Fools, getting to show that off once a month, or in the case of investing in the Fools I sing a special surprise podcast this week. It just shows so much great insight among our community, and I certainly selfishly benefit from that as much as anybody else. On to poem number four. This is the only one that’s mine, and there’s a little backstory that I want to share with you. First of all, let me say it’s slam poetry. For anybody who’s ever been to a poetry slam, I’ve been to one too, just one. The one that I happened to have attended was at the Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit some years back. The person who was coaching us is a famous slam poet. His actual name is Adam Schmalholz but his stage name is IN-Q, as in I-N, hyphen, Q. I’m going to share with you in just a sec what he said to us to inspire us to write a slam poem that day, which I will shortly be sharing. But before I do that, I want to give you a hot tip. If you want to be inspired, if you want to spend three, maybe four minutes, sometime before summer ends here on YouTube, and be maybe a little bit blown away, maybe with a loved one or your family around. I would highly recommend that you just Google IN-Q YouTube.

There you’ll find yourself on a YouTube page with some of the work that Adams put up on YouTube, three, four-minute videos. Two, in particular. I want to call out one, it’s called A Poem About Saying Yes. The second is entitled, The Only Reason We’re Alive. What did IN-Q say to us that day? We had about 20 minutes at this basically corporate offsite conference to write a poem. But just before, he said this, he said, here’s the thing. When you write your poem, you’re going to have 20 minutes, and I want you to think about a time where you walked through a door, something happened, and when you walked back through that door you were changed forever. He said it’s not going to be something that probably happened at the office. It could be, but think a little bit bigger. Think outside of your normal space. I want to share with you my short poetry slam about a door that I once went through, and when I came back through that door, I emerged changed forever. It’s called Why Did Everything Stop That Day. Because it did. Why did everything stop that day? In a way, I could say that never. No way had something like this happened before to me, what is more, I was sure that it would happen again. When? I didn’t know, but it did. Everything stopped that day.

My way of doing what I did before, selfishness stopped. Well, some of it, and that was good, as was some of my ambition stopped, stopping, dropping to a point where something in me said, I don’t care. I don’t care about the where of where we live. I don’t care about the who of who you’ll be. You’ll be you, and that is enough for me. Stopped worrying when you’ll talk or walk or balk at a boy. Your first word, your first step, your first day. Because everything stopped the day you were born, daughter, and now everything starts. Not a bad experience that poetry slam session. Sometimes I wonder how much better we could have done if we spent more time at it. Twenty five minutes, but then I think, maybe poetry that comes fast and furious is the whole idea of a poetry slam. Thanks again to IN-Q. I highly recommend those YouTube videos. And a shout-out to my beautiful daughter who turned 30 this year and continues to earn my admiration for plunging herself into all her activities and always thinking how to raise people up around her. Onto poem number five. Like poem number three, this isn’t exactly a listener’s poem. Number three was Longfellow with Curt thinking about it. Number five, a horse of a different color here. I am absolutely delighted to share with you the global debut of a 10.5-second musical clip, which I liken to a poem. Speaking of investing in the Fools I sing, Erick Devore, longtime Motley Fool member, rule breaker, investor, Erick, who also writes music for film, TV, and games, he and I had this exchange a few weeks back when we did the rovua palooza ultima on this podcast. I said over six years, I picked 35 stock samplers on this podcast. Each was tracked annually. We closed them out at the three year mark. Landmark episode coming today, and it was that 35 stock samplers in 10.5 chapters. I did a few weeks back. Reacting to that on July 10th, on Twitter X, at Erick Devore.

By the way, Erick is spelled with a K on the end, and Devore, D-E-V-O-R, has an E on the end. At Erick Devore wrote, really looking forward to this one. Chief can’t wait to dive in, and I said, thanks, Erick. Should it inspire a 10-second jingle, we’ll play it on the podcast. And he said something like, there goes my afternoon, and later he said, check your email. Here we have, Erick has entitled it (inaudible). Now, (inaudible) is where each of those 35 stock baskets, those samplers ascended as they tied out after three years of tracking. Many of them winning, some of them losing, and overall, we beat the pants off the market over six years. So I thought, could there be an epic short piece of music that we can now play in celebration of that? And in retrospect, I sure wish I’d asked Erick years ago to do this, so we could have played it every time we rocked (inaudible) but here is Erick’s (inaudible); and I should mention, a couple of fun music theory-related Easter eggs, he points out, the harmonic progression here is 141, that’s GCG, so we go to the four chords. There are synths medals, percussion, guitars, strings, brass, and choir playing, or seven families of instruments throughout, and there are only two primary movements in the sequence round trips, so two chord changes. Why did Erick point out those three things, four, seven, and two? Because, as it turns out, that was our 472nd weekly podcast. Erick was honoring that. Again, there’s a lot of math and music, so he gets this by lacing that into (inaudible) Could I hype this up anymore? I should probably stop. Here we go. Get ready. Buckle your seat belt. (inaudible) is poem number five of Investing in the Fools I sing. Wow, I wish we’d had that and played that all the way through this podcast over the years. Erick, if you are indeed signing rights over to us, can we share them with you? We’ll replay it, I’m sure from time to time, what a delight it was. By the way, to meet you for the first time in person at Fool Fest a few weeks ago. In fact, I’m going to tweet out my picture, my selfie with Erick, both of us all smiles, having a great time. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention again, Erick, and how you can reach him. If you’re interested in music for your film, your TV, or your video game, I’ve enjoyed his stuff in all of those, especially video games www.erickdevore, that’s E-R-I-C-K D-E-V-O-R-E.

If you do end up working in some capacity with Erick, you won’t just be working with a very talented musician, but a wonderful man and a F, Fool. Fool on Erick. Thank you. All right on to poem number 6. This one from Eugene Ng, who is writing in November of 2020 from Singapore. Eugene, a longtime Motley Fool member. He wrote, my favorite quote of yours is, “Make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future.” Before I go on with Eugene’s note, let me just say that within a year or two, I ended up making that the principle number 1 of the Rule Breaker portfolio. There are six principles to a Rule Breaker portfolio. You can go back and listen to that podcast or google it. In my experience, most people don’t have much coaching on how to build and maintain a portfolio. The number one question most frequently asked in this podcast over the years, which I would say is the wrong question, in a sense, gives a way that many of us do need more coaching, because the most frequently asked question, I think Eugene, you know, and remember this is, how many stocks should I have in my portfolio? On the face of it, a very understandable question, but ultimately a question that has no single obvious answer. We get into that more in our six portfolio principles for the Rule Breaker portfolio. Back to Eugene’s note, where he’s rocking, what I think is the most important principle number 1, as he just wrote, make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future. Eugene went on. Your quote, in your philosophy on vision truly means so much to me that I’ve decided to incorporate it in everything I do when it comes to investing. That includes my investing philosophy, which I call vision investing, and the name of my fund, which is Vision Capital. It’s mission to invest in companies that reflect the best vision for our future. He went on to say, here’s a poem that I’ve penned, and I should say before sharing this, this is very attractively set down on paper.

Once I read it, you’ll understand why. But I will also mention, this is not a poem that rhymes. Robert Frost sometimes criticized poems that didn’t rhyme, blank verse, if you will, he said, it’s like playing tennis without a net. I do appreciate some good rhymes in my own poetry. I also recognize the strength of words well put together, and in many cases, repeating and creating a cadence, which is what you do here with this poem, Eugene, thank you for it. It is called Investing in our vision, and here it is.

Find excellence, buy excellence, hold excellence, add to excellence, sell mediocrity. Think probabilities, not certainties. Think possibilities, not certainties. Think payoffs, not price targets. Prefer growth, not declining. Prefer growth, not struggling. Prefer growth, not turnarounds. Seek rising revenues, not rising price. Seek rising earnings, not rising price. Seek rising cash flows, not rising price. Choose quality, not value. Choose quality, not price. Choose quality, not others opinions. Find, don’t wait. Research, don’t wait. Buy, don’t wait. Buy, don’t sell. Hold, don’t sell. Add, don’t sell. Your own research, not others. Your own views, not others. Your own conviction, not others. Your own buy, not others. Your own cell, not others. Your own miss, not others. Be optimistic, not pessimistic. Be present, not looking back. Be forward looking, for we are here. Now, invest in the world, invest in the future, invest for the better. Invest in your vision. Well, I don’t think I need to tell you to stay Foolish, Eugene, because I’m pretty sure you very much are. Fool on, my friend. On to poem number 7. I’m not sure anybody has sent more poetry into this podcast over the years than Lisa John Wharton. Lisa has sent an acrostic. That’s one of those poems where if you read the first letter of each line, it spells something going down vertically, and it spelled Motley Fool. She also sent in a sonnet at one point. I don’t have time for them all, but I will read this one, which she submitted just last December on our year end mailbag, December 2023. It’s a joy to share it. Here we go. Dear Motley Fool. Gratitude fills me a gainful year in review. Emotionally and financially, blessings anew. Books, the architects of my growing smarts. Games, weaving joy. Crafting, happy hearts. Ninety percent richer, my portfolio sings. Market gains dance on wealth wings. Eight countries explored, a global feat. Conferences embraced where knowledge and ideas meet. Penned another chapter, a book brought to birth, living a life envisioned, a testament to my worth. Motley Fool, a guiding star so reliable in crafting dreams, you’ve made it all possible. Thanks, and let’s have another great year, Lisa Wharton. Well, thank you, Lisa. I hope it has been a great year. I particularly love to hear about your travel, your writing, including what you just shared with us. Of course, sounds like you’ve been playing some games, you’re reading, and you’re investing. I would just say, wow, what a year, and congratulations. I think the best phrase of all was living a life envisioned.

As we get older, we have more and more control over our circumstances, usually, if things are playing out right, far more at the age of 50 or 60 than you would have had at the age of 15 or 16. It’s inspiring to be part of a community of people living a life envisioned. James Clear points out in his book Atomic Habits that the best way to get in shape is to hang out with other people getting in shape. The best way to invest Foolishly is very likely to hang out with other Foolish investors online via this podcast, and, of course, at events like Fool Fest. The best way to live our best life is to find and spend time with others who are managing to do that with theirs. Lisa, I join with you and I can hear our 400 plus Motley Fool employees surrounding me and feeling the same as Lisa said, let’s have another great year, and she was talking about 2024, but I say the same for 2025. Thanks for the poem. Onto poem number 8. Adam Nelson has distinguished himself as a hero among men. Yes, in the context of this podcast, where he revolutionized our Market Cap Game Show by rethinking how to arrange the show. That’s why I consistently lionize him, no matter what he does or says on this show or in the world at large. But especially I want to remember our 100th mailbag, February of 2024 this year. If you didn’t get to hear it, please listen in because you’ll get to meet Adam and a bunch of other Fools speaking of a community of Fools. Adam joined us and shared a lot of wisdom. This was a poem that he wrote obviously with a nod to Shakespeare, as you’ll shortly figure out. It was on the November 2021 mailbag, where Adam said, having been inspired by other poems that had previously appeared on this podcast that his 2022 resolution, I forgot to ask you about this one earlier this year, Adam, I assume you held to it. Your 2022 resolution was not to sell a single share of any stock you owned and thus embody your desired investment strategy to which you then rocked your own inner Hamlet and came up with this To Trim or Not To Trim. Again, I think this podcast is wonderfully timed with the events of the stock market, this week, especially the downside volatility many of us have experienced toward the end of July and the start of August. To Trim or Not To Trim by Adam Nelson, I think speaks for itself. Let’s begin, To Trim or Not To Trim? That is the question. Whether it’s nobler in the mind to suffer the dips and pullbacks that lead to outrageous fortune or to rebalance into a sea of troubled stocks and by adding to them to die, to lose sleep, no more and buy a sleep, to say we’re in the heartache of choosing 1,000 obvious stocks that our flesh is heir to. It’s a compounding devoutly to be wished to hold, perchance, to dream. There’s the rub for in that holding.

What dreams may come when we have not sold off this immortal business? We must give pause to respect the management that gives so long a hold. For who can bear the downgrades and price target cuts of analysts in time, time that exists in quarters. Only the analysts are wrong. The proud holders must not be spoken to with contumely, the insolence of Wall Street and the spurns? Only the patient merit the worthy gains. The undiscovered stock from whose wealth, no holder returns, puzzles the market and makes us rather bear those ills of the bear market than to fly to other stocks we know not of, and enterprises of great growth and business momentum with this regard, their currents do not turn awry, and we shall not feel the need to take action. Winners win, do not trim. Thank you, Adam Nelson, for many times your contributions to this podcast, and the ones I trust, going forward. Poem number 9, closing down this surprise special to start Authors in August for Rule Breaker Investing. In fact, I’ve used this poem a number of times to close out the whole year on this podcast, our year end holiday podcast. I’ve often shared why we invest the poem to remind us why we invest. In a past essay, I once wrote. This is not the poem. This is what I wrote, the poem reacts to this. I wrote and I quote, “Here’s why we invest for our children and grandchildren, because our parents and grandparents did and made our lives so much better. Because every dollar we invest supports the companies and businesses we admire. Because we love and celebrate ownership. We believe this world will be far stronger for more owners, not more renters. Because the academics are wrong. Because with Arthur O’Shaughnessy and his Ode, we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams investing as our instrument, and making dreams come true.

Sorry, Disney, making dreams come true is a very real Motley Fool goal. I see it happen with amazing testimonials bull market or bear. I hear it every week on this podcast.” That is a portion of what I wrote once in an essay. One of our online members, in fact, it’s a couple of sisters who team up together. They took the screen name on the Motley Fool site, Captain Haiku, because they tended to write reflective Haiku’s about investing. This is what Captain Haiku wrote a poem back to me about, why we invest? Scanning down it, it’s not very long, but you can see it’s one Haiku after another that may or may not be evident as I share with you this poem orally. Here we go. Why we invest? Sorry, can’t truncate. Each word has import and heart, not selfish, we build. Many years gone by hard work, hard times, good times, too. Haiku needs little. Why do we invest, so that our hard work endures beyond our short years, so that our children start their journeys on a hill and see the mountain. We build battlements that endure shelter others from the worst of storms. We launch sturdy ships. We will not see the far shore, but have no regrets. We are a small part of all we set in motion. Thus, we invest. Well, to our authors in August, Ben Golland and his poem, Fool, to John Flood and becoming a Fool, to Kurt Elia, staring at Longfellow’s psalm of life and pulling out of it one Foolish, investing lesson after another to me. I don’t mean to thank myself. I’ll just thank my daughter and my family for making everything stop that day. To Erick Devore, with an epic Foolish musical moment, our interlude right in the middle of this podcast. It makes me wonder what that whole soundtrack sounds like. To Eugene Ng, envisioning a better world for his investors in East Asia, to Lisa Wharton, living her best life and sharing it out to Adam Nelson, trimming or not trimming, who, I may say, I would choose in a classic duel over William Shakespeare himself. I just say, choose the APA, Adam. To a couple of sisters who have launched sturdy ships, though they will not see the far shore, but have no regrets. Thank you, each. Thank you, dear listener, for suffering Fools gladly. August has begun.