Motley Fool Epic Review [Is It Better to Bundle?]

Anyone who’s familiar with Progressive’s “Flo” knows that when you bundle, you save. And that’s the idea behind Motley Fool’s Epic.

The Motley Fool Epic isn’t itself a stock-picking service—instead, it’s a bundled selection of four popular Motley Fool stock recommendation products:

• Stock Advisor
• Rule Breakers
• Hidden Gems
• Dividend Investor

Naturally, the utility of Motley Fool’s Epic boils down to how good those underlying products are, and how much value the bundled package creates.

So today, my Motley Fool Epic Review will be broken down into a few parts: a look at Motley Fool itself, the products that make up Epic—Motley Fool Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Hidden Gems, and Dividend Investor—and Epic’s value proposition.

Let’s dig in and see whether the whole enchilada makes sense for you, or whether you should just take a bite of what the Motley Fool has to offer.

 

What Is The Motley Fool?

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The Motley Fool has helped millions of investors outperform the stock market with a variety of investment recommendation services.

Motley Fool has a long and sterling history within the investment newsletter community. It started out as an investment newsletter in 1993, and a year later, its founders brokered an online content deal with AOL, where the Fool’s content lived until moving to its own site in 1997.

The company has since gained acclaim through Fool.com, its Motley Fool stock picking services (which include Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor and Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, among many others), and even its CAPS Community—a popular message board where people go to share investment ideas.

Motley Fool has built out an entire cottage industry of investment advisory services, currently offering dozens of premium products to their customers. Today, readers can use Motley Fool recommendations to build a portfolio of high-growth stocks, income-generating plays, or even options trades they think can pay off quickly. Investors can even use Motley Fool’s recommendations to leverage real estate opportunities such as real estate investment trusts (REITs), commercial real estate, and residential real estate.

Related: 15 Best Stock Market Investing Research & Analysis Sites

What Is Motley Fool’s Epic?

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Motley Fool Epic is a collection of four Motley Fool services—Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Hidden Gems, and Dividend Investor—packaged together at a discounted rate.

All together, that means you’re picking up more than 300 Motley Fool stock picks, not to mention various reports and stock analyses from the individual services, for less than what it would cost to buy all four services individually.

That said, some investors might only care for part of what’s included in Epic—and the relatively smaller cost of buying just one service. So our Motley Fool Epic review will break down each individual service and its costs, then draw out scenarios where it might or might not work for different prospective customers.

Let’s dive into the four components of Motley Fool Epic!

What Will You Get With a Subscription to Motley Fool’s Epic?

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A subscription to the Motley Fool Epic will provide you with one year’s worth of access to the following four products:

1. Motley Fool Stock Advisor (Buy-and-Hold Stock Recommendations)

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• Available: Sign up here

Motley Fool’s signature product, Stock Advisor, aims to provide you with one thing: top picks for market-beating stocks from the site’s co-founders.

Stock Advisor is my pick of the bunch if you want consistent performance with less volatility. And it espouses my favorite, plain-vanilla trading style: buy-and-hold.

The investment newsletter and service sends recommendations for “Steady Eddies” and potential high-flying stocks the service believes provide financially sound fundamentals.

Preferring to stick with companies that outperform steadily over time, Stock Advisor offers stock picks with investment rationales, research, and information to educate you about your investments.

How has Motley Fool Stock Advisor performed?

Stock Advisor stock picks have performed exceptionally well over the service’s 22-year existence. The service has made 175 stock recommendations that have historically delivered 100%+ returns, multiplying members’ net worth several times over.

Overall, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor stock subscription service has returned 671% through April 8, 2024, since its inception in February 2002. This number is calculated by averaging the return of all stock recommendations it has made over the past 22 years. Comparatively, the S&P 500 Index has returned 152% over that same time frame.

What to expect from Motley Fool Stock Advisor

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor service provides a lot of worthwhile resources to subscribers.

1. “Starter Stocks” recommendations to serve as a foundation to your portfolio, whether you’re a new investor or experienced
2. Two new stock picks each month
3. 10 “Best Buys Now” chosen from more than 300 stocks the service watches
4. Investing resources with the stock picking service’s library of stock recommendations
5. Access to community of investors engaged in outperforming the market and talking shop

The service charges a discounted rate for the first year and has a 30-day membership-fee refund period. Consider signing up for Stock Advisor today.

Related: Motley Fool Review: Is Stock Advisor Worth It? [Our Take]

2. Motley Fool Rule Breakers (Growth-Stock Recommendations)

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• Available: Sign up here

Motley Fool Rule Breakers recommends stocks that the Rule Breakers team believes have massive growth potential. In some cases, these companies are at the forefront of emerging industries—in others, they’re disrupting the status quo in long-established industries.

This stock subscription service doesn’t fixate on what’s currently popular, but instead always looks for the next big stock ahead. That means these Motley Fool picks have the potential to be nauseatingly volatile … but also the potential to rocket higher exponentially.

Rule Breakers’ team has six rules it follows before making stock recommendations to subscribers:

1. Only invest in “top dog” companies in an emerging industry. As Motley Fool puts it: “It doesn’t matter if you’re the big player in floppy drives—the industry is falling apart.”
2. The company must have a sustainable advantage.
3. The company must have strong past price appreciation.
4. The company needs to have strong and competent management.
5. There must be strong consumer appeal.
6. Financial media must overvalue the company.

In other words, Rule Breakers’ team considers a number of factors before it ever recommends a stock to its users. If it’s not a well-run company with a sustainable advantage over its competitors, and it’s not in an emerging industry, it probably won’t get past Rule Breakers’ velvet ropes.

How has Motley Fool Rule Breakers performed?

Their rules seem to pay off, if their results are any indication.

Since the product’s inception in 2004, Rule Breakers has more than doubled the S&P 500, beating many leading money managers on Wall Street. Their results speak for themselves and easily justify the affordable price tag.

What to expect from Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers

The service includes five primary items you can expect to receive when you sign up:

1. A list of Starter Stocks—including their “essential Rule Breakers”—to begin your investing journey
2. Top-10 rankings of timely buys from the entire Rule Breakers portfolio
3. Two new stock picks each month
4. Investing resources, including the stock picking service’s library of stock recommendations
5. Access to a community of investors engaged in outperforming the market and talking shop
6. And of course, you’ll receive regular communications from the Rule Breakers team providing analysis and rationales behind the portfolio’s holdings.

If you’re unhappy with the service within the first 30 days, you can receive a full refund.

Related: Motley Fool Rule Breakers Review [Picking Growth Stocks]

3. Motley Fool Everlasting Stocks (Long-Term Stock Picks)

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• Available: Sign up here

Launched in 2018, Everlasting Stocks includes stock recommendations pulled from existing Everlasting services offered by Motley Fool. Stocks recommended by the service follow Tom Gardner’s Everlasting philosophy of seeking outperformance by finding companies with an edge—be it a superior company culture, unflappable pricing power, or founders and/or C-suite members who are a step ahead of the average executive.

When you sign up, you receive immediate access to 15 starter stocks hand-picked from Tom’s own personal holdings. (Previous Motley Fool Everlasting Stocks picks include big names such as Shopify and Tesla, which have gone on to clobber the market.) From then on, Tom Gardner and his team of analysts recommend two stocks per month—typically falling on the conservative side of the investing spectrum, and intended for those wanting to hold for at least five years (if not much, much longer).

The Everlasting Stocks service also includes:

• Sell notices if and when the analyst team decides it’s time to take profits
• Email updates on Everlasting Stocks’ picks
• Monthly rankings
• Access to a model portfolio allocation tool that will help you determine the optimal way to allocate your account funds

Learn more or sign up for Everlasting Stocks today.

Related: 8 Best Stock Portfolio Tracking Apps [Stock Portfolio Trackers]

4. Millionacres: Real Estate Winners (Best for REIT Stock Picking)

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• Available: Sign up here

Motley Fool’s Millionacres: Real Estate Winners focuses on understanding the fast-moving, ever-changing world of real estate investment—and mobilizes you for success with valuable resources, recommendations and picks!

Real estate is a worthwhile investment not just because of its return potential, but also its relatively low volatility compared to stocks. However, because most people can’t afford to go out and buy, say, an apartment building or grocery-anchored retail real estate, they have to get access via publicly traded real estate companies.

Millionacres provides recommendations for real estate investment trusts (REITs) and other real estate-related equities. The service delivers easy-to-understand monthly investment alerts and quarterly investment rankings. And importantly, Millionacres’ analysts make clear-cut cases for their recommendations, drastically cutting down on the investing research you need to do yourself.

What you get with Millionacres: Real Estate Winners

Millionacres: Real Estate Winners is a premium subscription product meant to simplify real estate investing for the average retail investor. You’ll receive clear, actionable investment recommendations along with specific guidance on how to get started in today’s real estate climate.

Among the resources that Millionacres: Real Estate Winners provides to subscribers:

• Fresh monthly stock recommendations
• Regular updates on previous recommendations about quarterly earnings reports and other key events
• A ranked “Top 10 Investment Alerts” every quarter
• Educational content and other resources
• That last point is worth noting. This service isn’t necessarily just for veteran investors—people who are new to real estate investment trusts (REITs) can build their knowledge base while putting Millionacres’ stock picks to work.

Lastly, if you subscribe today through us, you can lock in a discounted first-year rate.

Related: 17 Best Investment Apps and Platforms [Free + Paid]

Examples of Motley Fool Stock Picks

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By subscribing to Epic, you’ll get access to more than 300 stock picks from four products with pretty successful track records. That’s more than enough foundational stocks to help you build out a diversified portfolio of expertly selected holdings.

A few examples of Motley Fool stock picks that have soared since being recommended:

MercadoLibre

MercadoLibre (MELI) is a Latin American e-commerce giant, with operations in North, Central, and South America. Its various services include the Mercado Libre marketplace that allows people to list and sell items; Mercado Envios shipping solutions; classifieds and advertising; and Mercado Pago payments solutions, which include mobile point-of-sale, digital wallets, prepaid cards, and more.

The company was founded in 1999 and went public in August 2007 at $18 per share. Rule Breakers eventually recommended the stock in September 2015. It was one of David Gardner’s original themed “five-stock samplers,” and it has gone up by more than 10,515% since entering the portfolio through Dec. 7, 2023.

Tesla

Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla (TSLA) went public on June 29, 2010, at a mere $17 per share—or $1.13 per share once you account for its 5-for-1 and 3-for-1 stock splits of the past few years. Today, it trades for several hundred dollars per share, and has made many investors a boatload of money.

There are probably at least a few Motley Fool readers in that crowd. Rule Breakers first recommended Tesla on Nov. 11, 2011—a year before the Model S hit the road, and years before the Model 3 or Model X. Since then, shares have produced a return of nearly 11,273% through Dec. 7, 2023!

Netflix

Netflix (NFLX) went public on May 23, 2002, at $15 per share. Less than two years later, after shares more than quadrupled, NFLX split its stock for the first time, 2-for-1. In December 2004, Motley Fool’s David Gardner recommended investors buy Netflix, even though it was a small-cap stock that had lost more than two-thirds of its value from its 52-week highs.

Less than a year after the recommendation, the stock doubled. And ever since Stock Advisor’s recommendation, shares have exploded higher—up more than 30,000% as of April 29, 2024!

Related: 8 Best Stock Portfolio Tracking Apps [Stock Portfolio Trackers]

Is Motley Fool Epic Worth It?

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Each individual service stands for itself—I’ve personally subscribed to Motley Fool Stock Advisor and enjoyed its outperformance firsthand, and the other three have long outpaced the market. So on an individual basis, these products are definitely worth the price.

But the question is: Should you buy them all together with the Epic?

Let’s start with pricing:

Epic

Individual Service Pricing

When It Makes Sense to Buy Motley Fool Epic

Epic has always been a value by merit of its renewal rate compared to the combined renewal rates of all four products. Its $499 annual subscription rate represents 52% savings compared to renewing Stock Advisor ($199), Rule Breakers ($299), Everlasting Stocks ($299), and Millionacres ($249) at their regular rates, for a combined $1,049.

But now, Motley Fool recently started discounting the first year’s subscription of Epic, which has basically cleared the only remaining cost-efficiency hurdle it posed.

Previously, Epic’s $499 first-year cost exceeded the $396 combined first-year cost of subscribing to Stock Advisor ($99), Rule Breakers ($99), Everlasting Stocks ($99), and Millionacres ($99) at their promotional rates. Now, though, Epic costs $300 for the first year—24% savings compared to individually subscribing to all four services at the onset.

Buying Motley Fool Epic is also a value if you want to subscribe to any three services for the long-term. And even some combinations of two (Rule Breakers + Everlasting Stocks, Everlasting Stocks + Millionacres, and Rule Breakers + Millionacres) are cheaper when bought through Epic at renewal rates.

When It Doesn’t Make Sense to Buy Motley Fool Epic

There are only a handful of situations where Epic doesn’t make financial sense.

If you simply only have a fixed amount of money to spend on a stock-picking subscription, or if you only want to purchase one type of product, it makes no sense to buy Epic. Each individual product’s promotional and renewal rates are considerably cheaper than Epic.

For instance, if all you want is growth picks, just subscribe to Rule Breakers for $99 and renew at $299—both of which are cheaper than Epic’s $300 promotional rate and $499 renewal rate, respectively.

It’s also cheaper to try out two or three Motley Fool subscriptions individually for a year at promotional rates, but if you decide you want to keep them, it’ll generally make sense to purchase them through Epic.

Long-term, if you want Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor and one other Fool service, it will technically be cheaper to buy those two individually at renewal rates—though the savings aren’t always much. Stock Advisor + Rule Breakers ($498 total) and Stock Advisor + Everlasting Stocks ($498 total) are just $1 cheaper than Motley Fool Epic ($499), which would give you access to two more services. Stock Advisor + Millionacres ($448 total) is the only grouping that provides meaningful savings compared to Epic at regular renewal rates.

In my opinion? If you’re just starting out with stock recommendation services, give an individual Fool product a try. But if you’re ready to start building a portfolio at scale, Epic is an exceptional value that will keep you flush with opportunities for as long as you invest.

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