Gone Rule Breaker Shopping

Funds & Featured Portfolios, by Mark Robertson, Managing Partner April 1st, 2016

This month’s tracking portfolio, David Gardner’s Stock Advisors Rule Breakers, monitors the progress made over the last 14 years.

It’s a dashboard that the Plungers Investment Club would love. (At least for the non-core and adventure component of their holdings.) This month’s tracking portfolio, David Gardner’s Stock Advisors Rule Breakers, monitors the progress made over the last 14 years. We place $100 into each selection/decision and track the progress of that $100 investment over time.

Paths to Super Investor Returns?

The active positions in the RuleBreaker with the highest return forecasts are featured in the accompanying dashboard excerpt. Rule Breakers focuses primarily on underappreciated growth stocks with solid management and a sustainable business strategy. This time-tested approach works. In fact, the Motley Fool Rule Breakers have consistently been among the leaders of Hulbert Financial’s rankings of 5-year performance. The media has taken notice as well with the Wall Street Journal previously calling Rule Breakers manager David Gardner one of the best stock pickers on Earth.

Our cover story review this month documented a 15.1% absolute return over the trailing 14 years — excess relative return of +7.2% over the Wilshire 5000. These results were achieved with a few roller coaster stocks like Amazon, Apple, Priceline.com, Activision Blizzard and Netflix. All of these stocks will have their speed bump moments.

The consensus forecasts in the dashboards may or may not resemble the expectations built by David and the Rulebreaker team of analysts. Tracking portfolio companies that David would deem worthy of study right now include: Illumina (ILMN), Texas Roadhouse (TXRH), Activision Blizzard (ATVI), McCormick & Co. (MKC), Amazon.com (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Gilead Sciences (GILD) and Disney (Walt) (DIS).

Restoration Hardware (RH) is down 59.4% since selection back on 3/20/15. Do the fundamentals support a closer look? A strengthening economy could provide some bolstering as home repairs mend. The generic pharmaceuticals have been solid and Mylan Labs (MYL) has been on the radar for years. We featured Boston Beer (SAM) recently in the Fave Five and long-time Rulebreaker favorites like Apple, Gilead Sciences, Priceline.com and Amazon have returned to the sweet spot with return forecasts likely to place them in the buy zone. PayPal (PYPL) was recently featured by Kim Butcher during a Round Table session and Starbucks (SBUX) can be a jolt. There’s much to study here. Break at will.

Stock Advisor Rule Breakers. Based on the flagship Motley Fool newsletter, $100 is invested into mentioned companies. The top 16 (by PAR) is shown here. The 14-year annualized rate of return is 15.1%. Source: www.fool.com, Stock Advisor

Mark Robertson

Mark Robertson is founder and managing partner of Manifest Investing, a source for research and portfolio management focusing on strategic long term investors.