Motley Fool Epic Review – How Good Are These Stock Picks?

Motley Fool recently updated its lineup of stock-picking services and completely revamped the popular Epic Bundle. It’s now called Epic and includes five monthly stock picks from four different Motley Fool scorecards: Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Hidden Gems, and Dividend Investor.

Is Epic the right stock-picking service to help you build a potentially market-beating portfolio? Our Motley Fool Epic review will cover everything you need to know.

Motley Fool Epic Pricing Options

Epic costs $499 per year, but new members can typically find a discount code to get a discount on their first year. There’s no trial period, but Motley Fool does offer a 30-day membership-fee-back guarantee.

How Does Motley Fool Epic Work?

Epic includes access to four stock picking scorecards from Motley Fool: Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Hidden Gems, and Dividend Investor. In total, you’ll get five new stock picks per month.

We have in-depth reviews for Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers, but here’s a quick rundown of the four services:

• Stock Advisor: Motley Fool’s flagship service, which has beaten the S&P 500 748%* to 163% since 2001. Includes two stock picks per month with a focus on long-term explosive growth stocks. 
• Rule Breakers: Offers one new stock pick per month, with a focus on high-growth companies in tech and emerging market sectors. Has beaten the S&P 500 294%* to 137% since 2004.
• Hidden Gems: A newer stock picking service launched in 2018 that focuses on large-cap companies across the market with high growth potential. It’s currently trailing the S&P 500 28%* to 38%.
• Dividend Investor: A new stock picking service launched in 2023 to focus on dividend-generating stocks. It’s currently trailing the S&P 500 18%* to 36%.

*All performance data is as of September 2024.

There’s a fair amount of overlap in Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, and Hidden Gems, and the three services actually recommend the same stocks in different months relatively frequently. While the redundancy means you get fewer unique picks overall, it can also be a useful signal about which stocks The Motley Fool team has the most conviction in their recommendations.

Importantly, all three scorecards recommend members to hold picks for a minimum of five years, so they’re only suitable for long-term investors. The focus on growth stocks also means that picks from these services can potentially go through some serious pullbacks when the market dips.

While the service has plenty of winning stock picks and is profitable as a whole, not every stock pick will be a winner, especially in the short term. For example, Chewy has fallen 75% from its all-time high and Motley Fool has repeatedly recommended the stock on its way down. Clearly, the team believes that Chewy has long-term potential, but investors need to be able to stomach the losses and keep holding the stock in the meantime. Risk averse investors may choose to use their own stop loss strategies.

Dividend Investor has a completely different focus and can be very useful for investors who want to diversify or generate steady income from their portfolio. The service looks for companies that have a track record of growing their dividends and that are on strong financial footing to continue potentially doing so into the future.

Motley Fool Epic Additional Features

All Motley Fool stock picks come with research reports that explain why Motley Fool analysts recommend the company. They cover unique benefits or moats, the company’s leadership team, and risks that could derail growth in the future.

What I like about these reports is that they’re easy to read, so you don’t need to be a financial analyst to understand them. If you’re only planning to invest in a handful of picks from Epic rather than buy all the recommendations, the research reports can help you decide which ones fit your investing style.

In addition to new picks, Motley Fool also provides ranking lists that highlight the best stocks from each service to double-down on right now. Say you have some extra money to invest and want to buy more dividend stocks. You can check out the list of the top 10 stocks to re-buy from the Dividend Investor service, dive into the research reports, and make a decision fairly quickly. The ranking lists for each service are updated monthly.

Epic also comes with three model portfolios that are built around Motley Fool’s most-recommended stocks. The portfolios are organized by risk tolerance and include Cautious, Moderate, and Aggressive options. Each portfolio includes around 30 stocks with recommended allocations.

Finally, Epic includes access to Fool IQ+, a new stock research platform built by The Motley Fool. You can use Fool IQ+ to get access to basic financial information about hundreds of companies, read commentary from Motley Fool analysts, and even look at institutional ownership and insider trading activity around recommended stocks. It feels like a slimmed-down version of the research Seeking Alpha offers. 

What Type of Investor is Motley Fool Epic Best For?

All of Motley Fool’s services, including Epic, are built around long-term investors. Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Hidden Gems, and Dividend Investor each assume that you’ll hold picks for at least five years, and potentially much longer. Some of the best-performing picks in the Stock Advisor portfolio have been active for more than 20 years.

If you’re new to Motley Fool, I recommend starting out with Stock Advisor. It’s easy to upgrade to Epic after a few months if you find yourself wanting more recommendations.

Epic itself is best for investors who want access to a wider range of stock picks than you can get through Stock Advisor alone. With five picks per month, you can really pick and choose which recommendations to follow based on the research reports, ranking lists, and information available in Fool IQ+. You’ll have to do more self-directed work compared to Stock Advisor, but you can also opt to invest in only the highest-conviction picks.

The inclusion of Dividend Investor in Epic is another major value-add coming from Stock Advisor. This service not only offers highly diversified stock picks, but also could potentially help you generate income from your portfolio that you can possibly use to reinvest in future Motley Fool recommendations.