Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio: How to Build and Grow a Panic-Proof Investment Portfolio »

Brothers David Gardner & Tom Gardner co-founded The Motley Fool, a multimedia investment advisory company dedicated to building the world's greatest investment community, in 1993. They have co-authored four New York Times bestsellers, including The Motley Fool Investment Guide, The Motley Fool You Have More Than You Think, and The Motley Fool's Rule Breakers, Rule Makers. Tireless advocates for the individual investor, the Gardners also oversee the award-winning personal finance and investment Web site Fool.com (attracting millions of visitors each month); a nationally syndicated newspaper column, carried by more than two hundred newspapers; and a broad suite of highly-regarded investment newsletter services.

In this long-anticipated, groundbreaking guide to building a portfolio, acclaimed stock pickers and Internet pioneers David and Tom Gardner lay bare the simple philosophy that they have used to help millions of grateful individual investors outfox the professionals on Wall Street.

The research, the stories, and the results that underpin this book stem from the revolutionary and wildly successful "Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio""—a one-of-a-kind Web experiment in which individual investors follow along as Motley Fool co-founder Tom Gardner invests and manages $1 million of The Motley Fool's own money.

In page after page of sound, sensible investment advice, readers are offered a rare glimpse into the inner workings of The Motley Fool machine—and offered a first-class education in building, growing, and defending an individual portfolio, one investment strategy at a time. From learning to think like an investor to finding a first stock, from dividend investing to blue-chip bargains to small-cap treasures, from international investing to community-based online tools that are revolutionizing stock selection and asset allocation, this book takes the reader through the essential strategies for building any portfolio—no matter how small its start or how big its ambitions.

BetterInvesting Magazine

“Motley Fool makes investing fun again.”

Preface ix

A Note on the Financial Collapse of 2008 xv

1 Getting Started 1

2 Why Great Investors Are Odd 11

3 Your First Stock 21

4 Dividend Dynasty 67

5 Blue-Chip Bargains 111

6 The Treasures of Small-Cap Investing 142

7 Risk Takers and Rule Breakers 185

8 We Are the World 234

9 CAPS: The Power of Community Intelligence 270

10 Your Next Million 279

11 What Next? 328

Appendix A Picking the Right Mutual Funds 331

Appendix B Further Reading 363

Acknowledgments 367