When Motley Fool co-founder and Rule Breaker Investing host David Gardner picks one of his trademark five-stock samplers, he's usually making his predictions for at least a three-year window. But because he's fastidious about keeping score -- and keeping track -- he doesn't wait that long to grade his results. Every year, around the anniversary of each sampler's debut, he tallies up the share prices, talks a bit about the factors behind each company's performance, and measures those mini-portfolios against the benchmark, the S&P 500. (Why that benchmark? Because if you're going to call yourself a good stock picker, you'd best be able to do better than the person who doesn't pick at all and just invests in a broad index fund.)
For this week, the rotation consists of a trio of samplers, and he's brought in Fool analyst Emily Flippen to help with the review.
One year ago, it was Five Stocks That Got in Trouble With a Capital T. Gardner had four criteria for that group: The stocks had to have been big long-term winners for the Rule Breakers portfolio, had to have hit new highs in September 2018, had to have fallen at least 20% between then and the podcast, and (just for fun) had to start with the letter T. His choices: 2U (NASDAQ: TWOU), Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO), Teladoc (NYSE: TDC), The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD), and Trex (NYSE: TREX).