In this episode of Motley Fool Rule Breaker Investing, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner reads your Foolish mailbag questions and anecdotes, from Washington, D.C., to Germany, from the SEC to the moon, and from individual stock ownership to the deeper question of what freedom is for.
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A full transcript is below.
This podcast was recorded on June 24, 2026.
David Gardner: Should public companies report to their owners four times a year or just two? That’s not a theoretical question. It’s a real proposal now being considered by the SEC. This month, many a Fool is taking the time to write the commission directly to explain why we believe transparency matters, and we have a great listener take on that coming up. Meanwhile, on this mailbag, another listener asks when to add to a winning stock. Another shares a week so extraordinary that he does so anonymously. Another is a German police officer raising two daughters, doing pretty much everything right to the point that he asks, “What creates the greatest opportunity for a meaningful and fulfilling life?” I’ll try to answer. A delightfully Motley collection of notes, questions, stories, and reflections from fellow Fools around the world. It’s the last Wednesday of the month, which means it is time for your mailbag, only on this week’s Rule Breaker Investing.
Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. We had three earlier podcasts this month, three Wednesdays. Already on June 3, I kicked off the month with “I Fought The Law and The Law Won,” Volume 3, where I brought back six more memorable laws, principles, mental models that help explain how our world works. We range from Sutton’s law this time and the Diderot effect, to Dunbar’s number, and even Gardner’s law, all in service of making us a little more aware of the patterns quietly shaping our lives.
While I take some pride in always presenting new material, I want to admit an error that I made, and I fought the law in “The Law Won” because I presented Sutton’s law, as I mentioned, which is basically keep it simple, go where the money is. I had forgotten I had already presented that on “I Fought the Law and the Law Won, ” Volume 2. We have a rare repeat of a point made, and I did so earlier this month without even remembering that the previous time I had already presented Sutton’s law. Anyway, Mea Culpa. Then on June 10, we gathered around the campfire with five fellow Fools. It was Stock Stories, Volume 12, Time Travel Investing. That’s a series. We’ve done it 12 times now because gathering around the campfire and telling stories is what humans have done for a thousands of years. In particular, this go-round, we connected around a surprisingly powerful theme, and that is, “That for Great Businesses, it is often Not Too Late.” We heard tales involving Google, IBM, Life360, a biotech shell company that refused to die, and one Fool just beginning his journey with individual stocks in his 50s, Stock Stories Volume 12.
Then, last week, it was the Market Cap Game show, “The King-Sharon Rule” debuts. Charly Travers and Jason Moser joined me and you for the 42nd installment of our long-running game as we introduced our first major rule change in years. Along the way, we talked market caps, food delivery, spices, ski resorts, luxury cars, airplane parts. Some more airplanes, some more cars. Somehow, we learned a little bit more not just about the stocks and the market caps, but how our world works as well through the lens of business. That is the month that was, and I want to mention before I go into my Twitter/X Hot Takes for this mailbag, that you can follow this podcast on Twitter/X @RBIPodcast, and I’m @DavidGFool. I want to underline something because next week, it is our annual repeating what you’ve done to create financial freedom podcast. Because that is itself a mailbag, that is listener-driven. We often, with our mailbags, run a few weeks behind. I urge you to write me right away with something that you’ve done to enable financial freedom either for yourself, for family members or friends, or the world at large over the past year.
That’s right here in the United States of America. We’re celebrating our 250th anniversary as a nation, and every year on July 4 is Independence Day. Yet here on Rule Breaker Investing, we celebrate financial independence, and whether you have it yet or not, we’re all seeking it, and I’ve always found it inspiring to hear from each of you what you have done to create financial freedom in the past year. Write us. Our email address is [email protected]. You can also tweet us on Twitter/X @RBIPodcast. What have you done to create financial freedom over the past year? Now, just a couple of Twitter X hot ticks. Actually, the first one wasn’t from Twitter. It was just from email, but it closed the loop on last month’s mailbag, so Dane Walton, thank you for your note. You wrote, “Hello, David, I told you I’m usually a week behind in my listening, but not this week. Got a text from a church buddy on Wednesday who declared, I’m famous. I immediately listened to Rule Breaker Investing.
Again, this was last month’s mailbag. Always fun to hear a nice shout-out from the Motley Fool folks. You guys are great. I appreciate the one-sided friendship I feel as I listened to all of you, I then shared the episode with all my stock picking friends, and even my wife listened to it and came over and said, “Wow, I gave you a lot of time.” Dan, it wasn’t hard to give you a lot of time. You’re so welcome because it was a great note that you shared last month.
Thanks for closing the loop, and then one other hot take, this one is from Twitter/X @GauravK, investor Gaurav Kumar, you wrote in, reacting to last week’s Market Cap Game Show. Love this. “Come for the Market Cap Game Show.” You tweeted and stay for the info on how cars work. We did talk a lot about what happens under the hood, last week’s podcast. Part of the fun of putting the Market Cap Game Show together every quarter is randomizing which stocks we’ll be covering, and sometimes themes emerge, of course, randomly, and cars and food last week. It was a really fun Market Cap Game Show. Congratulations again to Jason Moser, who advances to these coming matches, March 2027, Market Cap Madness.
We’ve got seven mailbag items this week. Let’s get started. Mailbag item Number 1. This one, from longtime fellow Fool Eric Eason, writing. Eric, before I read your note, I want to provide a bit of context. As I mentioned at the top of the cold open on this week’s show, the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a proposal that would allow public companies to reduce their regular reporting from four times a year to just two. Supporters argue this would reduce costs, help companies maybe focus less on quarter-to-quarter pressures. I understand those motivations, but I don’t think reducing the flow of information makes investors more long term. It simply makes them less informed. At The Motley Fool, we’ve pretty much always viewed investing as ownership, and if you own part of a business, you deserve regular communication from that business that you’re the part-owner of. Of course, companies are still operating every day, launching products, winning customers, making mistakes sometimes, that, too, and changing strategy.
But under this SEC proposal, owners would simply receive fewer official updates about what is happening. My concern is that less transparency doesn’t reduce uncertainty. It increases it. When information finally arrives, surprises tend to be bigger, not smaller. The Motley Fool is making a big effort here in late June and early July, and I’m encouraging you to do so to let the SEC know that you appreciate hearing from your companies quarterly, especially when you’re a part owner, even for your own stock research of other companies you have appreciated the regular flow of information, indeed, over years and decades now, and you don’t want to see that cut in half as part of a cost saving or time saving gesture toward public companies.
Anyway, back to Eric Eason’s note. Here’s how he wrote in for Rule Breaker mailbag item No. 1. Hi, David, I’m very glad The Motley Fool is taking an active stance against the SEC’s recent proposal to reduce corporate reporting from quarterly to semi-annually. I used the link suggested in your sibling podcast, Hidden Gems Investing, to write this following letter to the SEC. Eric wrote, “I am adamantly against your proposal to reduce publicly owned corporate reporting from quarterly to semi-annually. I have been an individual investor buying individual stocks for 30 years. I rely heavily upon the quarterly reports and management conference calls for my investing decisions. This transparency is essential to my investing success, upon which my retirement depends. Transparency is also an American value as it fosters stewardship amongst our leaders and discourages corrupt insider behavior. Furthermore, Eric goes on, large institutions have the resources to hire the analysts who cultivate relationships with management as part of their duties. They therefore learn immensely important information outside of formal reporting periods, information, which I am unable to acquire. This is additionally why quarterly reporting is so valuable to me, as it helps keep me abreast of developments, so I’m never too far behind institutions in obtaining essential information. Your proposed semi-annual ruling would thus put me and my fellow individual investors at an even larger disadvantage against institutional investors. Your role as a regulatory body is to even the playing field and encourage honest stewardship by corporate leaders. Your proposed ruling would do the opposite by making it more uneven against the individual investor and fostering insider profiteering at everyone else’s expense.”
Eric, that was your note that you submitted to the SEC, and in your mailbag, to me, you just concluded, “Cheers to a successful campaign to maintain corporate transparency and good governance,” signed your friend Eric Eason. Eric, thank you. I don’t think I really need to add much because you spoke so eloquently, but I do want everybody hearing me right now to know that over the next 10 days, you, too, can write in and let the SEC know your thoughts on the proposal. In fact, we prepared an article. If you just Google the phrase, “individual investors deserve more,” yes, that phrase, if you Google it, we now own the number one positioning on Google for that, you’ll find our article, but you can also just go to fool.com/savethe10q. You will find our article along with the link to write the SEC. I hope you will. Because for me, maybe I’ve been spoiled all along, but as an individual investor, being able to see the numbers, the balance sheets, the income statements, hear from management on a quarterly basis for decades now is a big part of my research process, and those tools are essential. To think that we would cut their use in half is, for me, unconscionable. I hope you’ll feel the same way and let the SEC know. Thank you to Eric Eason. Thank you to you, dear Fool.
Let’s move on to mailbag item Number 2. This one comes from Sanjay. Thanks for writing in. Hi, David, hope you’re well and happy belated birthday. I’ve started listening to you over the last 6-9 months through your podcast because of your audiobook, Learning to Adapt, the habits you mentioned in your Rule Breaker Investing audiobook. Let me just say back right away, Sanjay, thanks for listening. I’ve said it a number of times on this podcast, but maybe the audiobook is my favorite version of my book.
I so enjoyed being able to read it and present it myself. I had a lot of fun. It took me three days, by the way, in the studio. Three full days to read the whole book, but it’s all there, and I’m delighted you found it that way. Sanjay goes on. Thus, I’m not able to comment yet on your question around your birthday on what I’ve learned from you that I found most useful. Hopefully, maybe by next birthday, I can contribute. However, I can say that I feel comfortable and better after listening to you, which has given me the confidence to change and adapt a habit that you mentioned in the audio book. It is habit No. 2. Add up. Don’t double down. Sanjay goes on, “Can you please guide me as to when I should add up?” Then, he provides an example. He said, I bought Intuitive Surgical in thirds due to a volatile market this year. I have bought that company ISRG in the range of 478 at the high, down to 398 at the low. It presently represents 3.74% of my portfolio. The stock, as I write, is at 416. How do you adapt the add up habit in this circumstance, or even if it wasn’t Intuitive Surgical, maybe it’s Nvidia or any other stock. Thank you, in regards, Sanjay.
Well, let me just speak briefly to Habit Number 2, and then let’s do some quick math together, Sanjay. Habit No. 2 is there to teach Rule Breaker Investors that if you have new money coming in, I much prefer to add to stocks that are winning for me in a world where I think most people default to rebalancing in their own minds, they add to their losers. Its always been a great Rule Breaker habit that’s had great results when I contend for you and for me that we should add new money to stocks that are up not the ones that are down. We have a long-time community member, listener, and also writer and contributor to The Motley Fool, Danny Vena. When I first got to know Danny online on our forums years ago, he had an even more dramatic way of approaching this. I’ll just give Danny, I’m not saying he still does this. He may well, but I just want to say what he was doing back then because it opened my eyes even further to the benefits of this. He would wait till a stock that we had recommended a stock that was a Rule Breaker that was performing well. He would literally wait till it was up 40%, and 40% was his magical rule, where at that point, he would add. He needed the stock to be up 40% before he would add to a position. Then if that overall position then went up 40 more percent, he would then add again. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, and Danny may or may not completely agree with this today, but I want you to know I was always guided by the idea, Sanjay, that we should be adding to our winners. But when I started encountering people with mechanical rules around winning even more than you or I might think, I thought it was kind of amazing, and Danny has done great as an investor.
This doesn’t work for every type of stock, Sanjay. This works for Rule Breakers. Of course, there are cyclical companies that go up and down and up and down. I don’t necessarily think you’d want to approach investing this way with those kinds of companies, but, you know, I’m talking about Rule Breakers to a fellow Rule Breaker. Now let’s do some math together. You mentioned that at the high, you’ve bought Intuitive Surgical at 478. Then it’s come down some over the course of this year, and you’ve got some buying in thirds, as you mentioned at 398. I’m just going to do some simple math here. If your high is 478 and your low is 398. If we average those two, you’re going to be at $438 a share. That’s sort of your average cost basis in my mind, anyway. As you wrote, you said the stock was at 416. I’m just quoting it today, here on Tuesday, June 23, it’s right about even at 400. Here’s my thought that $438 median, I think that might be the number I would use if I’m thinking about adding to Intuitive Surgical. That’s about a 10% gain from here. That’s my way of thinking that that stock is winning for you because at that point, Sanjay, you’ve passed above your medium price into territory that is winning.
Now, I don’t mean to make this about a specific dollar amount. I hope you understand it’s the principle that matters, not the exact math. But I have made a pretty good career of investing by only adding to my winners and waiting for them to begin winning before I add to them. Of course, if I have extra money and something isn’t winning for me, I’m only too happy to put that toward another stock that is winning for me.
I think before we move on to Mailbag Item Number 3, I think the reason this works is because great stocks grow over time with the progress that the companies make and the improvements that they add to our lives as those purchasing their products and their services. Great stocks really just measure human progress and the progress of our economy and, of course, the companies that make it up. That’s why I prefer to add to things that are winning that are going up over time. In my experience, what do winners do, Sanjay? I know you know the punch line. Winners win. Generally, winners keep on winning, and that’s why I’ve always felt much better adding new money to my portfolio into the things that are working. That is my conclusion and my thought for you, Mailbag Item No. 2. Thanks for writing.
All right, on to Mailbag Item Number 3. Hi, David. I’m one of your regular listeners, and my relationship with The Fool spans decades. But I would like this submission to be anonymous because of the personal nature of the content, and mostly because this isn’t about me, but it should highlight what following Foolish and Rule Breaker precepts can do for a person. I, he writes, am that person. What a week I just had. It started on Tuesday when I was able to send a 12-year-old cancer victim and his father to Game Five of the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup finals, which cost many thousands of dollars. The emails I received from the boy’s dad brought tears to my eyes as he described his son’s best-ever sporting event experience. Later in the week, my dear bride and I decided to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars of our children’s home mortgages. Each of them was facing different challenges, and this gesture would be transformative in supporting them going forward, eliminating financial pressures when they needed it most, as opposed to waiting until we pass, hopefully many years from now. Finally, we spent the weekend with our grandchild, who suffers from anxiety attacks and is autistic. It was a great time, principally because he and we love playing the magical athlete board game that you touted in a previous podcast. We made many trips around the track, often cackling with joy as our athletes battled for supremacy. The real magic is that none of the financial moves we made will materially impact our standard of living or retirement. It is entirely due to the application of Foolish and Rule Breaker principles over the last 20-plus years. I cannot thank you enough, smarter, happier, richer me. Excelsior.
Well, anonymous friend. First, thank you for rocking my Motley with an enthusiastic Excelsior. At the end of your note, you probably know that’s the title I gave the final chapter of my Rule Breaker Investing book. It’s a word that means a lot to me. For Marvel fans, you probably also know it meant a lot to Stan Lee, the creator of so many of Marvel’s superhero characters. Thanks for ending that beautiful note with the word Excelsior. Second, I hope I never get tired of hearing stories like yours. In fact, I dream of a future where an increasing number of mailbag notes sound just like yours. They’ll have different names. They can all be anonymous so far as I’m concerned, different circumstances, different acts of generosity, different lives touched. But the same underlying story, someone embraced Foolish and Rule Breaker principles, stayed the course for decades, and eventually found themselves in a position to do remarkable things for the people they love, and in some cases, for people they don’t even know. A young cancer patient at the Stanley Cup Finals, children freed from mortgage burdens, a grandparent laughing around a board game with a beloved grandchild. I don’t think that I could ever share too many stories like that.
Before we move on to Mailbag Item Number 4, let me just reflect that I think every one of these stories, like the one we just heard, inspires us, along with Dory. I think it was my theme on this podcast for the year 2023, which was very volatile after a horrible 2022, to just keep swimming. Each of these stories expands our imagination as well for what might someday be possible. In our own lives, I love hearing what people do because it suggests new things I hadn’t thought of that I could do, too. Let me just close by saying a hearty congratulations. Your note is a beautiful reminder that the ultimate scorecard isn’t wealth accumulated, it’s lives enriched. Fool on.
I guess I’d be remiss at about the halfway point for this week’s podcast if I didn’t mention once again what we’re doing next week, because I just got to share with you beautiful examples of what financial freedom feels like, what it sounds like, what it looks like. I’d love to know what you’ve done to create financial freedom over the past year. Some of you have written me each year. Maybe you have an update, and some of you are just encountering this podcast for the first time this week, and you’re thinking, you know what I did? I finally started contributing to my corporate 401K, and my company matches, and that’s a step I took toward financial freedom, or maybe you helped out a child, figuring out the stock market. Maybe you inspired them by opening an account for them and putting money in this podcast. Indeed, of course, my whole company absolutely loves to hear those kinds of stories and not just to inspire us but to teach us, as well. There are a lot of smart people hearing me right now making good moves of their own toward financial freedom, and share it out. You reach tens of thousands through this podcast.
Let’s move on to Mailbag Item Number 4. This one from Eric, another Eric. From Mailbag Item No. 1. Thank you, different Eric, for this note. Dear David, as an arithmetic enthusiast. I loved your number hand game in last month’s mailbag. It got me thinking about how to approach that same exercise, but from the other direction.
Now, before we move on, for those who didn’t hear last month’s mailbag, I just mentioned a trick you can pull with people to show how bad the human mind is at wrapping itself around big numbers. The trick is that you hold out your two hands in front of you, maybe a couple of feet apart. On one side, you say is the number zero. Then, looking at your other hand, on the other side, you say, That’s 1 billion. Then you ask your friend, or maybe you make a bar bet, or maybe you’re at the corporate water cooler. Here’s zero, you say, and here over, here’s 1 billion, you ask them, Where is the million? Again, in my experience doing this many times over the years, the average person will somewhere about a third of the way from zero. About a third of the way over, they’ll say, Right about there. That’s where 1 million is in between zero and a billion. Well, just to inform those who didn’t hear last month’s mailbag, that is incorrect. There are 1,000 millions in 1 billion. Therefore, as I often say, you couldn’t really fit a knife between how carefully they should be placing their hand right against your zero hand, 1000th of the way over to the other side. That’s the zero-to-1 billion hand trick that I like to pull on people, and that’s what has inspired this note from Eric, and let me keep going.
Eric goes on. We have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, but 1,000 is graspable. Let’s start there, Eric writes. If I hold my left and right hands a foot apart and say that that distance represents the span 0-1 thousand, where would I have to place my right hand to represent 1 million? He asks. He goes on, Google tells me the average city block is 660 feet, so the answer would be nowhere in the room. No matter what room you’re sitting in, it would be a block and a half away, 0-1 million. He goes on, and what about 1 trillion? How far would I have to place my hand then? Well, nowhere on this planet. It would be, Oh, so nearly on the moon. Which, at 238,000 miles, would be almost close enough for my hand to touch. Therefore, if my outstretched hands represent $1,000 of market cap, Nvidia could go to the moon and back twice and still have room to spare. Thank you for sharing such a fun idea to play with. Signed Eric PS, I’m imagining a future Market Cap game show Geography Edition.
Well, thanks for writing in, Eric, and your note reminds me of, I guess I’ll say two related truths. First, well, we already spoke to this one, but the human brain simply isn’t built to intuitively understand very large numbers. We evolved to understand dozens. Sure. Hundreds, maybe thousands. But once we get into millions, billions, and trillions, we’re mostly faking it. Here’s the second thought. It’s one more reason that I love market caps. We built a game show around it. People see one stock trading at 20, and then another trading at $200 a share, and they assume that second company is bigger. Of course, price per share alone tells us almost nothing. The market cap is the actual price tag of the business. One of the reasons we played that game show for nearly a decade is to help all of us think a little more clearly about scale. Thank you, Eric, for sharing a little bit of your arithmetic enthusiasm with the rest of us.
Let’s move on to Rule Breaker Mailbag item number 5. This one from Frank Di Marcio. Thank you, Frank. You’re right. “Hi. I’ve been building an app with Claude that automates covered call trading on top of a long-term equity portfolio.” Frank goes on “Generating consistent income without selling holdings, similar to how JEPI works,” and I need to pause it there for a sec because I’m not really a JEPI person. It is a ticker symbol, though. Pretty sure, Frank, you’re referring to the JP Morgan Equity Premium Income ETF. For those who have that ETF, they’re getting consistent income from it, and you’re modeling something using artificial intelligence to help you achieve the same for your own portfolio. Frank goes on, “I recently added a sleep number feature to my app, and that would be, of course, the largest position in my portfolio as a percentage of the total portfolio, and immediately realized my 38% is too high. Best. Frank M. Di Marcio.”
Frank, first of all, thank you for sharing that. What caught my eye wasn’t so much the covered calls, which is not a strategy I use, but I know many a Fool enjoys obtaining income through that very conservative use of options. I won’t even say that your AI Claude App caught my eye, although that’s pretty cool. It was the sleep number, of course. I love that you built a feature into your software, and then you immediately applied it to your own portfolio, and then you immediately discovered something about yourself as an investor. That’s exactly the point of the sleep number.
Again, the sleep number would be principle number 4 of the Rule Breaker portfolio. As we manage our portfolios going forward, I’ve always said, establish your sleep number. Determine, in other words, what is the largest position as a percentage of your overall net worth that you would allow anything to become and still sleep well at night? As it turns out, our new friend Frank discovered that his largest position was 38% of his portfolio, and that number 38 was ahead of whatever his actual sleep number is. Of course, the point of the sleep number is not so much that his number should be your number or yours should be mine, but that each of us should establish our sleep number. It’s better to discover you’re uncomfortable at 38%, Frank, through a spreadsheet or an app, though, than through a so-called market correction. I always use that word, looking askance, having a little fun with it. I just mean a market drop. I’m glad you were able to discover through your own research and your own programming as opposed to having to suffer through a bad market. Thank you very much for sharing.
One thing I enjoy about sharing out so many great Foolish notes at the end of every month, through our mailbag, is sometimes I’m just sharing what different people are doing. Here’s Frank designing his app with Claude, automating covered call trading. Again, not something I do, not something Frank would even recommend to you, dear listener, whoever you are, but nevertheless, really fun to hear what people are learning, trying, and doing, and that’s part of the fun of my monthly Rule Breaker Investing Mailbag. Let’s move on. We got two more.
Let’s move on now to Rule Breaker Mailbag Item number 6, this one from Arvind. This would be another example of a note that came in a month after my birthday, where each year I ask on May 16th for you to write me in and tell me what you’ve learned from me; that’s a great gift, something that I really appreciate. Of course, I shared that last month, and that’s what Arvind is still rocking here as he starts with “David, what’s it I learn from David?” He goes on. “When someone tells me about a stock,” Arvind writes, “its current price, its past price, how much it has gone up or down, or how many times it is split. I ask them,” ‘Do you know it’s market cap?’ You might be surprised,” Arvind goes on, “but I end up asking this question at least once a month; even more surprising, most of these people are heavily invested in the market and are high-net-worth individuals. I am happy to say this question has helped them focus on the actual company instead of just the stock price. Thanks. Again, I truly appreciate your commitment to making smarter, happier, and more resilient investors. Thanks. Arvind.” Thank you.
If the Market Cap Game Show accomplishes nothing more than getting a few thousand people to start asking that question, not just of themselves, but of friends and family, “Do you know its market cap?” I would consider the whole series a grand success. It’s such a simple question, but it does instantly shift our conversation from the stock to the business. A stock trading at $500 a share can actually be a tiny company, and a $20 stock could be one of an enormous company. Price alone tells us almost nothing. I know I just said this a few minutes ago, but it is Market Cap Game Show month here on this mailbag. Market capitalization is the actual price tag of the enterprise. I do want to add, as well, that elsewhere in his note, Arvind goes on to offer several thoughtful suggestions for improving our Market Cap Game Show. In fact, this note arrived, Arvind, just as we were implementing our biggest rule change in years, and that would be last week’s show the King-Sharon Rule, where it debuted one of your ideas, which was that a player could be given the option to pass and challenge the other contestant to provide the market cap range, which is a very gamey, fun suggestion, pretty clever.
But my hesitation right now, Arvind, is that every new rule that we add does add some complexity, not just for the players themselves but for listeners at home, people learning and trying to play the game. One thing I’ve always liked about the game is listeners can start playing along, I’d say, in about 15 seconds. For now, I think we’re going to keep it simple, but I do always appreciate hearing ideas from fellow Fools, especially ones who are thinking deeply about market cap and, Arvind, how to make the game better. Thank you for writing in.
On to mailbag Item number 7. I obliquely suggest from time to time that I like to save best for last for my mailbags. Really, we’ve already had a couple of beautiful notes this month. I don’t mean to suggest that this note was the best one, but it is another remarkable note and my pleasure to give it my best shot at a response. “Dear Mr. Gardner, my name is Fabian Burghardt. I am 43 years old, married, and the proud father of two daughters, Ala and Amela, aged 11 and 6, living in Germany. I’m writing to you because your philosophy of investing and lifelong learning has resonated with me for many years. Like many parents, I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of my children. My wife and I come from ordinary working backgrounds. I work as a police officer in Baden-Wurttemberg, and before that, I spent eight years in the military police. I chose those professions because of a strong sense of justice that has guided me.” Fabian goes on, “since childhood. My wife is originally from Bosnia and works as an educator. Together, we have built a home, are raising two daughters, and are doing our best to provide them with the strongest possible foundation for life.
For years, I believed that financial security was one of the most important gifts I could provide, and that is why I save consistently and invest whenever possible, even during months when family life leaves little room for extra savings. Both of my daughters already have their own MSCI World savings plans and small investment accounts.” Before I move on, let me just say MSCI stands for Morgan Stanley Capital International. What Fabian is referring to is an automated dollar-cost-averaging strategy that just regularly invests small amounts of money into an ETF or index fund that tracks the MSCI World Index. That’s a very well-known international index established by Morgan Stanley. For those who are newly acquainted with that term and that acronym, that’s what our fellow Fool is referring to. Back to Fabian’s note: “Our younger daughter, Amela, chose Hasbro because she loves My Little Pony and Mattel because of Barbie. Our older daughter, Ala, chose Coca-Cola, Nike, and Tonies because they are companies and products she knows from everyday life.
For us, these investments are not really about money. They are lessons about ownership, patience, responsibility, curiosity, and long-term thinking. The older I get,” Fabian goes on, “the more I realize that my goal is not to make my daughters wealthy. My goal is to help them become free. Free to pursue meaningful work, free to explore their interests, free to choose their own path without feeling trapped by financial pressure. What I admire most about your work is your optimism. You’ve spent decades encouraging people to think long-term, keep learning, and participate in the growth of great businesses and great ideas. Because of that, I would like to ask you one simple question.” By the way, I don’t think this is that simple, Fabian, but let’s do it. “If you were preparing two young daughters for the next 20 years, what mindset, habit, or principle would you focus on most? What do you believe creates the greatest opportunity for a meaningful and fulfilling life? Even a brief response would mean a great deal to me. Thank you for taking the time to read my message, for the positive impact your work has had on countless investors around the world. I wish you and your family continued health, happiness, and success. Kind regards, Fabian Burghardt, Germany.” He signs it, father, police officer, and investor.
Fabian, first, what a beautiful note. What fortunate daughters you and your wife are raising. Yours is the note that makes me proud that we do this podcast every week, over the months, and over the years, because here’s a secret: mailbags are really only as good as the people writing in. One thing I’ve often said over the course of my life when people ask me what I’m after, I say something like this: I’m after the good opinion of good people. Fabian, I want to say it is a true pleasure to have yours. You ask what mindset I would focus on most. Here goes my simple answer. I would say “curiosity.” Because when I think about curiosity, I think about the curious person who keeps always learning. A curious person adapts. A curious person discovers opportunities that others walk past, don’t flip over the stone, or just blindly miss altogether. Probably most importantly, I would say a curious person rarely stops growing. Money, we talk about it a lot. Money can create options. These things are all wildly good. Education can create skills. But I would say curiosity, which is what I’m focusing on here, Ala and Amela, creates a lifetime of possibilities. Fabian, from these reflections that you’ve shared from the remarkable life that I can hear that you are leading. It sounds to me you’re already giving your daughters something even more valuable than financial security. You and your wife are giving them a home filled with love. Filled with what I would say sounds like purpose and a great example. From across the Atlantic, thank you for your note, my new friend. Actually, keep up the great work.
Maybe for the first time in the 11 years of my podcast, I’m going to end this mailbag with the very same phrase that ended last month’s mailbag because it is so on point. Stay hungry, stay Foolish, and Fool on.
