The Stock Picking Philosophy to Find the Next Amazon with Motley Fool's David Gardner

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio.

**Barry Ritholtz** (0:16)
This week on the podcast, I had so much fun chatting with David Gardner of the Motley Fool. I remember the Fool back in 93, 94 when it first launched on AOL.
What a fascinating career. If you're a stock picker, if you're someone who really is committed to finding the best companies and then writing them for decades, you're going to find this conversation really fascinating. I thought his book was really interesting. His whole approach to life, to investing is really great. I enjoyed our conversation. I think you will also, with no further ado, my discussion with the Motley Fool's David Gardner.

**David Gardner** (0:55)
Thank you, Barry. It's a delight to be with you. Thank you so much.

**Barry Ritholtz** (0:58)
I have a vivid recollection of sitting on a trading desk and watching you guys pop on to TV at various times. And as soon as you guys showed up, I'm like, all right, let me pull up NVIDIA and Netflix. I knew they would start running and then soon turn around and fade. So as always, I mean, just intraday, we'll get a little later to the difference between investing and trading.

**David Gardner** (1:25)
Yes, sir.

**Barry Ritholtz** (1:25)
But first, I have to go back to your background because it's so unusual. University of North Carolina on a Moorhead Scholarship focused on a bachelor's in English and creative writing. I assume Wall Street was not the original career plan.

**David Gardner** (1:42)
It actually was a career plan as I came to UNC Chapel Hill as a freshman, I was telling people, I think I'm going to go to work on Wall Street. I had a formative summer in between my sophomore and junior year, where I worked at Solomon Brothers back in the day, the good friend era. I think Michael Lewis is writing Liar's Poker somewhere around then.

**Barry Ritholtz** (2:02)
Late 80s, I think, the first dropped?

**David Gardner** (2:03)
The year was 1986 for me that I was at Solomon.

**Barry Ritholtz** (2:06)
You probably overlapped with him at the same time.

**David Gardner** (2:08)
It was, I don't recall Michael, and I'm really glad to see where he's gone on to great heights. But that was the summer I learned I was never going to want to go work on Wall Street. That was a really wonderful experience.
I just realized it's not a culture that I'm gonna probably spend time with as an adult. And so that was so helpful. I love the markets. I just wasn't a Wall Street person.

**Barry Ritholtz** (2:31)
And you grew up in a household where markets, investing, stocks were part of the daily conversation. Your dad helped you win a high school stock picking contest. Tell us a little bit about that.

**David Gardner** (2:41)
Sure, it was actually earlier than that. It was fifth grade, it was fourth grade. But my dad probably did what other dads did, pick stocks for their son in this all-boys school, St. Albans School I went to in Washington, DC. And I remember he had hardcore-braced Jovanovich, he had Getty Oil. These companies aren't around anymore too much, but that was my stock portfolio. And over the course of three months, I outperformed my classmates, and so I won a gigantic Hershey bar.
To my 10-year-old eyes, it was the biggest Hershey bar I'd ever seen. But it was a wonderful introduction. The real exercise then, Barry, was just to look in the newspaper, to write down 16 5 8s, where the stocks close. We would do that once a week, over the course of three months, and just start understanding the markets. So that was an early experience, but really, dad was so formative for me as an investor.

**Barry Ritholtz** (3:32)
It's always fun talking to the youngsters who grew up with decimalization. Because I vividly recall, what's the price? Up a teeny. You don't get that anymore.
It's a whole...

**David Gardner** (3:45)
A lot of your listeners do, Barry. And I get it.

**Barry Ritholtz** (3:47)
I get it. Right. Up a stick, up a half, whatever it happened to be.
And then, how did you end up writing for Louis Rue Kaiser's Wall Street newsletter?

**David Gardner** (3:56)
Yeah. So I started out of college, took a couple of years to read and write and travel a lot, got married without a job, and then it was time at the age of 24 to get my first job. And as it turns out, the newsletter that was supporting Louis Rue Kaiser, you remember his show Wall Street Week?