What You Have Learned from David Gardner, Vol. 7

**David Gardner** (0:00)
Once a year, well, it happens to you too. You have a birthday.
That time of year every year for me is mid-May. We've had a tradition with this podcast, which is that you give me a gift, which you did once again this month. Thank you so much. You give me a gift in the form of notes, emails, tweets, sharing what you've learned from this podcast. And then I get to organize these thoughts and share back reflections on some of the cardinal points that you make, which in a way summarize Rule Breaker Investing, especially for new listeners. This series is entitled What You Have Learned From David Gardner. Here in 2026, well, it's Volume 7, What You've Learned From Me.
Thanks for the birthday present. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:52)
It's the Rule Breaker Investing Podcast with Motley Fool co-founder, David Gardner.

**David Gardner** (1:01)
Nine notes I want to share this year, and we get to close this podcast with a leprechaun and then a Scotsman. So we got that going for us. Before we start, let me just mention next week's podcast. Next week's podcast is crazy.
I can't believe what I'm going to try to do. I mean, it's just another podcast, but it's crazy. So circle May 20th and or make sure you're subscribed to Rule Breaker Investing for next week's podcast, which reminds me, by the way, of one other short point. I would really appreciate it if you drop a review of this podcast on Apple podcasts. I almost never say this. In a world where I know many people and it clearly works and more power to them, where many people constantly say like and subscribe to this podcast, or like and subscribe please to this YouTube video or channel. And I basically don't do that. And I haven't done it much for years. That said, it's my birthday week. I turn 60 this week. If you'd like to give me a present, dropping a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or Google Play would be really nice and appreciated. On Apple podcasts, I see we now have 921 ratings for Rule Breaker Investing. 921, that's close to a thousand. I'd kind of love to go over a thousand. Probably won't happen this week, but you can help me out and help other Rule Breakers find this podcast. If you take a moment right now or right after listening, to throw me some stars, maybe a sentence as well or a paragraph, throw me some stars and make me smile. Thank you. All right, as I mentioned at the top, one of my favorite birthday presents comes in the form of listeners like you reaching out directly to share what you've learned from me. Now, I'm a little bit self-conscious, entitling this episode, What You Have Learned From David Gardner, because I'm the first to make jokes, especially about professional athletes who refer to themselves in the third person. You've heard it before, things like, what's ahead for Michael Jordan? Then Michael says, well, Michael Jordan's thinking a lot about his future, that sort of thing. Often, it seems like the sports journalists set up the athletes to use third person by asking them questions directly in the third person themselves anyway.
What have you learned from David Gardner is the question, and what you have learned from David Gardner is what I'm sharing back this week. Let's get started again. Nine notes to share, closing out with a leprechaun and then a Scotsman. What you have learned, number one, this one from IA. Conkle. Thank you. You're right. I've learned so much. Been following Motley Fool for 30 years. Key learnings, be patient, invest for the long term, and be in the market. One that doesn't always make sense, you go on considering general financial advice of diversification and having a balanced portfolio is ride your winners. Thank you, IA. Conkle. Well, it's a short e-mail, but it packed a punch, really. Be patient, be in the market, and for a long time, and especially, I appreciate you underlining the ride your winners, or as I like to say, habit number one of the Rule Breaker Investor, rule number one, let your winners run high. And it's true, this does go contrary to much of the advice you get from the professional financial advice world. There are brokers who over the years say things like, it's time to lock in profits, Janice, time to lock in profits, IA Kunkel, we got a profit, let's lock it in. That caused a lot of people to trade out of their great position in Apple, back in the day, or maybe NVIDIA. And then again, you have financial planners. Again, this is understandable. They want you to not overweight into any one position. What I don't like so much is when they regularly want you to harvest your winners and rebalance those gains back into your losers. Rebalancing not great for stock market portfolios. I understand why some funds do it, but that's really why I invented the sleep number concept, which is principle number four of the Rule Breaker portfolio. Establish your sleep number IA Kunkel and many others listening. I think you get it. You'll help yourself out a lot by habit number one, letting your winners run high, and then toward your sleep number. That is the highest percentage you'd let a position get in your portfolio, and still be able to sleep at night. So that concept of letting winners run is really gonna play out wildly in your favor toward your own prosperity over time, as clearly you've experienced for 30 years now IA Kunkel and for others listening. The only question is, is it becoming too large? Is that winner or winners in your portfolio becoming too much on your mind? That's a good reason to sometimes pair that position back. Anyway, thank you for sharing what you've learned. That was number one. Let's go to number two. Thank you, Rich Smith. David, for this year, the thing I've learned from you is to be more appreciative of my mistakes and to see how I can improve as a person and investor. It's been instructive, Rich writes, to see how different five-stock samplers have performed well after their initial three-year timeline, but also to take that concept and apply it on a broader scale. To also borrow from Charlie Munger and appreciate and learn from the mistakes of others has provided much worldly wisdom. While I still fall short on my inner scorecard periodically, I can at least let go of the mental anguish of it all, Rich writes, more easily now, and objectively seek ways to keep moving forward and upward. I wish you the happiest of birthdays filled with much joy and foolishness, Excelsior Rich Smith. Well, thank you for writing in Rich. You've been a regular correspondent over the years and I really appreciate the attention you've thrown our way and I hope it's been a huge win-win. I've certainly enjoyed having you as a regular listener and I loved doing, as you know, my five stock samplers, picking 30 times over the course of seven years or so, over this podcast's history, picking five stocks at a time, a sampler, if you will, toward a specific theme. I laid out the theme and the stocks that we're going to pick and then we track them. We followed them a year later. How are they doing? Two years and then three years. And at that point, I generally shot it all off and finished the game because if, as I've often said, if we kept following those samplers every single year, 30 of them, there wouldn't be much else to talk about on this podcast from one year to the next. But as you well know, Rich and all my regular listeners, just because we stopped tracking after three years the five stock sampler, by no means did that mean we would close out the positions. Those are some of our best favorite Rule Breaker and Stock Advisor stocks, companies I truly love, and that's the beauty of doing our 10 years later series, which I tipped off just in the last six months or so. We've done four of them so far. Every 10 weeks, we review 10 years later one of those five stock samplers, the very week 10 years later after I picked it. And so that's been a lot of fun to share. And you're right, Rich, it's been fun to see how some of them did okay over three years and were smashingly great over 10 And we've now had at least one that reversed it. It was a good market beater for three years and a big market loser over 10 And by the way, since I gazed over the spreadsheet from time to time where I've tracked all 150 stock picks, I can tell you there's a lot more of that to come. There are some big time winning samplers and some embarrassingly horrible samplers 10 years later. And I'm enjoying reviewing them every 10 weeks as the next one comes due. But my favorite word in your entire short note, Rich, was your closing. My favorite word, Excelsior. Thank you for sharing that. What you've learned for me number three, I could almost say birthday gift number three. This one from long time listener and a big fan of mine, Jum. Thank you, Jum. Hello David. Early happy 60th birthday. Big one. Congratulations on reaching this milestone. 60, she writes, is the new 40 with a smiley emoji. Sorry, I've not been in touch for some time, but I have not missed any Rule Breaker Investing episodes. The RBI podcast is still what I look forward to each week. Work has been busy and I have disabled my use of the X slash Twitter app. Sadly, it was played by spam. I had no time to deal with it, but I just can't miss your birthday tradition. I'd love to send you this birthday gift. Jum goes on, you've been a big influence on how I think about investing. Although there are so many great life lessons I've learned from you. This year, dips, wait for dips is what I chose. Thanks to you, I'll tell you three reasons why I will never, Jum writes, wait for dips.