Gratitude: 2024

From groundbreaking achievements in business (artificial intelligence) to investing home runs (Nvidia, and the S&P 500 overall) to the meaningful connections that enrich our lives, this week's Rule Breaker Investing podcast is an expression of thankfulness for what inspires us, supports us, and keeps us moving forward... and reminds us why we invest. Let's feel grateful together -- let's call it out! And find sparks of inspiration for the year ahead.

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This video was recorded on Nov. 20, 2024.

David Gardner: What do you have to be grateful for? Pull up a chair and stay a while and let us be grateful together. This week, let's reflect on our world. At the end of another year, let us rejoice in the good things that we have only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. It's a delight to have you join me during, what is for many of us, one of the busiest months of the year. Thank you for taking the time to suffer Fools. Gladly, this week's theme is gratitude. Nearing the year's end, I do this every year. I want to reflect on its power. This annual series began in 2020 after a conversation with my son Gabe, who shared insights from the book, Thanks by Robert Emmons. The book highlights how cultivating daily gratitude can measurably increase our happiness by as much as 25%, that's above the baseline that a lot of psychologists think you can't really move your own baseline that much, as much as 25% by cultivating a daily gratitude practice and sustaining that over months. Even simple practices like keeping a gratitude journal for three weeks, which admittedly I've never done, but it can improve your sleep and your energy. Emmons' work weaves science with wisdom.

From philosophers, theologians, and novelists, he emphasizes that gratitude is essential for a full life. One line from the book's introduction resonates with me. Here it is. It is gratitude that enables us to be fully human. To my son, Gabe, I say, thank you for sharing this. The great 20th century humanitarian physician theologian, and, he won the Nobel Peace Prize, too. Albert Schweitzer called gratitude the secret to life. In one particular sermon, he summarized his position by saying, "The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live. He has penetrated the whole mystery of life giving thanks for everything." Well, everything sounds like too long a podcast this week, but I do have seven things queued up to give thanks for. Before I start with the first one, let's just briefly consider the opposite, the opposite of gratitude, and that would be ingratitude.

Now, for me, that sounds a lot like complaining. Complaining about the opposite of Schweitzer, about everything. I hope you don't have anybody like this in your life if I ever did, I don't have now. I'm happy to say, but people whose first instinct is to complain whenever I have in mind those feverish, selfish little clods of ailments and grievances, I have to go back, speaking of quotes to another of my favorite quotes previously covered on a great quotes Rule Breaker Investing podcast, and that would be the great George Bernard Shaw quote from his play Man and Superman on living a great life.

Let's do it one more time here, and I quote. "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. The being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish, little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy, I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community. As long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake, life is no brief candle to me. It is a splendid torch, which I've got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." Thank you, George Bernard Shaw for that beautiful contrast between feverish clouds of ailments and grievances, complaining the world won't devote itself to making us happy and the exact opposite.

That is gratefulness, in Schweitzer's words for everything. Well, seven gratitudes this year for my first. Well, darn it, I do this every year. I want to thank you. Yes, you, whoever you are, wherever you are, and you are many places and you're all different. But I'm speaking to you. Right now, you a Rule Breaker, brother or sister in arms, fellow Fools all, a community to which I can say with Bernard Shaw, my life belongs. Thank you for being there, not just, of course, to my Rule Breaker investing podcast listeners, although most of all, of course, to you, but I want to thank all Motley Fool members and prospective Motley Fool members everywhere, especially I think of people who are not yet members today, but who are awakened to the beauties of questioning conventional wisdom, which is at the heart of being a fool.

For all Fools everywhere, for that spirit of challenge for doing it in a fun way, which has to be the case if you're a Motley Fool. It's one thing to be a challenging conventional wisdom as a fool. But if you're a Motley Fool, you're bringing some humor to it, just like Shakespeare's jesters. To every foolish spirit everywhere with gratitude Number 1, I say, thank you, because arguably, as much as I apparently enjoy talking to myself some weeks on this podcast like this one or to friends and special guests, other weeks, I'm talking not so much to me or to them all the way through, but to you. I especially thank you for listening and extra thanks if you're somebody who's shared your story, if you've shared your question, if you've written into our mailbag, any of the mailbags this year or any other year, thank you.

This podcast is powered a quarter of the time by you. About one week in every four. It's Mailbag, and it's your awesome stories, poems, and questions which power this podcast. In a special thanks to you and by the way, our email address is rbi@fool.com. If you're moved by anything you hear this week, if you'd like to share your own gratitude, I'd love to share that on this coming week's podcast. Email me right now rbi@fool.com. By the way, this is always the time of year when I get, especially to thank my producers this year. My longtime producer Rick Engdahl and my recent and sometime producer Des Jones, my foolish friends, a brand new show every week with no skips and no repeats, going back to July 2015. Thank you, Rick, and Des so much for helping to make this podcast the best version of itself weekend and week out through 2024 and beyond. On to gratitude, Number 2, and this one's also pretty easy.

This one's obvious, 2024 was the year of Nvidia. Thank you, and Nvidia. On April 15 of 2005, Tax Day 2005, Nvidia stock traded at $19.56 per share. I know, because that's the day I first picked it for Motley Fool Stock Advisor. Since then, it's been one of the great stocks of this or really any era. Let's follow its story. For storytelling purposes, I'm using my original cost basis of $19.56, and I'm going to trace Nvidia's rise to today. Now, I want to note four times over the past 20 years, the company split its stock, two for one in 2006, three for two in 2007, four for one in 2021, and 10 for one in 2024. Thus, shareholders today now have 120 shares for every one share they own back in 2005 when I first recommended it.

Stock splits reduce the share price while increasing the number of shares in equal proportion. I think most listeners of this podcast already know that, but I'm always speaking to new people, too. I want to make sure you know that stock splits add no value. The pizza stays the same size. It just has more slices. While Rule Breaker investors do have 120 shares for every one that existed back in 2005, thanks to those splits, our original cost basis has therefore effectively been reduced to just 16 cents. I want to rush in to add, especially for newcomers, Nvidia was never a penny stock. Don't buy penny stocks. It's just that for Rule Breaker investors, when you have stock splits like these and you hold over a long period of time with an incredibly low cost basis, it starts to look like you bought a penny stock, but rest assured, it was 19 dollars and 56 cents on Tax Day 2005. Let's go through the story then.

By October 2007, the stock was making me look good as it tipped the scales at 120. That's up six times in value in two years, what we like to call a six bagger in homage to Peter Lynch, who coined the bagger phrasing. But then came 2008. One year later, those of you who are investing then, do you remember the year 2008? Nvidia dropped from 120-18. We went from riding high to looking silly. The dang thing had been up six times in value, and now 3.5 years later, we were underwater. By December 2009, Nvidia had begun to recover, and for my new monthly Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick, I picked one stock a month from 2002-2021 for Motley Fool Stock Advisor. I rerecommended Nvidia. The stock was back to 47. I wrote at the time, and I quote, "The timing is right, and so is the price".

Five years later, at the end of 2014, the stock finally hit $60 a share. Yes, that bullish rerecommendation I bravely made in 2009 at 48. Had only seen the stock rise 25% over five long years. It was still, by the way, just half of what it had been seven years earlier when it was at 120 in 2007. Though it had now tripled, it was a three bagger from our original 2005 cost basis around $20 a share. The stocks at 60. Let's bump it forward to 2016, and Nvidia finally crosses 120. It just reclaimed that early high that we'd celebrated in 2007, nine years earlier. I think you can cue Jack Nicholson in the shining with a little bit of we're back. By the end of that year, the stock had tripled again. Having started 2016 at 96, it closed at 319 and was far and away the top performing stock on the S&P 500 in 2016. It was up 198%. That means with our original cost basis of 19 dollars and 56 cents and that $47 reentry, we were sitting a bit higher in the saddle with the stock at 319.

Now, I get dangerously Foolish urges from time to time where I just have to challenge conventional wisdom and go further out on a limb to prove a big point. Sometimes it works, and by the way, sometimes it doesn't. But now was one of those times. I thought about all my regression to the mean friends. People who say things like, it's awfully expensive now, or what goes up must come down. The ones who cite studies about how last year's top performers are bound to underperform next year. Now, I recognize this can be true, but I love to point out when it's not because that'll shock some people, which is fun.

When you're on the opposite side of conventional wisdom, and you're right, while it's wrong, that's when you stand to make the most money. The very month after the media was buzzing about Nvidia being the top performer on the S&P 500 in 2016, in January 2017, I made Nvidia my new monthly recommendation for Motley Fool Stock Advisor, so that was the third time it had been my big monthly pick. I was showboating and it worked. This time it worked. I wasn't picking Nvidia just for 2017, of course, but it was awfully nice to see it rise in 2017 from our $307 recommendation price in January to 580 that year. Nvidia was the S&P 500 10th top performer in 2017 up 83%. Now, quick side note. This has happened in recent times, not with Nvidia, but with Meta Platforms. Fun to note, last year, Meta Platforms, the former Facebook, went from $122-353 a share. Last year, it was up 188%. Crazy, because for a company that today has a $1.4 trillion market cap, it was adding hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap in just that one year last year. Did it regress to the mean here in 2024? What goes up must come down? Actually, not at all. Meta Platforms has gone from 353-553 this year, up another 57% as of today's recording. It reminds me of that Nvidia moment in 2017.

Anyway, let's go back and finish the story here, because I've never heard anyone follow the line what goes up with anything other than must come down. But isn't that the point? Because when A, everyone thinks that, and B, we don't and C, they're wrong, then D, whether or not their eyes are opened, E, our eyes will likely take on the iconic dollar sign look of Scrooge McDuck because with great Rule Breaker stocks, what goes up ends up going upper. To continue this remarkable story from 2005 to present after running from 96-580 from 2016-2017, Nvidia in 2018 touched over 850. But couldn't hold it and then fell all the way down to Wamo Ouch 385. I realize this is a lot easier to show in a graph than it is to speak truth with numbers in a podcast, but I'm just going to keep finishing it out here because by early 2020, the stock crossed back over 850. Again, it ended 2020 at 1,560. Yes, we're still sitting on our original cost basis of 19 dollars and 56 cents, now seeing the possibility of 100 bagger, because 100 bagger would be 1956, and the stock closed 2020 at 1,560. By the way, as things turned out, we were actually shooting too low because in 2021, the stock crossed $3,600.

Having started 2022 just over 3,600, shareholders watch their stock nosedive. Get this once again, just months later below 1,500. From 3,600, it got cut in half in 2022 and closed at 1,800. Now I hope you're noticing how much we are recurrently losing, sometimes waiting years for any gain at all. I hope so, but are you also noticing how much money we've made? Keep noticing. Before I wrap up, let's take a moment now to reflect on the staggering volatility that NVIDIA demonstrated at its new scale, because when a company, as significant, large, and successful as NVIDIA sees its stock price plummet from 3,600 to 1,800 in a single year. Its market cap shrinks from 750 billion to 375 billion. That's again, hundreds of billions of dollars all gone in a single year. To me, that's a striking example of how inefficient our markets can be, by which I mean sometimes certifiably crazy. Yes, crazy, but that doesn't mean there still isn't a lot to learn from the NVIDIA story.

As I share my gratitude this year in closing, gratitude Number 2 for NVIDIA. The company's stock sits at $17,209 a share from our cost basis of 19. 56. Now, in real-world terms, NVIDIA is today trading, if you quote it, at $143 a share or so. What I've done is I've taken out all of the stock splits and just shown you the real-world gains made by this stock, whether you want to count from $0.16 or $19.56. But there are some really important takeaways before we move to gratitude Number 3. First of all, the market is willing to bid Rule Breakers to exceedingly high, and I would also say exceedingly low points as stocks. Sometimes just separated by a year or two.

The volatility, you have to recognize and appreciate. You have to ride it if you want to have 100 Bagger as an investor, whether it's NVIDIA or frankly, any other stock. It's also proof positive, though, that that original pick was a phenomenal pick. We were up 880 times since 2005. But even my price is $47 a share in 2009 and 307 in 2017 look really great. Now that we're at 17,000 plus dollars a share, so each time we were buying higher, but it was still a great pick. When you really think about it, it was a heck of a buy every other year in between 2005 and 2024 and every single day of any of those years. Think about it. This year included, it's now the most valuable public company of all time. It is a classic Rule Breaker. It fulfills all six of my Rule Breaker stock traits.

Rule Breaker investors who followed our six habits will recognize how valuable that combination of our six habits, holding stocks for long periods, for example, how valuable that combination is when you combo it with the six Rule Breaker stock traits that I talk about all the time. I'm so grateful to have shared all of that with so many of you. In the end, the proof is in the pudding. It's the business performance of the company and its Five Star CEO Jensen Huang that are the real reason for riches. Here, you're not going to have great stocks without great companies. You don't have great companies without great people. That perhaps is the lesson to learn for all time. It was proven for all time this year. Not because NVIDIA was a hot stock this year or last, it was proven for all time because of the ride that Motley Fool members have been on from $19.56, or in split-adjusted terms today, from $0.16 to today's price of 143.5 for NVIDIA.

Thank you, NVIDIA. On to gratitude Number 3. In my old new borrowed blue podcast earlier this year, I went deep with the color blue. I called it the study in blue briefly on that podcast, and I'm going to bring that back now into this expression of gratitude for this year; this week's podcast, a study in blue. In fact, I want to express four gratitudes, four blues. Here again, near the end of 2024. Thank you in advance, blue.

Four blues. Let's start with the first, blue sky. The term blue sky when we talk about thinking represents boundless optimism and creativity, free from the constraints of the current realities or limitations. It's about envisioning what could be rather than what is. It encourages an open-minded approach to problem-solving and innovation. I think of three-time Rule Breaker Investing guest Warren Berger's great book, A More Beautiful Question. A More Beautiful Question is all about that blue sky thinking. On the cover of the book, there's just a big question mark, and guess what color that question mark is? It's blue. When I think more about blue and blue sky, I think of my friend, fellow optimist Bill Burke, who joined me on this podcast earlier this year. Bill heads up the Optimism Institute. He has his own podcast. It's called the Blue Sky Podcast. The line that starts off every one of his podcasts, and I love it. Here it is. There's always blue sky above. Sometimes you just have to get your head above the clouds to see it. Blue Sky Optimism is integral, I would say, to my own success as an investor. Certainly for entrepreneurs, optimism is practically a required personality trait. It needs to be laced into your character for you to be a successful entrepreneur most of the time.

These things are enabled by the blue sky. The first of my study in blue gratitudes here, and before I move on to the second, I should just mention blue sky laws. They're what protect investors against fraudulent sales practices and securities fraud. Of course, I love that phrase, too. The whole movement, by the way, started state by state about a century ago. These days, many states in the United States have based their blue sky laws on regulations that were put in place decades ago, but it's all there for clear visibility. Blue sky embodies both the spirit of unbridled optimism and the foundational principles of transparency and protection in finance, blue sky. Next, let's go to Blue Ocean. The Blue Ocean Strategy is a business theory. It's also a book that suggests companies are better off searching for ways to gain uncontested market space, the so called Blue Ocean rather than compete head to head with other companies in an existing industry. The authors of the theory, which they did, as I mentioned, turn into a book, they'd call head-to-head competition with existing competitors. They'd say that's red ocean. Blue Ocean Strategy is focused on creating new demand. That's the best way to make your competition irrelevant. When you create new demand, you encourage innovation. You emphasize the importance of offering something unique to your customers. It opens up new frontiers opportunities for growth and profitability. When I think about some of my, maybe yours too, my favorite Rule Breakers, these are classic Blue Ocean companies. We've already talked about NVIDIA with its GPUs.

How about Tesla, creating so much demand with electric cars that it has refashioned an entire industry? Have been fantastic stocks. They're ones so worthy of holding for a long time. These are Blue Ocean companies. Much for gratitude for blue skies and now blue ocean. Let's next go from ocean next to the moon. A blue moon is when you get a second full moon within the same calendar month. I think it's every 29.5 days the lunar cycle happens. The moon fully rotates around the Earth. Because our months are not 29.5 days, every one of them, but closer to an average of just over 30 days, what that means is every couple of years, we get a month with two full moons, and that second full moon, that's what we call a blue moon. Hence the saying, once in a blue moon, which we as humans, generally mean to denote something that happens very infrequently. But in the context of gratitude and here of investing in businesses, a blue moon opportunity can be seen as a rare and valuable chance that shouldn't be missed. It's those unexpected moments or market conditions that have seized upon can lead to significant achievements or breakthroughs. I'd say, at a personal level, dear listener, think of your once in a blue moon moments, the once you took up, even the once you maybe failed to take advantage of. A career leap that all of a sudden presented itself involved some risks, but maybe you took it. Once in a blue moon, maybe it's made all the difference.

Or in other contexts, how about that once in a lifetime travel adventure you got invited on? You said, "Yes." You climbed that mountain or you went across that ocean, and you've got the pictures to show it and stories for the rest of your life, a once in a blue moon opportunity. Let's be thankful for them, even if we didn't take up everyone, that they exist, and especially when we say yes is so worthy of our gratitude. Well, let me close my study in blue with the last blue, and that would be blue spaces. Blue spaces refer to the beneficial effects that bodies of water have on our mental and physical well being. Research suggests that being near in or around water can significantly boost your happiness, reduce your stress, improve your overall health. The color blue itself is often associated with calmness and serenity.

Blue spaces tap into design principles. They emphasize your connection and my connection with nature. Incorporating blue spaces into our lives, whether it's walks by the beach, living near water, or just simply choosing travel destinations that offer aquatic tranquility can be a profound source of rejuvenation and joy. There you have it. Blue skies, blue ocean, blue moons, blue spaces. Gratitude Number 3. Thank you, blue. On to gratitude Number 4, and this one is the flavor of the year. I have to express gratitude to artificial intelligence. I use ChatGPT every day. I know some of you do too, and there are many other forms of artificial intelligence. Before any of that, there was ways. I remember using ways 10 plus years ago.

Basically, artificial intelligence, where drivers report in what's happening on the roads at large and gives you a much better picture of where you should drive and navigate traffic than just a standard map or GPS. Ways as an early form of AI, has added immeasurable value to my driving life. Anyway, it's artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence takes many different forms, and I realize some of them are considered threatening. Often we hear things like, it's going to be the end of the human race, artificial intelligence.

By the way, I highly doubt that, and I'm incredibly grateful so far for artificial intelligences, but most specifically ChatGPT. Gratitude Number 4, ChatGPT, thank you for the birthday gift ideas. Thank you for proper pronunciations. Thank you, ChatGPT for helping me learn fun facts whenever I'm traveling. ChatGPT and artificial intelligences enhance all of my travel experiences. It's accelerated by thank you note writing this year, as well. Thank you, ChatGPT for another favorite use. Thank you for your efforts at punching holes in all of my most confident notions, in all of my new ideas, a phenomenal use, by the way.

Asking artificial intelligence to give you a little bit of pushback about your favorite ideas. By the way, ChatGPT, I also want to thank you for always answering in just seconds. It takes me seconds to come up with a bad dad joke. Thanks to ChatGPT, great gratitude to all of the artificial intelligences that are helping to inform our lives and improve our society. That's not all of them, but that's most of them. For most good people, that's their intent as they work on artificial intelligence. But for me, most particularly, the one I use almost every day, I highly recommend it to you as well. It's free, ChatGPT.

By the way, one new use because I developed a new episodic series for Rule Breaker Investing this year. Just did one last week. My second ChatGPT asks and David answers where I have it challenge our notions about Rule Breaker Investing. I had a lot of fun doing that podcast last week and we did one earlier in the year to kick off. There's yet another use of ChatGPT. Let's move on to gratitude Number 5. This one I shared a couple of years ago, and I felt moved again this year to express this gratitude again. I first had to articulate it at a high school reunion. The year was 1994.

My class was gathering back in Southboro, Massachusetts, where I graduated from St. Mark's School in 1984. In 1994, it was our 10th reunion. Nineteen ninenty-four, by the way, side note. Also the year the Motley Fool launched on America online. Anyway, the joy of our regathering as high school classmates, 10 years later, was bittersweet because early on that weekend's Saturday morning, we gathered at the chapel for a brief service in mourning of one of our brightest classmates, who had enrolled in the Naval Academy after graduation and who had died during a training flight in the Atlantic Ocean, North of Puerto Rico, having launched from but not ever returning to the USS John F Kennedy. I have been asked to say a few things at that chapel service, and I felt the weight of that without really knowing as a young man what to say.

These days, when needing to learn something, I could ask ChatGPT or maybe at least start by Googling. But in 1994, Google still wouldn't exist for four more years so I don't know how I started searching about for what to say, maybe Yahoo, but I lighted upon this. Part of what we lose when we lose someone, part of what hits us hardest is that we actually have just lost part of ourselves. The part of ourselves that blooms, blossoms, shows itself in only a certain way in the presence of that friend or dear family member. Now, by their death, that part of us has to go away. The part of me that is only with you is now gone. The part of me that is only with you is no more.

I felt this earlier this year, once again, when my wife lost her dad. I felt it at the funeral and then at a separate memorial service, and of course, a number of times since, I felt it for all of us, for each of us there that day, at the funeral to pay tributes because each was a certain version of themselves only in the presence of that man in the same way that you show different sides of yourself to your mother or father, different than you showed to your best friend from high school or your cousin or your favorite college prof, favorite because she saw something special in you. That version of you, that unique version of you with its own history of stories differentiated from all other sets of stories. That version of you melts away when someone you love is gone.

Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem, Spring and Fall to a Young Child begins by asking his addressee, presumably a young child named Margaret. "Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove on leaving?" It's fall, just like it is here, Autumn and the beautiful Goldengrove is dropping all its leaves, and perhaps this sensitive child cries at the sight, but as the poem bends to its brief end, the poet asserts, "It is the blight man was born for." It is Margaret you mourn for. George Saunders in his world beater of a book, "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain," says that, "There are many versions of you in you."

That puts me in mind of this same thought about loss, part of the loss, part of the mourning and part of the healing, very important parts too, are the recognition and acceptance that we have now lost something of ourselves that we will never regain. It is the blight man was born for. It is you yourself that in part you mourn for. During this season of fall in the northern hemisphere where the leaves are dropping and we reflect back upon the years it's been, including our losses, which have been many, I'm here to underline something to be thankful for here too, to be self aware about this, because though I've recounted a few stories of loss and reflection on what loss really includes, the part of me that is only with you is no more, I want to be the first to celebrate and underscore the part of me that is only with you because that's very much alive.

If you and I are both alive and worthy of gratitude for all those that we're connected with. Think of that joke from your school days that you can only truly appreciate with the person who is with you in those days. That spouse or partner or therapist who knows only this or that thing about you. That person that you can or choose only to share something with. That child who makes a hero of you, even if you don't feel heroic yourself that way that you show up that is only in that context. Those contexts, those connections, those relationships, which one day may cease when one of us does, those things are precious.

An awareness of that, perhaps, especially over the Thanksgiving table, next week, that acknowledgment and appreciation of those with whom you are connected, that that part of me that is only with you needs to be felt, seen, I would say acknowledged, if you like, thanked, appreciated for however long and however rich you can make it. That part of me that is only with you is gratitude Number 5. On to gratitude Number 6, this one's pretty straight up. It's frameworks. I'm grateful for frameworks. They've helped me so much in investing in business and in life. In early days of this podcast, I went over the Gartner Hype Cycle.

If you don't know what that phrase means, go ahead and google it, along with the phrase Rule Breaker Investing. Listen to that podcast and learn yourself a really helpful framework for thinking through Rule Breaker stocks. I think of Clayton Christensen's Fantastic Disruptive Innovation Paradigm. I think of my six traits of a Rule Breaker stock. I spoke to them a bit earlier with NVIDIA. Those traits have guided my investing decisions without changing the same traits since I first wrote Rule Breakers Rule Makers with my brother in 1998. I'm still using the exact same six traits that helped me pick well, NVIDIA in 2005. That's another framework. Or the 25 point risk rating framework that we practiced on a podcast earlier this year when we compared Kinsale stock to Chewy stock. We did that on a podcast earlier this year, introducing my 25 point risk rating framework, a way to put a risk rating on a stock, something that many people have a hard time doing.

Or how about Deborah Meier's Five Habits of Mind? I blasted that one out and blast from the past Volume 8 in January of this year, but that's a long standing, lovely framework. If you don't know what it is, you could at least google it, or you could listen to it on this podcast. Even just style boxing, what Morningstar has done for the mutual fund industry by looking at funds that focus on large cap companies versus small cap companies or more growth oriented companies or more value oriented companies. That's in Morningstar's parlance. I don't really use that myself, but that's a pretty effective matrix or I even just was reminded of one by my friend Victor Cho, the former CEO of Evite a few weeks ago at Conscious Capitalism. He was talking about the Eisenhower Matrix. Some of you will know this, but if not, this one's simple, picture two axes, like a plus sign. One of them at the top is important and at the bottom is not important. Then the sideways intersecting axis is on the one side, urgent and on the other side not urgent. You've got a box that's important and urgent. The opposite would be important, not urgent. Then the other two, as well. So there's a framework you can use. My friend Victor, I thought this is a pretty great line. He said, "You know, my goal in life is to go from one day to the next and not allow anything in that box," and he's pointing at the box that says Urgent/Important.

The goal, as Victor is conveying, is never to allow something that is important in his life to become urgent. It's very admirable. I'm sure he does pretty well at it. There's a framework you can use. I am thanking gratitude Number 6, the frameworks. There's an old line, sometimes you'll see it on a T-shirt, maybe on a bumper sticker. "Whoever dies with the most toys wins." I'm pretty sure most of the time, people are joking when they put that on their T-shirt or their car, but more seriously, I would say, whichever investor fills up his or her toolbox with the most frameworks and knows the right time to apply the right framework, that investor wins. By the way, it's not just one person. It's not a zero sum game.

We can all win at this. In fact, you will win more and more as an investor, if you turn this gratitude Number 6, frameworks into an action plan. Keep filling up your toolbox with more good frameworks. Gratitude Number 6. My final one this year, gratitude Number 7. I don't do this every year, but I certainly will when the S&P 500 is up 20% or more in any given year, and as of this recording, it's up 25.1% in 2024, so I want to thank the stock market and why we invest. I want to start by saying that we can even invest. That is worthy of our gratitude. For many of us, hearing me right now, we were born into a society that we're in danger of taking sometimes too much for granted. It's hard to appreciate all of the things that have privileged us. That we've inherited, in some cases, or just naturally been surrounded by or fallen into through serendipity. Let's go back deeply into history. One of those things is that we have currency that lets us [laughs] store up value. My good friend Wikipedia reminds us that originally currency was a form of receipt representing grain stored in temple granaries in Summer in ancient Mesopotamia and in ancient Egypt. They eventually realized that coinage would be easier than grain.

Anyway, yeah, thank you, currency, and thank you banks, which enable us most of us, though not everyone in the world today, most of us to protect our savings, guard it. Know that it will be there for us from one day to the next. Thank you, banks. Then, actually, through the stock market, we can translate our savings into part ownership of companies whose products and services and work in this world, we admire. Companies you can take pride in that you can actually become a part owner of through the small miracle of the stock market that we too often may take for granted, that's pretty great. Even better because it does get even better is if you've invested well in the stock market and you give time to happen. Good stocks grow in value over time. NVIDIA, good news for you with you and me doing very little. I've done very little to power the stocks that have powered my life and the lives of many of you who listen to this podcast, follow the Motley Fool over the years. I've done very little in the grander scheme to help Amazon or Intuitive Surgical or MercadoLibre, each of those is 100 bagger plus for me, but they've done so very much to empower my life and many, many others toward financial freedom. I've done so little in return, so thank you stock market that you are even there.

Also, thanks for being reliable. You're quite predictable over the long term stock market, even though you can be flighty in the short. Your reliability is squarely behind my enviable record as a market timer, who is right 66.6% of the time. That's my record, and yes, sir, ladies, gents, and Fools, once again, this time last year, I made this market call. I said, "I think the market in 2024 is going up." Boy, did it? Guess what? I think the market is going up next year too. Well, I said [laughs] at the start of this last gratitude, gratitude Number 7, that it's for the stock market, which I've just spoken to, but also my gratitude is to why we invest. Why we invest. That's another thing I'm extremely grateful for, not just the market itself, but why.

In closing, I want to share with you a brief essay which I've turned into an audio essay that recurs only once a year on this podcast right around now, as well as a poem that was inspired by it to close this way, once again, my Annual Gratitude Podcast. This is an essay I first wrote in Motley Fool Stock Advisor in 2010. I should mention, by the way, shortly after I'd written that on our discussion boards at fool.com, one of our members who went under the screen name Captain Haiku, which I later understood to be two young women who are sisters, composed a brief poem on the Motley Fool message boards in response. I'm going to share both my audio essay but also their poem to close. Here we go. Gratitude Number 7, closing it out with why we Invest.

My favorite episode of my favorite miniseries Band of Brothers is entitled, Why We Fight. Without wishing to spoil the story for those who haven't yet seen it, I won't give away the answer to the question, but the episode is a beautiful, sad and gripping piece of Hollywood poetry, and the phrase, why we fight has since stuck with me, and it's morphed into my own phrase, why we invest. Let's peel every layer of the onion away at the start. At the root of the fruit is this simple reality. We work hard in this world to build up savings. That savings we call capital. Our capital represents the sum total of our lives efforts expressed monetarily above and beyond what we've spent. When we invest, we're doing something very wonderful and very difficult. We're forfeiting the enjoyment of the use of that money in the near term. All our instincts and temptations, many of our peers, perhaps even a spouse, urge us sometimes directly or subtly by association against saving. Spend it now, reads or sings or shouts, anyone of thousands of messages, confronting the typical adult every day, but investors take at least some of their capital and do the exact opposite. We forego the instant gratification that on its own is admirable, but we go on further. We investors, we crazy investors, forfeit the enjoyable, immediate use of our capital for no certain reward.

As stock market investors in particular, we invest willingly knowing that our unspent and unenjoyed capital may actually, at least partly disappear. If there's a better reason for calling ourselves Fools, I don't know that the world will ever find it. In particular, practicing my own unique style of Rule Breaker Investing, seeking to maximize my returns, I flat out know that I will lose money on many occasions. If you throw in the academic studies that say investing in individual stocks isn't worthwhile because you can't reliably beat the indices. Well, now you can see why do it yourself investing is a niche. It's a niche. We've been helping to grow at The Motley Fool, but it's still a niche.

Here's why we invest for our children and grandchildren, because our parents and grandparents did and made our lives so much better, because every dollar we invest helps support the companies and businesses we admire and buy from, because we love and celebrate ownership and believe this world will be far stronger for more owners, not more renters, because the academics are wrong, because with Arthur O'Shaughnessy and his Ode, we are the music makers, and we're the dreamers of dreams, and investing is our instrument, and making dreams come true, is even more a Motley Fool thing than Disney.

I think a very real Motley Fool and 100 other reasons besides these are all in part or in whole why we invest. Keep at it, dear Fool. Now, before I close with Captain Haiku's response, I want to remind you, next week is our Rule Breaker Investing Mailbag, so give me a gift. Will you drop me a thought, story, question, poem of your own. All are welcome. We'll record next week's Mailbag probably on Mondays, so please get me a note now or over the weekend.

Our email address is rbi@fool.com. Now to close. Captain Haiku's response described by two foolish sisters in a short sequence of Haiku's that speaks so well to why we invest. It goes like this, "Sorry, can't truncate. Each word has import and heart. Not selfish, we build. Many years gone by, hard work, hard times, good times too, Haiku needs little. Why do we invest? So that our hard work endures beyond our short years, so that our children start their journeys on a hill and see the mountain. We build battlements that endure, shelter others from the worst of storms, we launch sturdy ships. We will not see the far shore but have no regrets. We are a small part of all we set in motion, and thus we invest.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. David Gardner has positions in Amazon, Intuitive Surgical, MercadoLibre, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Chewy, Intuitive Surgical, Kinsale Capital Group, MercadoLibre, Meta Platforms, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends Gartner. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.