What You’ve Done to Create Financial Freedom, Vol. 4

Each Independence Week, Rule Breaker Investing asks a simple question: What have you done over the past year to create financial freedom—for yourself or for others? This year’s answers feature a listener’s Declaration of Financial Independence and a young woman whose very first stock purchase turned out to be… Nvidia. Along the way, we revisit three favorite moments from the first three years of this annual tradition, discovering that the path toward financial freedom may be simpler than it first appears: Believe. Persist. Pass it on. Happy Independence Week—and may financial freedom continue to echo like a Liberty Bell.Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart ShannonCompanies Mentioned: NVDA, SCHW Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month’s Mailbag ranges 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 actually for. Along the way, fellow Fools write in about transparency, curiosity, market caps, parenting, AI, adding to winning investments, and what can happen when decades of patient investing quietly compound into opportunities to help others. As always, the best part of the Mailbag is you.Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart ShannonCompanies Mentioned: HAS, ISRG, JEPI, KO, MAT, MSCI, NKE, NVDA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Market Cap Game Show returns for its 42nd installment, with longtime Motley Fool personalities Charly Travers and Jason Moser battling for a coveted spot in next March’s Market Cap Madness Final Four.But this episode marks something new. For the first time, players can invoke the King-Sharon Rule, adding an extra layer of strategy, risk, and reward to the game. Agree or disagree is no longer the only choice. Feeling confident? Call “higher” or “lower” and put an extra half-point on the line.Ten stocks. Two seasoned competitors. One brand-new rule. And for reasons that only became apparent while recording, an unusually heavy concentration of food, cars, food delivered by car, food consumed after getting out of a car, car parts, collector cars, and at least one company that makes spices for the food. Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Companies Mentioned: DASH, GPC, HGTY, MKC, MTN, OC, RACE, SYY, TDG, TEAM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the twelfth time, we gather around the campfire for one of RBI’s favorite traditions: Stock Stories. Five Fools. Five investing lessons. This summer’s tales share a surprising common thread: A biotech shell company that refused to die. An old gift of IBM stock quietly compounding for decades. A Fool who finally bought Alphabet nearly twenty years after he first meant to. A company called Life360 proving that “obvious” doesn’t mean “fully valued.” And a producer awakening to stock-market investing in his 50s.The lesson? You may think you missed it. You probably didn’t.Pull up a chair, grab a marshmallow, and join us around the campfire. Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Companies Mentioned: GOOGL, IBM, LIF, UBER (and some random CUSIP#!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do some organizations seem unable to solve the very problems they were created to fix? Why do seemingly rational people end up chasing the wrong goals? And why does one innocent purchase so often lead to five more? In this new volume of RBI’s recurring cerebral series, David explores a handful of memorable laws and principles that help explain how people, businesses, markets, and institutions actually behave… from the sublime to the silly. Some are famous. One is his own. All are useful. Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when Nvidia’s annual dividend suddenly exceeds David’s original Motley Fool cost basis—six times over? This month’s Mailbag brings back a Foolish old term, “divvy-pop,” while also revisiting the power of doing less, holding more, and letting great companies keep surprising you.Also inside: a Buffett-meets-Rule-Breaker reflection from British Columbia, a jellybean contest gone mathematically sideways, a GameStop question that runs straight into the Snap Test, and a closing shout-out to Mr. Ernst’s personal finance class at Kopachuck Middle School in Gig Harbor, Washington—where the next generation is already learning that investing means ownership. Companies Mentioned: AAPL, AMZN, ANET, BIDU, BN, BRK.A, BRK.B, CHWY, EBAY, ⁠FFH.TO⁠, GME, GOOG, ISRG, MELI, META, NFLX, NVDA, SHOP, TMFC, TSLAHost: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To mark his 60th birthday, David delivers what may be the most distilled episode in Rule Breaker Investing history: 20 thoughts about investing, 20 about business, and 20 about life—gathered from decades of entrepreneurship, stock-picking, reading, losing, winning, and trying to stay Foolish along the way. From the “Ship of Fools” and the spiffy-pop, to optionality, fads that weren’t fads, the hardest thing in life, divergence and convergence, and why the longer Frank Lloyd Wright lived, the more beautiful life became… this is a fast-moving collection of convictions, stories, quotes, and life-earned observations designed to stick with you long after the episode ends.A milestone birthday. A landmark episode. [And yes: somehow, he fit 60 thoughts within 60 minutes.] Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Companies Mentioned: ABNB, AMZN, CROX, GOOG, LUV, NFLX, SBUX, TSLA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once a year, around David’s birthday, listeners send in notes sharing what they’ve learned from this podcast over the years—about investing, business, and life. This year’s volume includes reflections on “dips wait for dips,” learning to appreciate mistakes instead of fearing them, the surprising power of simply doing nothing during market volatility, and why optimism itself may be one of the great competitive advantages in life.Along the way: a physician assistant on the front lines of COVID, a renowned cancer surgeon who juggles, a Foolish Leprechaun who finally stopped trading and started investing, and a Scotsman reminding us all to look for L’Optimisme in the world.Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when you actually do the thing most investors only talk about… and hold stocks for a full decade? This week, David welcomes The Motley Fool’s Tim Beyers and together they go back exactly 10 years—to the week—to revisit five companies picked in May 2016, scoring how they really did and, more importantly, asking why. From biotech to big data to media to real estate, this episode is about both the scoreboard and the lessons only time can teach. If you’ve ever wondered what a true 10-year mindset looks like—voilà. Host: David GardnerGuest: Tim BeyersProducer: Kristi Waterworth Companies Mentioned: CELG, DIS, MNDY, SPLK, TWTR, Z Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From buying in thirds instead of waiting for dips, to a dishwasher hack that still requires the humans to remember the hack, to one listener’s beautifully rebalanced “harbor-and-horizon” portfolio, this month’s mailbag is as motley as ever. Along the way, David cleans up a long-used reference to Heisenberg vs. Hawthorne, hears how Magical Athlete has become a family hit, and considers a pair of listener suggestions that may permanently improve the Market Cap Game Show. Companies Mentioned: ADBE, DUOL, HUBS, INTU, ISRG, MELI, NBIS, NVDA, RKLB, TSMHost: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices