I Was Young and Foolish Then . . .
Once upon a time, as I was trying to figure out the whole being-a-grownup thing, I spent a fair amount of time reading about investing and the financial markets. I particularly enjoyed the message boards at the Motley Fool website, which were a very interesting mix. The Amazon forum in particular was a fascinating conversation between bears and bulls, but I eventually stoppped reading the forums and the site as they went to a subscription model – I wasn’t sure I was really cut out to be doing a lot of heavy duty investing, so there wasn’t enough value in the site for me to pay for it. (If you were to go there and read the archives, you’d see me expressing skepticism a lot of the time, but then sometimes getting caught up in the same euphoria that drove the tech stock bubble. It’s one of those humbling things I like to remind myself of from time to time.)
At any rate, I bring this story up because one of my all time favorite posters at the Fool was RJ Mason, who had a tremendous ability to blend analysis, clear writing, and humor. And as I was checking out my WordPress dashboard yesterday, I discovered a link from a site I didn’t recognize, which turns out to be RJ’s blog. These days RJ’s a roboticist, but he still has time to put the occasional witty cartoon and/or comment on his blog or his website. So go take a look.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.
Wednesday, February 21st 2007 at 1:13 am |
Well, uh, thanks for the link. How’s that for backscratchy?
The majority of my favorite posters are gone from the Fool now, and I don’t post much myself any more, but I do still check in to read a couple of my favorites that are left.
Wednesday, February 21st 2007 at 1:29 am |
Let it be said that the Motley Fool still has about the best message board setup I’ve seen. Odd that it hasn’t been more copied.
Tuesday, February 27th 2007 at 2:08 am |
You’re more than welcome, and welcome to Not News.
I still get the occasional Hot Topic e-mail from the Fool, but at this point I haven’t looked at the site in years. I don’t even know what their current emphasis or approach is.
What was it about the Fool boards you liked? I’m even having trouble remembering much about the setup there, except that it was relatively easy to find posts by particular people. Which is no small feat given the number of forums they ran.