Update: 
Investment advisory business The Motley Fool has today announced it will no longer attempt to educate its members and readers against the perils of baseless stock market speculation, and will instead seek to capitalise from the growing trend. Also, and related, it sees a growing opportunity in electronics retailing, and will diversify its business by entering this exciting sector.
Formed in the US in 1993, and doing business in the UK since 1997, The Motley Fool has long considered itself a safe-haven from stock market speculation, instead priding itself on educating investors to help them find market-beating stocks and develop a long-term investing mindset.
Unfortunately, the recent speculative mania around GameStop (and the subreddit, Wall Street Bets) has convinced the company that the effort has come to naught. So, in a move described by Motley Fool spokesperson Flora Pilo as ‘necessary’, the company will now seek to cash in on the investor and consumer interest in two main ways.
LAUNCHES NEW RETAIL OFFERING
On the heels of renewed interest in US business GameStop, The Motley Fool is today announcing it will be entering the exciting electronics retail sector in the UK. The new stores, branded FoolStop, will sell gaming consoles, games and recorded entertainment.
After an extensive ideation process, the new logo will be: .
(The ‘full stop’ punctuation mark. Geddit… FoolStop / full stop!)
Pilo said, “We are also excited to have signed a deal with Atari to launch Pong 2 on the Atari 2600, exclusively at FoolStop”. In addition, FoolStop will stock the largest range of audio cassette tapes and players in the country and will dedicate space in each store to laserdisc movies.
In choosing the name, The Motley Fool wanted a brand that incorporated both the company’s heritage and the renewed investor interest in the suffix ‘—Stop’, and is hoping to capitalise on that interest by listing on the LSE in exactly 12 months time. Indications from investment bankers are that adding ‘Stop’ should increase interest from retail shareholders by around 1000-fold, and could see the company valued at upwards of $1.4 billion.
In the never-ending quest for search-engine relevance, the logo — . — should also drive a spike in traffic, as people accidentally put full-stops into their search engines, or their cats walk over their keyboards. It is early days, but that could as much as double the brand value, and The Motley Fool is actively engaging with domain squatters to see if a trade sale of the business may deliver even more value, for search engine traffic, alone.
Lastly, The Motley Fool has submitted an application to trademark the full-stop and will be collecting royalties on its use. Please note that if the application is successful, the royalties will be back-dated to today, and we have deals in place with the major software companies to track usage and invoice customers.
Our lawyers suggest that you commence using alternative punctuation immediately. (And please note that the ellipsis “…” will be charged as three full-stops.)
We apologise for any inconvenience.
The Motley Fool will be crowdsourcing equity to fund the new business.
Offers (and acceptances) will only be made via Reddit and Twitter, where experience shows users are more ‘risk tolerant’ and prepared to ‘invest’ for reasons other than economic return.
Targeting inexperienced or easily influenced investors on Reddit may be fortuitous in the very, very, very unlikely event that FoolStop isn’t admitted into the FTSE 100 in the first three months of existence as a public company (or, goes broke). But, you’ve gotta take a punt, sometimes.
HOW ARE YOU DOING, FELLOW KIDS?
Separately, but related, it is also important that we ‘get with the times’, so henceforth, we’ll be accepting (and preferring) the alternative spelling ‘stonks’, which the cool kids use to show they’re one of the in-crowd.
We don’t really know what ‘stonks’ is actually supposed to mean, but we assume it means the user is sufficiently cool, cynical and snarky — perfect for Twitter!
We know these changes seem sudden.
But there’s only so long we can continue trying to be the voice of sanity, before just giving up and joining the rush.
Stonks, baby!
FoolStop, ftw!
#YOLO