5 Supernova Stocks That Have Flown Under the Radar

Recently on the Rule Breakers Investing podcast, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner reviewed the performance of two sets of his buy-and-hold stock picks: one set with a five-year horizon, and one that he recommended we hold for a year. Now, he offers up a new handful of recommendations, and the theme that came to his mind was Motley Fool Explorer, which is one of the premium services that competitively cherry-picks stocks from the Supernova universe.

David is offering five hidden gems from 210 Foolish recommendations -- long-term market beaters that have never been part of a real-money mission (he'll explain what that means), that have market caps below $10 billion, and that have brand names most people won't recognize. And he thinks you should hold them for the next three years or more.

A full transcript follows the video.

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*Stock Advisor returns as of November 6, 2017The author(s) may have a position in any stocks mentioned.

This video was recorded on Sept. 13, 2017.

David Gardner: Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. What a delight it is to have you with me this week. Happy September!

Last week on this show I had a lot of fun reviewing two different sets of five-stock samplers that I had selected in past shows; one a year ago [and] the other [from] picks made two years ago this month. If you didn't get a chance to listen, I highly encourage you to take a little time to see how those stock picks have done and what we've learned from them.

And I mentioned at the end of last week's podcast that every 10 episodes of Rule Breaker Investing, or so, I pick some new stocks, and I said we'd be doing that this week and indeed that is what we are doing this week. So five new stock picks is the main focus of this week's show.

Before I get into that, I want to put out a plug for another financial podcast because I had the pleasure of joining Patrick O'Shaughnessy on his podcast Invest Like the Best. I was at the beautiful New York City apartment from where he did that podcast last week. I met him for the first time. We had a great time together.

We had a great time together; at least great enough that he was willing to make that podcast last over an hour and 15 minutes. So if you want to hear me talk even more than I usually talk in this podcast, let me just say I highly recommend the conversation. Patrick had actually read at least some of the book that we were talking about, The Motley Fool Investment Guide which is far more than most interviewers do these days, or that I would expect.

He came in really well prepared [with] very thoughtful questions. Such a likable guy from a very fine family, the O'Shaughnessy family. His dad, Jim O'Shaughnessy, [is] the author of the book What Works on Wall Street. They have a wonderful business themselves. It was just a delight to join in and talk about all manner of things -- I would say investing, business, and life -- with Patrick O'Shaughnessy on his podcast this week called Invest Like the Best. It's now out. You can listen. I hope you will.

And I guess I would be remiss if I didn't mention, again, Book.Fool.com. Yes, The Motley Fool Investment Guide has been updated and revised for 2017 going forward. Very excited about that. Two podcasts ago on Rule Breaker Investing I dedicated to the book, so I hope you got a chance to hear that. But if not, regardless of whether you heard that or not, I highly encourage you to go to Book.Fool.com. Buy a copy for friends and family if you already have one yourself.

We really appreciate you spreading the word and the knowledge about Foolish investing, and I think the right way to approach not just the markets but how about your life ... your life in finance ... by having the right temperament and taking the best actions that you can. Certainly there's a lot of Rule Breaker laced in there but it's broader, The Motley Fool Investment Guide, than just what I do on this podcast. So Book.Fool.com.

So what's a good theme for our five stocks this time around? Well, I thought about it and I thought about Motley Fool Explorer. Now this is one of the premium services we have, here, at The Motley Fool. It's connected in with my group of services [Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers], which are kind of our starter services. Lower priced.

And if you step it up one, in terms of the service that we deliver, you hit Motley Fool Explorer, where each month we pick a new stock, we add it to our Explorer real money holdings, and you as members [I trust some of you are members of Motley Fool Explorer] you'll know that you're encouraged to buy along with us.

And each month we kind of mix it up with different themes and trends -- areas that we think we should explore -- and look at the Supernova universe [200-plus stocks that I have under recommendation] and [decide] which four we want to focus on].

And then the fun of Motley Fool Explorer [if you're a basketball fan you know college basketball], it's kind of like the Final Four. We bracket them up against each other and a talented group of stock pickers here at The Motley Fool vote, and ultimately we pick one of those four as the one that we'll all buy into.

So that's what's happening this month and every month, and this month's Motley Fool Explorer is focused on some of what I might call the "hidden gems" within the Supernova universe. This is not to be confused with the Motley Fool Hidden Gems service, which is a wonderful small-cap service that I know many of you know of. I mean some of the lesser-known companies [that are] within Motley Fool Supernova or Motley Fool Explorer that I talk about from week to week on this podcast. What are some of the lesser-known ones that we like?

And so I gave a list of 10 stocks to Simon Erickson, who is our lead advisor in Motley Fool Explorer, because we were going to do this one together. He said, "David, what are 10 that you like within this group of 200 companies? What are 10 that we could highlight?" I gave him 10, and then his job [and he did it well] was to pick four of those to focus Motley Fool Explorer on. So again, if you're an Explorer member this month, you know what those four are.

I'm doing something different in this week's podcast. I'm going to do the same thing but with the six that Simon didn't select. So again, four of our favorite companies are being battled out against each other in a Battle Royale this month in Motley Fool Explorer of these kinds of companies -- the hidden gems -- of the Supernova universe. The six that Simon left on the plate I'm bringing five of those to you today. So these are all companies that meet a few key traits, and here they are.

The first one is that they haven't ever been picked in any Motley Fool Supernova mission. So if you know about Supernova, we have a lot of real money portfolios. We call them missions to stick with our space theming. But if a stock has never been picked in one of those real-money missions, then it was among the 10 that I handed to Simon and it is true of all five of the ones I'm presenting to you today.

In fact, just to provide some context, here, we have about 210 companies in the Supernova universe. [These are] 210 companies that I have actively recommended that I do actively recommend today. This is the universe from which I do all of my work and it represents the sum total of all my picks in Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers over the years, the ones that are still active. So about 210 today which is a big, healthy, robust number.

It's not going to grow that much more. The list is large enough and has enough tenure that these days when I pick [three new stocks] -- which I do every month [two in Rule Breakers and one in Stock Advisor] -- well, from 10 years ago there will be a pick that we still hold. Maybe it gets bought out by somebody else. While we roll some new ones on some old ones come off, and so it's a fairly steady state around 200 companies going forward.

So among those 210, a quick quiz for you. How many have never been picked by any Motley Fool Supernova real money mission? And the answer is of the 210 companies that are presently under active recommendation by me today, 130 have never yet been picked for a real money mission. So a big group of stocks I love to explore within.

The second trait is that they have to have a market cap below $10 billion, and that, by the way, is true of 91 of the 210 companies in the Supernova universe. So a minority of them, but about half, are below $10 billion in terms of the value of the companies themselves. Their market capitalizations.

And the reason we're looking for some of these smaller ones is because if you're going to look among hidden gems and smaller caps, you want to be looking at companies that aren't Facebook, or Alphabet, or Amazon, or the list goes on of the regular culprits I talk about on this podcast. Long-term holdings for many of us who are listening to this show today. So I wanted to find companies that are lesser-known, smaller companies, so that was trait No. 2.

The third trait is that the companies need to have a brand name that most people will not recognize. I'll give an example of a company that passes the first two traits but fails this third one. How about The New York Times Company? The New York Times Company has not yet been picked for any Supernova missions. It is below $10 billion of value [it's much closer to $1 billion than to $10 billion], but it's The New York Times Company. Lots of people know that brand name so it doesn't really fit in with what we're doing on this week's podcast.

And the fourth trait -- and of five traits, by the way, because we're working toward a list of five, here -- is that these need to be long-term market beaters over the last three-plus years. I wanted to focus on companies that are ahead in the market. So we're going to be talking about companies that have already won, and yet the reason I'm picking them this week for you for the next three-plus years forward [because that's my focus], is because I like them going forward.

What's past is past. That doesn't matter much anymore. If you're going to buy one of these stocks in this upcoming month all that matters to you, and really all that matters to me, is how they do going forward. With all that said my experience [is] contrary to the financial disclaimer you hear all the time; that being past performance is no guarantee of future results. As I've often said as a Rule Breaker, actually to me past performance is one of the very best indicators we have of likely future results. It doesn't work everytime, but it's a pretty good guide, so I like to look among winners to pick the next winners.

The fifth and final attribute, here, is that I handed Simon a list of stocks, all of which I have some particular affinity or affection for. So there's some extra sauce, here, among these companies where I like these companies and what they do.

So without further ado, let's get started on our five-stock list. I randomized, because this is something I do. In fact, one of my favorite, most-used apps on my iPhone is a dice-rolling app that enables me to randomize all the time, which I do throughout my day to make all kinds of decisions.

I've done this for years. It actually works. Maybe I'll talk about that on some other podcast if anyone has interest, but I randomized and decided today that we will do these in reverse alphabetical order. Typically I present stocks in alphabetical order; but sometimes I like to roll a die and see if we should reverse it and we're doing that this week just to mix things up a little bit. Let's start with the letter U.

"Hidden Gem" No. 1: The first company is Ultimate Software Group (NASDAQ: ULTI). The ticker symbol is ULTI. The company's market capitalization is $6 billion and the risk rating of this stock [I believe this is the lowest of the five I'm presenting this week] is eight.

Now risk ratings -- I'm not going to digress too much from the main focus. I can sometimes get off track when I get excited talking about things that I love. I love risk ratings. I love what we've created at The Motley Fool. For Rule Breakers and Stock Advisor we put a number from 0 to 25 on every stock estimating what we perceive to be the risk of holding that stock, and the higher the number, the higher the risk. Pretty intuitive. So if it's a big number, big risk. Lower number, low risk. This is an eight. Ultimate Software Group is an eight.

By the way, I've done a full series on risk ratings. Just page back a few pages on iTunes or Spotify, or however you listen to this podcast [Podcasts.Fool.com] and you'll see my series on risk ratings where I go through the whole system over the course of three episodes. I highly recommend them. Anyway, a risk rating of eight.

So what does Ultimate Software Group do? Well, the buzzwords here [and these are buzzwords] are cloud-based. That's a good buzzword. I think you know what that is. That means that all of the data is being stored somewhere up in the sky. Well, that's what we tend to think when we actually hear the word cloud, but it turns out it's very much more terrestrial than that. But the point is the data is protected because it's not in any one central place. It's in the cloud.

And the data that this company helps companies manage is their human capital management. So that's HCM, another buzzword for you. This company basically enables companies to keep track of all the HR-related tasks traditionally that they've done but in a more efficient, sometimes automated way using the cloud.

Ultimate Software Group's tag line... I'm going to try to provide this for each of these five companies because I love looking at corporate tag lines and brands. They're trying to tell you something about themselves. You can decide whether you agree or not, but at least they're putting out there what they think they're about. This company's tag line is "People First." And as you'll hear about shortly, I think that they're living up to that.

Anyway, a little history for this stock. I picked it in Motley Fool Rule Breakers on May 23, 2012. Here we are, now, five years later. I picked it that day at $81.16. Today it's at $190.87. A wonderful performer. It's up 135% over these five years with the market having done pretty awesome, too, at 112%. So this stock is 23% ahead of the market, which is maybe fewer than you would have thought given that it's more than two-bagged over the last five years, but it's been a strong stock market, overall.

So for each of my five companies, I'm just going to mention briefly a few traits that I like or appreciate about this company and why I like it as a stock. For Ultimate Software, I really like the recurring revenue business here. This is basically a subscription business. Companies pay them on a recurring basis to keep track of its data and to use the UltiPro platform which is what Ultimate Software calls its platform.

So recurring revenue. Very high renewals. Companies like it just like you. Do you like your Netflix? I do. Do you think hard about having that $7-10 charge roll over from one month to the next? No, you don't. You're probably happy for just to keep rolling. And that's the way it works, often, for good subscription services. We try to provide some of those at The Motley Fool, as well, so I know this business model pretty well. I like the recurring revenue with high renewals. They have very high renewal rates among their customers from one year to the next.

A second thing that I appreciate about Ultimate Software is people love to work at this company. Their tag line "People First" is true of their employees, I think, based on the rave reviews they get on Glassdoor. This is a consciously capitalistic enterprise. They're thinking about all their stakeholders trying to create wins.

And indeed [they] clearly are creating wins because the third and final trait I'll mention is just the growth that this company has exhibited. Earlier this year Forbes put them on the Fast Tech 25 list. That's the 25 fastest-growing public tech companies for 2017. There are two measures that Forbes looks at. The first is the past three years of sales growth. It's very strong. But also the three-to-five forward years of projected earnings. So Ultimate Software is the type of company that makes that group. We're very happy to have more than a double for this stock so far in Rule Breakers. I like it today, which is why I'm presenting it to you. Right now, going forward, Ultimate Software.

"Hidden Gem" No. 2: Let's go to the letter "O." The ticker symbol is OA. I bet you can't guess what that one is. That's part of the point. Most people don't recognize the names of these companies or what they're doing. OA stands for Orbital ATK (NYSE: OA).

Orbital ATK began, for me anyway, as Orbital Sciences, a stock that I recommended in Motley Fool Rule Breakers in August 2007. It was at $43 a share then. Today it's at $108, so a very strong performer. It's up 150%. The market, by the way, up 120%, so it's 32% ahead of the market over those 10 years that we've now held Orbital Sciences.

But just a couple of years ago the company merged. It merged with Alliant Techsystems, a company in Northern Virginia. Actually, they're both kind of near each other here in the Greater D.C. area. And Orbital ATK is the traditional aerospace and defense company, but with a lot of focus [think about the word orbital] on the aerospace part of aerospace and defense. The company operates space launch vehicles. Satellites. It does some missile defense systems. It's a pretty broadly diversified, but smaller aerospace company.

Their tag line, as best I could figure it out on their website, is "The Partner You Can Count On," which kind of makes sense. When you're partnering with them to hang an extremely expensive satellite somewhere up there above planet Earth, you need a dependable partner. Orbital certainly has had its failures on the launch pad, as have other peers, and that will always be part of this business over the years.

But what are a few traits that I value in Orbital? Well, first of all I just like space, and there's a lot of emphasis these days on Elon Musk. Many of you will know that in addition to Tesla and SolarCity [which is now part of Tesla] he also oversees SpaceX. [He] has a lot of passion for space flight.

Of course, Mars. Much has been made of Elon Musk's dream, he says, of one day hoping to die, when he does die, not on Earth but on Mars. A very space-focused person. A lot of people love space. I love space, too. I bet you might love space. And we can't buy shares of SpaceX today [as] it's a private company, but if you want to get involved in this business [we've been involved with this stock for 10 years, now, and we've beaten the market with it], think about OA, Orbital ATK.

I also want to point out the company has a very robust balance when you look at its revenue diversity. There are three divisions of this company: flight systems, defense systems, and space systems; and each of them is between $300-400 million. In other words, a very well balanced business.

One other thing I'll point out. I love companies with backlogs. That means they've already been contracted to deliver products or services in years ahead. This company, today, has a backlog of $15 billion. That is very strong for a company whose market cap is only $6 billion. So yes, I like Orbital ATK. I hope you do, too.

"Hidden Gem" No. 3: Stock No. 3 is NuVasive (NASDAQ: NUVA). The ticker symbol is NUVA. I have my word of the week for you. A lot of you will know if you've listened to me for a while, that I love words. I am a writer, I guess, first and foremost. Actually a writer first and foremost, a gamer second, a stock picker third. So I love language and here's the word of the week. Raise your hand -- don't if you're driving -- raise your hand if you know what "camel case" is. Well, looking in the studio I've got one of two hands raised.

Camel case is just a great word. A lot of us know lower case and we know upper case when we're talking about fonts or writing letters. Lower case letters. Upper case letters. Camel case [describes] a word [that includes], somewhere in that word, a capital letter. Here's a common one. Rick Engdahl, my producer, quickly supplied me with this. Thank you Kelsey Ryan with the assist. iPhone. Capital P. iPad. Those are camel case. There's upper case, lower case.

Now you know what to call this increasing number of words and this company's name is one of them -- NuVasive. Now you know that it's camel case in every case. So NuVasive puts a capital V in the middle of its name. The company's market cap is $3 billion. The risk rating for this stock is 12.

So NuVasive is a surgical treatment for spinal disorders company. It has its own platform for surgeons to use. The name of that platform is Maximum Access Surgery. They like to make it an acronym MAS. But the company has distinguished itself as a purveyor of a platform that focuses on fixing your spine for surgeons, but coming in at the side of your body as opposed to from behind. That lateral approach is very distinctive for this minimally invasive platform.

What is the company's tag line? Well, it's "Growing at the Speed of Innovation," as best I can make it out. I'm not sure they're that focused with consumer tag lines or commercials, but I saw that in one place on their website.

So NuVasive is a stock I selected in March 2014, and it was at $37. Today it's at $60 so it's been a really wonderful three-and-a-half years. Up 61% with the market up 45%. I will say that I rerecommended it last summer at $57.79 on June 22 of last year, and while it is up a few percentage points, the market is up substantially more and so my second recommendation, my rerecommendation, is actually behind the market.

And that keys into one of the reasons I like this stock right now for the next three-plus years. That's that NuVasive has dropped from about $80 to about $60 in just the last two months. And while the stock market can radically reprice things, if you actually look at business performance you never see these kind of radical ups and downs. So what I see is strong performance from a long-term player that's still a small company in this field, and the stock market having rapidly repriced them 25% lower in just the last two months.

But this is a medical device company. I like companies that make medical devices. They usually receive easier FDA clearance and they're profitable companies. They're often a little bit quieter or sleepier. Have you ever heard of NuVasive before we had this podcast? I'm guessing for many you've not. I also like companies with platforms -- companies like Intuitive Surgical with its da Vinci platform. I love it when companies bring in their own platform. So there it is -- NuVasive -- another stock I like for the next three-plus years.

"Hidden Gem" No. 4: Stock No. 4 as we climb up the alphabet. And for this next one, well, if you'd heard of NuVasive, good for you. I think you're in the minority. I would describe you as in the extreme minority if you've heard of this "L" company. The ticker symbol is LFUS. The name of this company is Littelfuse (NASDAQ: LFUS). L-I-T-T-E-L-F-U-S-E. The market cap for Littelfuse is $4 billion, so it's actually larger than NuVasive, which I just described, but smaller than Orbital ATK and Ultimate Software that are at $6 billion.

This company is, again, $4 billion. Chicago, Illinois based. Littelfuse has a risk rating of nine, so a pretty reasonable, safer, smaller company. Why are they a safer, smaller company? Well, they're the worldwide leader in circuit protection. And this is not something that you necessarily pound your chest about or get on the cover of Fortune magazine for being but, yes, electronic switches as well as automotive sensors. Basically they have a ton of components.

One of the things that I like about this company is its history. It was started in 1927, so it's 90 years old. I really love companies that have been around for multiple generations. By the way, a little bit about this company's history. Edward Sundt founded Littelfuse in 1927. He'd worked for GE among others and he found that the diagnostic equipment that he was working with would frequently experience electrical failure, so he thought, "You know what? We should be able to protect these circuits." Protect electricity, which is moving through increasing numbers of devices, not just in that era but these days, as well.

So circuit protection is 90 years later what Littelfuse leads the world in. Their tag line: "Expertise Applied, Answers Delivered." It sounds pretty solid. I don't think they spent too much on any kind of branding or marketing campaign to come up with that in the first place. I like it. It's kind of Middle West, right down the middle. "Expertise Applied, Answers Delivered." Dependable. I like it.

The stock I picked March 2014 at just under $93 a share. Today it's at $186. In fact, we can ring the double gong this week. I'm really happy to say that as of this week Littelfuse is up 100.7% so it's become a double for Motley Fool Stock Advisor members who patiently bought and held this company just for three years. The market over the same time up 44%, so this is a smoking hot market beater up 57% over the market averages.

And what are one or two traits that I should mention in passing before we get to our final stock this week? Well, how about just how boring this company is. Peter Lynch -- those who read his books or are familiar with Peter Lynch's work One Up on Wall Street -- loved really boring companies. This is a great Lynchian, boring company. Most people have never heard of it.

Another thing I love about it is that they have tons of different products. We're not just talking about one big biotech drug, here, or a new restaurant concept that needs to hit in order for these guys to succeed. Part of becoming the worldwide leader in circuit protection is that you have lots of different types of protection for lots of different circuits.

So another company like LKQ, for those familiar with it in the automotive space. I love companies that have lots of different products to sell. That's just, itself, a competitive advantage. If you try to compete with them in any kind of broad way, you'd also have to develop a ton of different widgets and gewgaws in order to compete with them, and I love those kinds of companies. That's something to appreciate about Littelfuse in addition to its illustrious, and long, and somewhat boring history.

"Hidden Gem" No. 5: And stock No. 5. Again, I like these stocks for the next three-plus years going forward. We'll be checking with them year by year as we go by. Stock No. 5 is Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB). The ticker symbol is BLKB. Blackbaud has a market cap of $4 billion today, so right around the same size as Littelfuse. The risk rating on Blackbaud is 11.

Blackbaud I first picked in November 2006, so we're talking about 11 years ago almost. The stock, over that time, has gone from $23.38 to $85.11. It's up 264%. The market over the same time up 125%. So of all the five stocks I presented this week, this has been the biggest winner. It's ahead of the market averages by about 140% over the now almost 11 years that we've bought and held Blackbaud.

I first heard about Blackbaud because my brother Tom and I spoke at a conference. We keynoted a conference for them. I was like, "Who are these guys?" I think we were in Charleston, South Carolina which, by the way, is where I'm going to be. I will be in Charleston, South Carolina right at the start of October. If you're a Motley Fool ONE member, perhaps you'll be joining in at that event.

Well, I was in Charleston, South Carolina about 12 years ago, or so, speaking with Tom at a Blackbaud conference and I learned a lot about the company at that time that I appreciated. If you work in the not-for-profit area [and many of you no doubt do], it's a huge area of the world today.

Blackbaud is, among many, the preferred platform for managing the database of the business, because after all there is a business aspect of the business that you're running as a not-for-profit. So they started with a product called The Raiser's Edge, which is a big platform for Blackbaud helping people raise money, track it, and keep up with all the database stats you want on your donors. That kind of thing. And once you get a product like that into a not-for-profit and they like it, they're probably just going to renew it year after year, and Blackbaud has been a beneficiary of it.

So I led off this week's show with Ultimate Software, which is also one of those subscription-based [we hope you'll renew us from one year to the next] businesses, in that case helping out human capital management. Here we have basically helping out not-for-profits. So if you like not-for-profits [a lot of us do] then this company is supporting them, and this company has built a pretty good business by serving them. And so that's what Blackbaud does.

And in addition to some of the traits I just mentioned that I appreciate about Blackbaud, I'll just point out one more, and that is that this company is the leader at what it does. Well, I can't say that they're kind of the Windows 95 of the world, going back to a time when Microsoft utterly dominated everyone's operating system. They're not really the Windows 95, necessarily, of the not-for-profit world, but they are a clear-branded leader within that space with a lot of customers who appreciate what they do.

So I like leaders. If you're not the lead husky, as I said to Patrick O'Shaughnessy on his podcast this week ... once again one of my favorite lines ... if you're not the lead husky, the view never changes. I love the lead huskies. This is a company that is a leader. Everybody else is trying to play catch-up, and they're taking the world and their industry, often, to new, interesting places as they continue to innovate.

So there you have it. Five, what I might call, "hidden gems" of the Supernova universe. That was our focus this week. I hope you enjoy looking further into these stocks.

I should mention this is a sampler. Each of these companies you're hearing are years old. If that sounds frustrating to you thinking, "Well, gosh, it would have been great to buy that stock 10 years ago now that it's tripled, but what have you done for me lately," I have two answers for you.

First of all, each of these five picks I'm picking today going forward, as I mentioned earlier, so I like each of them. But if you find yourself wondering, "Well, what are Dave's most recent picks in Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers," I highly recommend that you take a look at those services. In Motley Fool Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers we make new stock picks every month, and you have an opportunity to hear our freshest, newest stuff any time you want to join those services. I know so many of you already have.

But I should mention you can check out RuleBreakers.com to learn more about that service which focuses on disruptive growth stocks like some of the ones I mentioned today. Or, of course, our flagship service Motley Fool Stock Advisor, from where Littelfuse was drawn. A new issue of Stock Advisor comes out the third Friday of the month with two new stock recommendations from me and my brother, Tom Gardner.

So you can check that out by going... Actually, why don't you just go to our Podcast Center? You'll see info about those podcasts at Podcasts.Fool.com and learn about our other wonderful Motley Fool podcasts.

I will say in closing about these stocks that this is not a list of dynamic world-beaters. When you're finding these smaller, unknown companies, you're probably not going to be picking the next Facebook. So when we review the performance of these stocks some years hence, we may not see some of the dramatic numbers that we've hoped to see and actually have seen in some of our past five stock samplers. These are quieter, sleepier companies, but ones that I feel you'll feel pretty safe being invested in if you invest for the long haul, which by definition is the only way you can invest in my experience. Anything else is trading.

Now usually I like to close each week by telling you what we're going to do next week, but I don't really know what we're going to do next week right now. I'm going to dream it up sometime between now and then. I'll say this -- I'll say two things in closing.

One is I've got a little homework for you in the meantime. Go over and listen to Patrick O'Shaughnessy's Invest Like The Best podcast. Again, I had a great time with Patrick just a few days ago and that one's just out this week. So if you're looking for a little extra Foolishness, it's there for you.

And I would like to say at the end that if you haven't already, please subscribe to this and all Motley Fool podcasts, whether it's iTunes or Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter for this podcast at @RBIPodcast. Follow me on Twitter if you like. I'm @DavidGFool.

Finally, all of us at The Motley Fool feel this way, but I want you to know I particularly do, and that is we love to hear what you think of the work that we're doing. We love to see your reviews. So, get out there. Throw me some stars. Let us know how we're doing. We read every comment.

Thanks a lot! Talk to you next week. Fool on!

As always, people on this program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. Learn more about Rule Breaker Investing at RBI.Fool.com.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. David Gardner owns shares of GOOGL, GOOG, AMZN, FB, ISGR, NFLX, NuVasive, and TSLA. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends GOOGL, GOOG, AMZN, FB, ISGR, NFLX, and TSLA. The Motley Fool recommends Blackbaud, Littelfuse, NuVasive, Orbital ATK, NYT, and Ultimate Software Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.