May 2026 Mailbag: Divvy-Pops, Jellybeans & the Kids of Kopachuk

0:00What does a giant NVIDIA dividend increase have to do with a spiffy pop? Is GameStop secretly trying to become something the world has never seen before? What's the best lesson to learn from Warren Buffett after all these years? And could a middle school teacher in Gig Harbor, Washington, quietly be helping create the next generation of Rule Breaker investors? Oh, and did I really guess twice the number of jelly beans in a jar because I used the wrong geometry formula. It's a delightfully motley set of questions, stories, and reflections sparked by your notes throughout the month of May. It's now the last Wednesday of the month, so it's time for your mailbag, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

0:46It's the Rule Breaker Investing Podcast with Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner.

0:55Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Let's look back over the month that was for this podcast. We kicked it off on May 6th with 10 years later, five winners in a thinking world. It was the first podcast I did this month, joined by my longtime sidekick, Tim Byers from The Motley Fool. We went back exactly 10 years to the week to revisit five stocks I'd picked in May of 2016 and score what actually happened over a full decade. More than just the scorecard, though, we explored why certain companies won and lost, what changed, what didn't, why a 10-year holding period remains, to me anyway, just a beautiful and underappreciated timeframe to score yourself with your investing, though I will say I do prefer it when we beat the market with my samplers, and this one did not.

1:44And then came May 13th, second Wednesday of the month. What have you learned from David Gardner, Volume 7, my annual birthday tradition on this podcast? And once again, you all sent in thoughtful notes sharing what's stuck with you over the years. Everything from dips wait for dips and doing nothing during volatility to optimism, resilience, and the joy of investing itself. Many voices weighed in. thank you so much, including a juggling surgical oncologist, a foolish leprechaun, and sure, yes, a Scotsman, all making appearances. I want to thank you again, each of you who took the time to write in.

2:24Thank you so much. It was a very happy birthday. Fool on. And then last week, well, I went a little crazy. May 20th, 60 thoughts as I turn 60. 20 thoughts about investing, 20 Business, 20 About Life. Somehow packed a podcast that was, what was exactly 60 minutes, except the podcast ad tipped us over to 61 minutes. We ranged from Spiffy Pops and The Ship of Fools to Optionality, Divergence and Convergence, Steve Jobs, Shakespeare, Optimism, Self-Actualization, and why what wins in investing tends to win in business and in life too. And just as I did with my Rule Breaker investing book in the fall of last year when it came out.

3:11Well, I tried to do the same thing with last week's podcast, and that is in sports terms, to leave it all out there on the field. So my hope is twofold. First of all, I hope you enjoyed last week's podcast. And second, I hope it might be worthy of a re-listen at some point, maybe a month from now, or a year, or a decade. And that was the month that was for this podcast. All right, and as we are wont to do, we're going to do a few TwitterX hot takes before our six mailbag items this particular week. Again, to follow us on TwitterX, we're at RBI Podcast. I'm at David G. Fool. If you'd like to follow me, you can subscribe to this podcast and give us a like or a follow anytime you're feeling it.

3:57Whether you're using Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, etc. etc. This podcast pops Wednesdays at right around 12 p.m. Eastern every single Wednesday, every one without seats. So if you subscribe, you'll get us Wednesdays at noon Eastern every single week. No skips, no repeats. I'm not bragging here. A fresh RBI podcast every Wednesday since July of 2015. By the way, thank you to those who dropped some reviews in about Rule Breaker Investing on Apple Podcasts. You threw me some stars. I really appreciate that. Type in a line or two about why you value this podcast, how we can make it better.

4:35I love getting feedback. We read it all. All right. First, Twitter X hot take from Andrew Gibson at Andrew Gibbs 53446 on Twitter X. Andrew, you wrote, never apologize for your Scottish accent at David G. Fool. made my night and I'm 50 % Scottish. I said the earth did shake when I was born, says Andrew, typing in lots of R's and lots of A's in that famous line, which by the way, is one of my favorite lines. I included it in my book. It comes from Shakespeare. It's actually Henry IV, part one, I think, where Glendower is this grand, very proud figure whose Shakespeare has saying, I said the earth did shake when I was born.

5:16And I've used that line to describe some of my favorite stock, some of our best companies, the generationally great stock picks that you can make. Those companies usually don't start as tiny little acorns that are operating in small niche industries somewhere. Most of the really great rule breakers of our time, the earth shakes a little bit when Amazon is born or Facebook is born. And so I've always loved that line. Andrew, check it. I think you know this, but check it. Glendower was actually not Scottish. He was Welsh, and I'm not great, I don't think, doing Welsh accents, but I will once again give my Scottish lilt to my favorite Welsh line, I say the earth did shake when I was born.

5:58And that's my best shot at Scottish here at the end of May. You know, Welsh is more melodic. I think it's more like, I say the earth did shake when I was born. Something closer to that. Maybe that was too Irish. I'm not really sure. Anyway, thank you again to Justin Comer, who wrote into this podcast as a Scotsman on the what did you learn from me a couple of weeks ago? That's why we got to rock some Scottish. Another Twitter take, this one from at Triggs1Martin. Thank you, Martin. Today, you wrote, this was on May 21st last week. Today, NVIDIA went up 4.39%, or$9.19, cents divided by your original cost basis of 16 cents.

6:39That's a 57 bagger in one day for those wise fools who bought and held. What an incredible birthday present. Well, Martin, that was very kind of you to call that out. And, you know, I do want to say about NVIDIA that while not everybody was a Motley Fool member back in April, it was actually tax day, April 15th of 2005, when I picked it and And now split adjusted 16 cents. I take particular solace and comfort knowing that we didn't just pick it once. I picked it and re-picked it and re-picked it and told that story in the first chapter of Rule Breaker Investing, which, by the way, probably my favorite version of my book is the audio book.

7:19I had so much fun reading through the entire thing, sharing it with readers and listeners. But yeah, NVIDIA, what a phenomenal generational stock. What a Rule Breaker. just the very definition of a modern rule breaker and chapter one of my book dedicated to telling the story of NVIDIA and it's only gotten better since publication of that book. On to another Twitter X hot take number three this one from Arun Charian thank you at Arun Charian 12 I learned a lot from David most importantly David seems to be a kind gentle soul which allows him to see the world very clearly. It's great at spotting trends and pattern recognition as well.

7:58Well, Arun, that's very kind of you. Thank you. I will receive that as a birthday gift just a couple of weeks ago when you typed that in and when we just captured it now. But I appreciate your emphasis on kindness. I'm not going to say I'm the kindest person I know. I certainly know people kinder than I am, but I sure do value kindness. In fact, I think kindness is one of America's five core values. And when I see somebody being unkind, maybe that's just the way I think as a patriot, but I think that person is being un-American. And I think that's how powerful kindness, I think of Mr. Rogers in our lifetimes, or how about Oprah Winfrey as incredible examples of kindness.

8:35And, you know, kindness can show up in many different contexts, but especially when people embody it and then live it out as Fred Rogers and Oprah Winfrey have over their whole lives, a great path lit for you and for me as we proceed forward. through life and remember the importance and benefit. And you know, the great thing about kindness is it doesn't just help the person you're being kind to. It really helps you and your own character because everything is a muscle. If you use it, it gets stronger. And if you don't, it doesn't. Thank you, Arun. And one last one, maybe my favorite of all the tweets in the last month, just such a beautiful and simple thought from at behavioral bull.

9:13Happy birthday at David G. Fool. Behavioral Bull wrote, you inspired me to invest in individual stocks, which has created generational wealth for my family. Your investing influence will echo in my family's lives for generations. Wow. Thank you. It's enough for me to think that I could do that for my own family, but that I might for any other family is deeply special to me. And I really appreciate you taking the time to share that. Again, we're at RBI Podcast on Twitter X. That's pretty much our only social media presence. My very talented producer, Bart Shannon, among many tasks, also gathers your mail.

9:53Don't tell Bart this. It's definitely below his pay grade, but I certainly appreciate the time he takes to collect the mails that you send and set them up for me to speak back to you at the end of every month. All right. As I mentioned, six mailbag items this week let's get started mailbag item number one this one from thane walton thanks for writing in thane dang thane starts i'm always a week behind in my podcast what i have learned so here we go number one options thane writes i've lost more than i've made only selling covered calls has been consistent so it sounds like i've helped you thane rethink options and especially when you mentioned having lost more money than you've made.

10:37First of all, that makes me sad. And that's going to happen a lot with people who use options. It's going to happen with almost everybody who bets on sports. You're going to end up losing more than you make because you keep paying the house each time. But it's really that opportunity cost when you think about it. When we're spending money toward gambling like instruments, when we could have instead been investing in something as simple as the index fund, which rises over time, it's that gap between how you did probably with a red minus sitting before whatever number you racked up, how you did versus how you could have done.

11:10That opportunity cost just gets bigger and bigger as we go through life. So I'm always trying to get people on board and investing in instruments that rise, not fall over time. So thank you for that. And a second thing you've learned, you mentioned Thane, is selling. Intuitively, it feels like, Thane writes, I've made more selling mistakes than wins. and so I'm glad that I've helped you rethink holding period a little bit. You know, I think for most people, my brother is a great line. Whatever your holding period is on average, double it, Tom says, and you'll probably be a better investor and I strongly agree with that for almost everyone on earth.

11:51You know, we glory in those times that we sold something and then all of a sudden it does in fact drop. Maybe it gets cut in half or drops away and never comes back and that feels amazing. The problem is we often don't scrutinize the things that we sold that go up and sometimes keep going up and up. And then years later, I'll hear from a friend, you know, I had Apple for a year. I had it for a year and a half. I should have held on. And if you do the math, those are dramatically worse mistakes than holding on to a stock that isn't doing well. So I don't really try to glory in my sales. That's why I try not to sell much at all anyway.

12:28Then you've got a few more things you've learned. The next two are life and legacy lessons. Number three, you wrote, got my three boys investing early. And number four, life is much simpler with a buy and hold mentality. And yeah, I think the quality of our lives matters more than the amount on our brokerage statement. I mean, I'd love both of those things to be as high as possible. But if I need to trade off, I'm always going to be trying to trade up for quality of life, especially when you create quality in other people's lives, like getting three boys investing early. The last thing you mentioned, Thane, thank you for one of my top picks, my$300 purchase of NVIDIA back in around 2015.

13:11He goes on, I think there were 16 Supernova picks made that year. I put$300 into each. That single purchase in NVIDIA is now over$16 ,000. Of course, I've added many times to that position. And thanks, Thane R. Walton. Thane is a VP at United Planners Financial Service. You know, you started that lovely note, Thane, by saying you're always a week behind listening to podcasts. And that's why you missed dropping that note and being featured on my birthday podcast. But here you're on the mailbag. The mailbag, by the way, is typically a month behind itself. Some of you may know this, but the typical pattern is I will get notes in May for what we did in April.

13:52and I'd love some notes by the way in June for my 60 Thoughts podcast from last week but in the end there's no urgency around these things. It doesn't really matter if you're a week behind or a month behind because the purpose of the mailbag is to sit here at the end of every month and gather up all the best stories and thoughts that I can share back out and whether they came from three days ago or three months ago we're good either way. Thayne Walton thank you for taking the time to write in and fool on. All right, on to mailbag item number two. You know, NVIDIA's fantastic stock performance keeps infiltrating this particular week's podcast, I think because it has had such a phenomenal May, but also for the reason that Jason in mailbag item number two underlines, Dear David, I'm a Motley Fool member, weekly listener to the Rule Breaker Investing podcast.

14:43Thank you for your faithful weekly dedication to the podcast and all that you've done to make me smarter, happier, and richer. Well, you're very welcome, Jason. That is the purpose of The Motley Fool. That is the purpose of this podcast. So you know I love hearing back that we're hitting that for you. Jason goes on, I've been intending to write to you about this for some time, but work and family life can get busy. However, I was spurred to action this evening following NVIDIA's earnings release. In particular, my message is related to NVIDIA's decision to increase the quarterly dividend from one cent per share to 25 cents per share.

15:21I recall that NVIDIA is one of your best performing recommendations with a cost basis of 16 cents per share. And it is true. Thank you, Jason, for recalling that. I think I've already mentioned it once this podcast. By the way, I'm not trying to be Mr. NVIDIA. I got it at 16 cents guy because I also have a 16 cent cost basis on Amazon when Netflix split earlier this year. I'm now 18 and a half cents on Netflix. But now I'm starting to brag. Although with Dizzy Dean, the great St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, I do want to say sometimes it ain't bragging if it's true. Anyway, back to Jason's note. Thank you for regularly reminding listeners about the importance of letting your winners run high.

16:03And that is, of course, habit number one of the Rule Breaker Investor. As you know, Jason, And as companies compound earnings over decades, they often make decisions like NVIDIA to allocate excess capital to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends that grow over time. And I'm going to pause it once again right there because it's true. And I really love, Jason, that you point this out. You know, a lot of people forget that. They think that if you buy stocks like Apple or Facebook or Alphabet, those aren't ever going to pay dividends. And they usually don't, maybe for 10 or 20 years. But then they mature and all of a sudden Apple does start paying a dividend in 2012.

16:43Meta platforms, which is what Facebook is now called, started paying a dividend. Check it. 2024, two years ago. Another little company most of us have heard of started paying dividends that year as well. Alphabet Google started paying dividends in 2024. And now, as you mentioned, Jason, there's Nvidia saying, well, we had a one cent per share dividend, which is almost comically low. they just, I don't know what 25 times is, like double is two times and quadruple is four times. They just 25X'd it with their most recent earnings announcement. It does make me wonder sometimes, you know, what's the next company that's really big, that's never paid a dividend, that a lot of us know that will start to pay a dividend?

17:24Maybe Amazon, maybe Tesla, or maybe Netflix. All three of those companies have never paid a dividend before. I own shares in each, I would appreciate a little dividend, although they're doing pretty well without paying them. I will also say Apple and Meta and Alphabet have done pretty darn well. NVIDIA as well, paying dividends. But anyway, back to Jason's note. Based on NVIDIA's decision to increase the quarterly dividend by 25 times, I would like to propose the introduction of a new term to the Rule Breaker investing lexicon. We are all familiar with the term spiffy pop, describing when a stock's single-day price increase exceeds the entire original purchase price.

18:04The proposed new term is, drumroll please, Jason goes with spiffy divvy, that's short for dividend, spiffy divvy double, to describe when a stock's annual dividend exceeds the entire original purchase price. Its annual dividend, he writes, exceeds the entire original purchase price. In the case of NVIDIA, the now$1 a share annual dividend exceeds our$0.16 per share cost basis. Jason concludes, while investments that achieve Spiffy Dibby double status will be significantly more rare than Spiffy Pops, such investments are a testament to holding on to great companies over long periods of time and reaping the rewards of compounding through significant price appreciation and shareholder dividend returns.

18:56Congratulations on the NVIDIA annual dividend now being six times your original cost basis. I aspire to also one day own a stock that becomes a spiffy divvy double like NVIDIA. Even if spiffy divvy double doesn't become a mainstay of Rule Breaker Investing, I hope that it made you smile. Wishing you a happy belated birthday. Sincerely, Jason. Well, first of all, Jason, great minds think alike because you're not the first person to dream that up. In fact, many Motley Fool fans and in some cases employees have proposed this very concept for years and years. And I was checking it because March 29, 2017, our March mailbag for this podcast that day was entitled Introducing the Divi Pop.

19:46stop so yeah we had already come up with a concept we agree it's something worth tracking it's kind of brilliant many companies start out without even paying a dividend you buy their stock and then later on if one day actually one year if for a whole year you're getting paid four quarterly dividends and they sum up to being worth more than you paid for that stock in the first place we call that not a spiffy divvy double which is pretty catchy but we call it just instead of a Smithy Pop, we call it a Divvy Pop. And for those who like to spell things correctly, I spell that D-I-V-V-Y hyphen pop.

20:25So Divvy Pop. You know, part of the reason I wrote my book is that I have all these ideas placed in little drawers and cubby holes and ideas on shelves and in jars stuffed into podcasts over 11 years. And so outside of those few listeners, those precious few listeners who've actually listened to every one of these podcasts. And even fewer, by the way, who would remember them all. And I myself don't even remember half the time what I did do 10 years ago. So I needed to look it back up. And I saw that we'd already spoken to the Divi Pop on that podcast now almost 10 years ago. You know, there's something delightful about writing a book and having everything ordered sequentially for people.

21:08Page one is followed by page two. Chapter three is followed by chapter four. And you can kind of get it all coherently. One of my concerns has always been that when somebody finds The Motley Fool, they might just see an article online or receive an email from us, or they might hear me on a podcast. But they're lacking a lot of the scaffolding, a lot of the concepts or frameworks that I might use. And by the way, I'm just one of The Motley Fool employees. There are lots of people with different ideas about how to invest that also are motley and are foolish with me. So indeed, it's very hard in this very fluid media landscape that we live in with social media and podcasts and articles and books, too.

21:49It's very hard to get a grounding or foundational set of learning from a podcast. That's why I think in the end, I'm so happy that I wrote Rule Breaker Investing because I finally could order everything and get those six habits for investors, get those six traits for the stocks and the six principles for your portfolio. get them in order with logical language that speaks to people. Now, I didn't actually include DiviPop in that book, so maybe I'll write another, it won't be a stock market book, but maybe I'll write a Break the Rules book. I hinted at that at the end of my first book, and so maybe I'll do that at some point, but that's nothing I'm working on right now, just a future thought.

22:29Anyway, I love having done so many different podcasts over the years, and I do love the ability to have transcripts of them so I can go back and check what was said when. Let's move on to mailbag item number three. This one from Bob Chambers. What a delight. Thank you, Bob. Hello, David. I didn't get this to you for your last week's episode of what you learned from me, but I wanted to ensure I wish you a happy 60th birthday from beautiful British Columbia. I also, Bob writes, have a 60th birthday one week after yours and due to a strong investment portfolio carefully built over the years, following yourself and the Motley Fool services, I have been comfortably retired for a few years now.

23:10Having been a shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway the longest, Bob goes on, I have carefully read and learned a lot from Warren over the years. It's been very nice to lean on a kind of a yin and yang of investing between you and Warren. Recently, I really liked your metaphor of harbor and horizon, as this has been a good reflection of my portfolio for quite some time. I'm going to pause it right there because we did this on last month's mailbag right at the end of April. Vince Granary, longtime fool, wrote in and said, I used to be all in on all the Rule Breaker stocks. And Vince had several hundred investments and he scaled them down over time.

23:49But then as he aged, approaching the age of 70, he started selling off some of his beloved Rule Breakers and found himself with more dividend stocks. And he just sort of asked almost a plaintive question to kick off the mailbag item last month. he said, what kind of investor am I now? We're all getting to know ourselves over the course of our lives and ourselves keep changing, by the way, which is why self-knowledge isn't as easy as it sounds. And so Vince, as you'll remember, and Bob, as you clearly saw, I decided to call Vince, and maybe I'm speaking to you too, dear listener, a harbor and horizon investor, a harbor and horizon fool.

24:27And that works for me because we're talking about two parts of your financial life. So there's the harbor part. That's the part of your portfolio that's built for steadiness, income, and yeah, sleep. And then there's the horizon part, which is still pointed toward growth and possibility and longer term upside. I told Vince last month, you haven't forsaken rule breaker investing. You've life staged it. You've acknowledged now at the age of 69-ish, your risk capacity, your risk tolerance may not be exactly what they were when you were happily running hundreds of mostly, in your words, growth positions and watching the whole thing swing around sometimes like a chandelier in a hurricane, which is how it can feel in times of extreme volatility, especially for rule breakers.

25:13But again, harbor that part of your portfolio now designed to keep you steadier, calmer, better funded in the here and now, and horizon. Part of it is still pointed toward the horizon, still doing what rule breaker stocks do best, which is, by the way, looks scary at times and magical over long periods of time. Anyway, I wanted to interrupt Bob's note just to double down on Harbor and Horizon Fool, since I think it's relevant for many listeners. Bob's note goes on companies like Berkshire, Brookfield and Fairfax, the latter two Canadian companies. This comes from someone from British Columbia, representing my harbor.

25:53And then Bob goes on Shopify, Mercado Libre, and Arista Networks representing the horizon, among many others. I've even started using a Motley Fool index fund as a harbor investment to diversify further. I read your book when it came out last year and found it incredibly helpful to put all those great ideas, principles, traits, etc. in one place. I have a notebook full of my scribble from your podcast, Bob writes. It was great to see so many of Warren's insights overlap with your thinking about how to be a successful investor, ignoring the macro calls and predictions, finding the innovators and avoiding the imitators and staying in your circle of competence and then building it are some of my favorites.

26:42It really cements a concept in your mind when two very successful investors with different approaches have used them for success. My question for the main mailbag is this. Do you have a favorite key learning from Warren Buffett? Once again, happy birthday, David. Hope you have a great day. On my birthday, Bob writes, I will have a house full of family and friends from different parts of my life. I am lucky. This is from a very grateful investor who's still happily riding the train across the country through all types of weather, occasionally lightening the load to help with living a more interesting life.