🗞 The World's Most Patient Investor?

Happy Sunday!

Here’s what’s on the docket for this week’s newsletter:

• 💼 The World’s Most Patient Investor?

• 📱 7 Fastest Growing FinTech Apps

Let’s dive in!

Featured Story #1

The World’s Most Patient Investor?

David Gardner is the Co-Founder and “Chief Rule Breaker” of The Motley Fool.

While Gardner’s multi-decade returns are anything but ordinary, his investment approach is surprisingly simple. Gardner seeks out companies that he calls “Rule Breakers”.

These are companies that break the rules of the business status quo by bringing “disruptive technology, diabolically clever marketing, or a totally new business model into the world.”

Here are Gardner’s 6 criteria for finding “Rule Breakers”:

1. Top dog and first mover in an important, emerging industry.

2. Sustainable advantage gained through business momentum, patent protection, visionary leadership or inept competitors.

3. Strong past price appreciation.

4. Good management and smart backing.

5. Strong consumer appeal.

6. Grossly overvalued according to the financial media.

Although this recipe for finding stocks might seem simple, the magic comes from holding over multiple decades.

Legendary investor Charlie Munger once quipped “The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting.” And few investors exemplify that as well as David Gardner.

Gardner has generated more than 20% annualized returns since 2002 by holding some of the world’s greatest companies through both major drawdowns and long periods of “overvaluation”.

Here are 4 of his best investments ever:

1. Amazon

Initial Purchase: 1997 for $0.16 per share (split-adjusted).

Current Price: $226.56

When Gardner first purchased Amazon, the company wasn’t much more than an online book seller. But Gardner believed that Amazon had a major advantage over peers, and that advantage was Jeff Bezos. 27 years later and Amazon is now the global leader in e-commerce, cloud computing, and much more. Amazon is more than a 1,400 bagger since Gardner’s initial purchase.

2. Netflix

Initial Purchase: 2004 for $1.85 per share (split-adjusted).

Current Price: $912.53

When Gardner first bought Netflix, the company was in the online DVD distribution business. At the time, optimistic investors believed that one day they could potentially disrupt Blockbuster. But no one thought they could disrupt the entire linear TV category.

Fast forward 20 years and Netflix is the clear leader in the streaming TV market. This has helped turn Gardner’s original investment into a 492-fold return.

3. NVIDIA

Initial Purchase: 2005 for $0.164 per share (split-adjusted).

Current Price: $132.7

Most people today automatically think of NVIDIA as a wonderful investment. However, for the first 10 years that Gardner owned the stock it was quite a laggard. From 2006 to 2015 the stock went virtually nowhere. How many people would have held through that period?

Fast forward to today and revenue is up 2,319% from 2015 and Gardner’s investment has turned into an 808-bagger in less than 20 years.

4. MercadoLibre

Initial Purchase: 2009 for $14.13 per share.

Current Price: $1,825.08

MercadoLibre has been replicating the Amazon e-commerce playbook in South America for now more than 20 years. While many investors doubted MercadoLibre due to the logistical challenges of delivering packages in certain Latin American markets, Gardner let them prove it.

Low and behold, the model worked. As it turns out, customers in Latin America want the same efficiency and convenience of ordering online as American customers. MercadoLibre today is a 128-bagger since Gardner’s initial purchase.

While Gardner has seen his fair share of losers as well (American Online, TCBY, Media Logic, and many more) the remarkable upside of holding just a few major winners over 2 to 3 decades has more than accounted for the losers.

Platform Update

This week FinChat launched new and improved performance charts.

The update includes:

• ✅ Major UI Improvements

• ✅ “$10,000 Growth” Option

• ✅ Performance comparisons to other securities

• ✅ Intuitive chart exporting

Featured Story #2

7 Fastest Growing FinTech Apps

Consumer financial apps can make for wonderful businesses.

Many possess network effects which help drive low cost growth, and once embedded in a consumer’s habits can often be quite sticky.

Here are 7 of the fastest growing consumer financial technology apps:

7.) Cash App

Cash App is Block's all-in-one personal finance app that's most well known for its peer-to-peer money transfer business.

5-yr Customer CAGR: 26%

6.) DAVE

Dave is a mobile app that offers easy cash advances to customers needing to bridge the gap before their next paycheck.

3-yr Customer CAGR: 27%

5.) Wise

Wise is the lowest cost provider of cross-border money transfers. Customers can also spend money in multiple currencies with the Wise Card.

5-yr Customer CAGR: 29%

4.) Mercado Pago

Pago is MercadoLibre's digital wallet that is popular in several Latin American. Pago is best known for its peer-to-peer money transfer functionality.

YoY Customer Growth: 35%

3.) Remitly

Remitly is a digital remittance provider that allows users to easily send money back home. It's lower cost and more convenient than most legacy peers.

5-yr Customer CAGR: 54%

2.) NuBank

NuBank is a Brazilian neobank that offers a comprehensive quite of banking services (credit cards, bill pay, money transfer) to Latin American customers.

4-yr Customer CAGR: 49%

1.) SoFi

SoFi is a personal banking app that offers credit cards, high yield savings accounts, a variety of loan products, & more.

5-yr Customer CAGR: 61%

Meme of the week

This week, cryptocurrency Fartcoin hit a market cap of more than $700 million. Yes, you read that correctly.

That exceeds the market capitalizations of roughly 40% of all US public companies.