Meet Motley Fool Investing Analyst Jason Moser

Jason Moser is a senior analyst at The Motley Fool who heads up our Virtual Revolution portfolio.

In today’s episode, Jason talks with Motley Fool host Mary Long about early investing successes, what’s shaped his investing philosophy, and how golf changed his life.

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This video was recorded on June 16, 2024.

Jason Moser: I really consider myself what I call a Foolish investor. That is, I don’t really limit myself to any areas of interest. I don’t limit myself to the types of ideas, whether it’s some type of growth idea, or whether I feel like it’s a value idea or there’s a dividend idea. I like to keep my universe as broad as possible as an investor.

Mary Long: I’m Mary Long, and that’s Jason Moser, one of our senior analysts here at the Fool, who leads up our virtual Revolution service and a number of other Foolish portfolios. I caught up with Jason earlier this week to learn a bit more about how he found his way here and what’s shaped his investing philosophy. We also discuss why he owes so much of his happiness to golf, how being a young dad set the stage for an early investing success, and why it pays dividends, to stay curious. Jason, I’ve got the privilege of being tasked with rounding up a number of different Fools and analysts from around the company and chatting with them about how they wound up where they are, how they got into investing, how they formed their investment thesis, and so, of course, wanted to chat with you. When did you start investing? I guess is maybe where I’d like to begin. Was it a hobby? Was it a professional career right off the bat for you?

Jason Moser: It was definitely a hobby. I’ve had a few jobs along my way to ultimately getting here to the Motley Fool. But, I started investing. I learned about it from my father when I was younger. I specifically remember conversations we would have when he drove me to school in the mornings when I was in eighth grade. In that general 14-year age range, he would just talk about stocks that he knew of. He’s a physician by trade, but I always enjoyed investing, and he had some interesting perspective because he’s a doctor. He had some interesting perspective on healthcare. I remember telling me about some of his winners, and it just was always fascinating to me that you could take your money and grow it. He got me set up when I was around 18, a little bit younger, maybe with a brokerage account. Then I actually discovered the Motley Fool in Kazakhstan, believe it or not, in 2006. My wife, we were traveling with her work with the State Department. We lived in Kazakhstan for a couple of years, and that’s where I discovered the Fool, which ultimately really prompted my interest in learning more.

Mary Long: I want to get to your discovery of the Motley Fool, but maybe first, let’s go back to eighth grade. What kind of advice was your dad giving you in the car to middle school?

Jason Moser: If I think about you. My dad probably he was really always kind of a Fool before I knew what the Motley Fool was. He was very much a Peter Lynch, very interested in the things that he knew. Very interested in the healthcare space because he knew so much about it. But he was also very interested in just the products that he used every day, the car that he drove. It was an explorer. No, I’m sorry, back then it was a Bronco. He’s always compelled by Ford. I think that’s really the perspective that captured my attention was it helped shape your worldview even. But just taking a look at all of the things around us.

Mary Long: Then you said you discovered the Fool in 2006 when you were in Kazakhstan. How did you find it? Were you just messing around online, looking for stock advice and you stumbled upon the Fool?

Jason Moser: That was it, really. We had just gotten set up in our house and the weather there, as you can imagine, it’s very cold for a lot of the year. I was just fiddling around online and I found an article, just a general market article. I noticed the link and I was like, Fool, what is this? I clicked and it took me to an article on the Motley Fool home site. From that point on, I was hooked. I immediately started I was like, man, these are my people. I like this idea and so I’m fascinated. I was an economics major in college. I was fascinated by the stuff anyway. From there, I just started looking at all the services and I became a full-fledged Fool that day, for sure [LAUGHTER]

Mary Long: You mentioned at the top that you had a couple of different jobs before you started working here full-time. Maybe take us through that career path. You major you major in economics in college and then you graduate, you head out into the world and what’s life look like for a young Jason Moser?

Jason Moser: I graduated back in 1995, so the Internet really wasn’t even a thing yet. But like I said, majored in economics, graduated in Wafd 1995 and didn’t really know what I wanted to do at that point, but I’ve always played golf. At that point, I decided to go into the golf business. I ended up being a PGA club professional for about seven years, worked in Greenville, South Carolina and then moved up to Severna Park, Maryland. That was I met my wife along the way, we got married and I started getting to the point where I thought, you know what? Maybe this wasn’t really conducive to the family life that I ultimately wanted, weekends and holidays free and stuff like that. The golf business to working a lot of hours. I just decided to put my economics degree to good use and I stepped out and I got a job at Bank of America as a loan officer. I did that for a couple of years during the refinancing boom, learned a lot about underwriting and at that point, my wife got the opportunity to go overseas with her work. We actually spent five years overseas, three years in Egypt, two years in Kazakhstan. During that time, I left my job with the bank and I got a job with the State Department working at the embassies there. That was a little bit of a detour. But then when I got back from overseas, got a job with travelers insurance, learned the adjusting side, was just diving into the underwriting side when I got the call from the Motley Fool saying that I had a job waiting for mE. That was 2010 and I really never looked back. This has been of all the jobs I had the one I’ve enjoyed the most.

Mary Long: That job with the Fool, did you apply for this investment analyst role and that came to fruition? Did you go straight into that or was there a path? How do I phrase this? A path before that, that got you into the role in the space that you’re in now?

Jason Moser: Well, what we had at the time and we’ve had in certain inceptions all along the way. We have an analyst development program here at the Motley Fool. I was encouraged at the time, I had just actually made contact and developed a friendship with Matty Argersinger and we had gotten a chance to play golf together and he was telling me about Fool and the ADP and I should consider applying and I was like alright. Well I dug in and learned more about it and I applied and I went through all the process there. Thankfully, I came in pretty green as an investor, but coming into that analyst development program, give us a good year and a half of study in all different modules. Everything from valuation to competitive analysis and everything in between. Buck Hartsel taught that for a year and a half. That really, I think, helped develop my chops there because I definitely came in. I had the member’s perspective. I knew what members knew, which we do a great job of educating, but this really helped me take it to the next level.

Mary Long: I love and just looking back on your career path and hearing about your early introduction to investing through your dad. You mentioned, how he embodied this Peter Lynch approach. Then I love that we fast forward to you stepping out into the adult world and almost applying that approach to your job search, too. Like, your dad’s like, I’m a doctor. What can I invest in that I use every day? You, as a recent college grad are like, I like golf. Maybe you’ll go into golf.

Jason Moser: That worked out for a while. Ultimately, I met my wife along the way there, so really, I owe all of my happiness today to my time in the golf business because it connected me with who’s one of the most important people in my life.

Mary Long: We talk about Peter Lynch and these different investing philosophies. I assume that that forms the basis of how you think about investing today. But if you had to describe your investing philosophy today? How would you do that?

Jason Moser: I think that was one of the things when I first came to the Fool as an employee, I really had trouble defining what kind of investor I was. Who am I as an investor? I did learn along the way. I really consider myself, what I call a Foolish investor. That is, I don’t really limit myself to any areas of interest. I don’t limit myself to the types of ideas, whether it’s some type of growth idea or whether I feel like it’s a value idea or there’s a dividend idea. I like to keep my universe as broad as possible as an investor. But there are areas well outside my circle of confidence that I just don’t know very much about. I’m still not really terribly familiar with cryptocurrency, for example. Will I learn more about that? One day, maybe, I don’t know. It’s really outside, what I tend to focus on in regard to businesses, so maybe not. That’s how I think about that.

Mary Long: Before you went through that investor development program at the Fool, were you still investing on the side as a hobby without doing it professionally?

Jason Moser: I was. I was sending a check in to, at the time I had a brokerage account with Edward Jones and basically just a dollar-cost average sort of thing where I would just make a deposit every month and they would just invest that and whatever their representative felt like was a good opportunity at the time. I was investing and I think for most of that was in the form of mutual funds, which were more in vogue at the time. You could call it investing. It was very passive investing. I basically just let them steer the ship, so to speak.

Mary Long: Then once you started steering your own ship, whether it’s in a personal capacity or a more professional one, what were some early mistakes that you made at the beginning of that journey?

Jason Moser: Well, I think one mistake I made when I made the move over toward more do-it-yourself mentality. I learned that I didn’t really know what I was invested in. Like Edward Jones, they were doing a good job. I’m not complaining about them. This was all my, I chose to do this. I chose to send them my money and then trust that they were investing money appropriately and for the most part, they did. It worked out well from a net perspective. But I did realize that there were a lot of things I just didn’t know what I was invested. If you asked me what I owned, I just remembered realizing, oh, my God, I don’t even know. Then, furthermore, I would learn what the business was and then I would start wondering, well, do I even understand what they really do. I think early on, it really just helped shape me in that regard, learning what you own and then really understanding the business fully. Then I would say, the other thing I noticed, it was just very easy to want to dive into everything. Then you realize you’re way outside your circle of confidence and you haven’t even really nailed down your circle yet. It’s easy to be enthusiastic and want to try to take in as much as possible. But remember, it really is a lifelong journey if you let it be and you get to take it just one day at a time. Don’t rush. Just learn as much as you can before you get in over your passenger skis, so to speak.

Mary Long: It’s so I guess I’ll say comforting to hear you say that because frankly I look at you now and think, Jason could talk about Edward and everything [LAUGHTER] When you were getting started, and you realized like wait, I have to narrow my focus. What was the initial thing that you narrowed that focus on to?

Jason Moser: I think part of this was just coming from the insurance business. But coming from travelers insurance, I felt like, I have an idea of how insurance works. I was really compelled by things like Berkshire Hathaway. At the time, I was learning a lot more about Mark Mehlhoff Insurance, which was a company that we as members followed and owned and as an analyst, I’ve enjoyed following and owning it, as well. I think that was my first natural instinct was to jump into the financial side between my time in banking and my time and insurance. But then what I realized very quickly was that it all boils down to tech and that’s what really opened my eyes to this fascinating world of tech and all of the different little markets within that bigger market, so to speak. I was very quick to jump into that side of things as well because it was so fascinating.

Mary Long: You’ve talked about this journey from putting money into your brokerage account each month to becoming, I don’t really want to use the word a more active investor, but that’s also accurate, like a more active investor playing a larger role in knowing what you’re owning. But then when you’re an analyst for the Fool, you’re not just making picks for yourself, but you’re making suggestions for other people. I don’t want to put you on the spot, but do you remember the first stock pitch, even if it wasn’t ultimately picked by the analyst team? Do you remember the first stock pitch that you made once you were in your role at the Fool?

Jason Moser: The first stock pitch that I made let me think about that because I feel like going through the ADP, the Analyst Development Program, we were required to do pitches and I remember it now, yes, I believe the very first one I pitched as a part of the Analyst Development program was a little company called Granite Construction. It is just a little small cap, like it says, construction company. It was one that I remember I initially had learned about in Hidden Gems at the time back then, Hidden Gems was our SmallCAp service. Granite Construction. Our first task was to pick a recommendation in the Foolish Universe and pitch that. I remember very well because I pitched it. I pitched what I thought was a very good recap of what the actual business did. But where I really fell short and I learned this very quickly. Talk about mistakes. It’s looking beyond just why this is a great business and understanding what the actual opportunity is. Hammering out that thesis and understanding, this is a good business, but furthermore, there’s an opportunity here. Is it a long-term trend? Is it a short term event? Is it something else? But I remember vividly because that pitch really taught me that lesson early on and I’m grateful for that.

Mary Long: We’ve talked a lot about lessons, but do you remember your first success story as an investor? You mentioned when you were a kid, realizing, wait this idea that I can buy ownership in a company and watch my money grow was really compelling. When you actually started picking companies and then seeing that pick, that thesis pay off, do you remember the first stock that lit that up for you?

Jason Moser: I remember, well, so beyond just stocks that I own, but this is one that I own and I actually pitched it during my time in the development program. It was a little bit of a lynching angle to it. It’s a company called Jim Bree and it’s no longer publicly traded, but at the time, it was publicly traded and for those who don’t know, Jim Bree, essentially is close for babies, toddlers. At the time, we had just had our daughters in 2005 and 2006. I was a proactive father. I was doing all the stuff, and part of that was taking them out, shopping for clothes. I just became astounded very quickly how a concept like Jim Bree could help a dummy like me clothe two little baby girls, and they looked great. It was affordable and it was reasonable. They had a great loyalty program that stoked more return visits. I became a just big believer in Jim Bree and simple concept in retail, but that worked out very well, and then ultimately, it was acquired by private equity at a pretty good premium of when I first started following and owning and recommending it. That one always stands out for a number of reasons.

Mary Long: You’ve touched a lot of different sectors within your career. You’ve lived in a number of different places around the world. Are there any skills or experiences or attributes that you think really set you up for success in your role as an analyst today?

Jason Moser: It was serendipitous, I suppose, but my work history has really given me a pretty broad perspective. It wasn’t ever intended. I just found my way as I graduated college. But I was very fortunate, I think, just in my work history. It gave me a pretty broad perspective, in regard to a lot of things and having lived in a number of places didn’t hurt either. I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing. I did a lot of philosophy courses in college as well, which just entailed a lot of reading and writing. That research, mentality, the curiosity, that’s one of the great things about our job is just every day, it’s something new. I was hired as a member. I was already a Fool. But one of the things I think I’ve always enjoyed being able to do and I enjoy trying to teach people to think more this way, is just extending my time horizon for as long as humanly possible. I think that’s a skill that can really open up a lot of opportunities as an investor, for sure.

Mary Long: Just want to close with bringing us to today. You’ve mentioned early on that one of the best lessons that you got was like, learn what your focus is and don’t feel like you’ve got to spread yourself super thin and become an expert in everything. Take one thing at a time. But then you also talked about expanding your time horizon and following where your curiosity leads you. What is something today that maybe you’re not an expert in, but that you’re really interested in and excited about and want to follow your curiosity deeper into that topic?

Jason Moser: Does it necessarily have to relate to investing?

Mary Long: No.

Jason Moser: I enjoy painting watercolors and I am far from an expert. The interest, again, piqued by my father. Thanks, Dad. He’s been painting forever. When we were traveling, I initially, that kind of lit the fire in learning more. For anyone who’s ever painted watercolors, you know very quickly, it’s a hard medium to work with. It’s one that you’d never really feel like you could ever master. It can be extremely frustrating at times and it can also be the most rewarding thing at times when you like, pull a painting off and it’s exactly how you wanted it to look. That’s something I continue just to dig in and try to learn more about becoming an expert at because I have a feeling I’ll never get there, but I’m going to have fun trying.

Mary Long: This weekend, we’ve talked to a couple of different Foolish analysts and learned more about their investing journeys. But we want to hear your investing journey, too. If you’ve got an investing journey or story that you want to share with us, send us a note or even better, record a voice recording and then send it to us at [email protected]. That’s podcasts with an S at fool.com. Hope to hear from you soon. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about. The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don’t buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. I’m Mary Long. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you tomorrow.