A Motley Fool 5-Stock Sampler 10 Years Later

First up in this Rule Breaker Investing podcast is a look at our original 2015 stock sampler: "5 Stocks for the Next 5 Years," a motley mix that spanned Latin American e-commerce, rural convenience, blockbuster gaming, front-line cybersecurity, and kitchen-tech roll-ups. Longtime Fool Rick Munarriz joins as Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner's sidekick to share the what, why, and when of these stocks' march through the decade.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

A full transcript is below.

Should you invest $1,000 in Casey's General Stores right now?

Before you buy stock in Casey's General Stores, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Casey's General Stores wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $670,781!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,023,752!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,052% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 185% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of September 8, 2025

This podcast was recorded on Sept. 03, 2025.

David Gardner: Ten years ago, September 2nd, 2015, we launched our very first five stock sampler, 5 Stocks for the Next 5 Years. It was a Motley mix by design. A Latin American e-commerce upstart, a rural convenience chain that secretly sells rivers of pizza, a video game powerhouse, a cybersecurity fighter, and a kitchen tech roll up. Today, we fire up the time machine 10 years later to see what actually happened through recessions, pandemics, acquisitions, and all the surprises a decade can deliver. We'll score our returns against the S&P 500, then ask the only questions that matter. What do we get right? What do we get wrong? What may we have been missing? I've invited my side kick for this episode Rick Munarriz to bring the goods, the stories, some analysis. We'll have some numbers too. We'll talk about the lessons you could use on your next 10 year journey. Five stocks for the next five years, 10 years later. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. It's September. I have been waiting for this month for months and months because in just a couple of weeks, the book, my final stock market book, Rule Breaker Investing comes out. A book I finished around a year ago, and I've been sitting on my hands for months and months doing Page Breaker previews. September is circled on my calendar. I could not be more excited that we're finally here September 2025. Now, speaking of months ago, I also did something else a few months ago. I signaled then what we're doing this week. I told you I wanted to go back to the 30 times I picked a five stock sampler on this show, 30 times where I said, here's a theme. Here's a basket, five stocks. Let's go beat the market and learn some great lessons together. Well, as history shows, we did beat the market. Most of these samplers were picked to play a game that lasted three years. How did they do over those three years? Well, many a review of Palooza podcast, as longtime listeners will know, ensued an episode I did here to update you on the stories. The performance of those 35 stock samplers picked 10 weeks apart over nearly six years. We check in a year later, two, and then three, and then close the game down. But earlier this summer, I began to foreshadow what's going to preoccupy us about, I don't know, once every 10 weeks going forward. Which is here on Rule Breaker Investing, we're going to go back to each of those five stock samplers, the great ones, the good ones, the also-runs, and the underdogs.

We have a few of those, too. Seeing now 10 years later, that week of their 10th anniversary, that's the actual timeframe that I as a Rule Breaker investor invest for. I hope you too, 10 years. How has that five stock sampler picked 10 years ago this week? How has it done? What can we learn? That's what we're doing this week, this special week we're kicking off our first episode in my 10 years later series with my pal and longtime sidekick, Rick Munarriz. But first, as I shared at the start of this year, my 2025 book, Rule Breaker Investing is available for your preorder right now. After 30 years of stock picking, this is my magnum opus, a lifetime of lessons distilled into one definitive guide. Each week, until the book launches on September 16th, I'm sharing a random excerpt. We break open the book to a random page, and I read a few sentences. Let's do it. This is the second to last page breaker preview. It's from the finale to Part 2 of the book where we explore the six traits of Rule Breaker stocks, and I'm reflecting on this page on a list that's on the page of my seven best stock picks. It's a table reflecting the seven 100 plus baggers topped by my single greatest ever stock pick amazon.com on September 8th of 1997. My gosh, September 8th. That's this very week. In 1997, 28 years later, it was, as of my publishing date, up 1371 times.

Anyway, let me quote now from the page, and I quote, "What matters most to me about this list is making it not just imaginable but real for millions of people. Each row is special. The prices have fluctuated since the publishing date, and these stocks will go in and out of favor. Some may fall from the hundred bagger ledge, while others near but not on the list like Shopify, Salesforce or Chipotle may arrive. In the end, there is no specific magic to the number 100. Heck, I prefer 1371." That's this week's Page Breaker preview. I'm really excited to say some early reviews are starting to roll in. Igor [inaudible] does his new frontier newsletter, online he reviews investing books, and he just came out with this this week. I quote, "There's certainly no shortage of investment books on the bookshelves. Some are a waste of time, some are helpful, and there are those that define your investment principles forever. David Gardner's Rule Breaker Investing is such a book. The stories are captivating. The writing style is magnetic, and you will certainly not put it down until the last page." Thank you very much, Igor [inaudible] for that. It does make me wonder. What did I write on the last page that Igor finally threw it down? I think I'm joking. Let's move on now to the first episode of 10 Years Later where I get to welcome Rick Munarriz. Rick has been part of the Motley Fool since 1995 as a contributing writer, analyst and cheerleader. Yep, I said 1995. When not breaking down stocks. He's breaking down scenes as part of the management team for Just the Funny, Miami's oldest improv comedy, theater, Rick Munarriz welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing.

Rick Munarriz: It's great to be here, David. Thank you.

David Gardner: Thank you. It's almost silly for me to say, welcome back, Rick. Since you were there at the start, it's like welcoming somebody to their own home and saying, welcome back to the place that you helped build. It is a delight to have you join with me, Rick, and as I thought about 5 Stocks for the Next 5 Years and all the stock picking that you and I have done together, and I get to brag earlier in my excerpt from my book, I mentioned Chipotle. That was a stock you brought to Motley Fool Rule Breakers. Your work and mine have been intertwined for many years, and it's a delight, therefore, to have you kick off 10 Years Later. Every 10 weeks, we open a time capsule. A past five stock sampler hits its 10 year birthday. We're going to score each pick equal weighted from the original air date. We're going to see its return and compare it to the S&P 500 over the same span. Then we do the real work. What do we get right? What do we get wrong? Are we missing anything? Well, actually, I have on each time a Motley Fool friend to help do a lot of that work. This week, it is, of course, longtime Fool, Rick Munarriz to join me and discuss together what the decade actually taught us as investors. We finish with the samplers overall result and maybe a quick go forward view on each company. If you're new here, that's 10 Years Later. Not just keeping score, but learning how and why Rule Breakers win, and sometimes lose too. The very nature of this week's episode and really the whole episodic series is we're going back in time. It's time to get in the Rule Breaker time machine. In this case, I'm setting the date for 10 years ago this week. [MUSIC] Rick, 5 Stocks for the Next 5 Years. This first sampler picked on September 2, 2015, there was no real theme to this one looking back. Looking over these stocks, there wasn't anything that really brought them together.

Rick Munarriz: It's a collection of magic makers, game makers, and pizza makers. There's a lot of things there. If there is a threat, is that they're all exciting growth talks at the time, promising companies.

David Gardner: It's funny to think back because I think at the time, as I picked this, I wasn't necessarily saying five stock sampler or we'll do 10 of these, let alone 30 of these. I think I was just feeling like, since we've started, this is a brand new podcast, I should pick stocks from time to time. I guess it made sense to lead off with what we would call a Motley List, given that this is Motley Fool Rule Breakers as a podcast. This is five completely different companies that all had something rule breakery about them. I hope what we're going to do together, is we're just going to go through each one. We're going to talk about the company, what it does really quickly for anybody who's not acquainted. Then Rick, you're going to start making me and all of us smarter as we look back on 10 years of performance. I'm going to give the performance, you're gonna help us understand why. Sound good?

Rick Munarriz: Sounds perfect.

David Gardner: Let's get started then, Stock number 1, 5 Stocks for the Next 5 Years was, and I use that past tense intentionally, was Activision Blizzard. Ticker symbol ATVI. Now in 2015, Activision Blizzard was already the House of Call of Duty and World of Watercraft, and then it added Candy Crush, bringing billions of phone swipes into the fold. Gaming was shifting from boxed disks to always on worlds. A few mega franchises became global habits, and ATVI owned. I think it's fair to say, Rick, several of them. The decade ended with Microsoft buying the whole Arcade for $95 a share, and that's a testament to how valuable that engagement flywheel became, I think. Listening back 10 years ago, which I did take time to do, Rick. Here's what I was saying in 2015. I basically said, video games are played more than movies are watched. That that trend would extend a top tier publisher, which with at the time, a $20 billion market cap struck me as the right way to ride that secular timeshare. Rick, before I give the numbers and performance, initial thoughts from you about this company and what began happening.

Rick Munarriz: Obviously, this is a story that I like to call four weddings and a funeral. To me, Activision is a story of love, mostly matrimony not always love. Many of the biggest games had been the product of acquiring a smaller developer for Activision Blizzard. They had Tony Hawk's Pro Skater in 1999. That was never soft. That's one wedding. Infinity War, it sounds like a department store, but it was actually a game developer in 2003, gave it Call of Duty a few months after it was acquired. I guess you can call that a shotgun wedding. The third wedding was the largest. It joined forces with Vivendi Blizzard in 2008. This is the company StarCraft and World of Warcraft, as you mentioned. It was big enough deal that Activision became Activision Blizzard. All this happened before our timeline started 10 years ago. But I think it's important because these three weddings and several other smaller deals helped give Activision Blizzard a diversified arsenal across genres and platforms. In a world of fickle gamers, Activision always seems to have a franchise with a pulse. Then it made a big splash afterwards. As you mentioned Candy Crush, and that was 2016, picked up Candy Crush developer King. That's wedding number 4. But when you live by bending the knee, you also die by it. Microsoft made an offer that Activision couldn't refuse three years ago. That was just $95 a share, which is $69 billion.

Unfortunately, all cash deal took a long time to close. It was announced in January of 2022, and it didn't close till October of 2023. But again, the story for us as Activision Blizzard investors ends there, because, again, you're getting a cash payout and whether you sold out early in January when it was announced or later on, forced your hand, you were left with money and money to go somewhere else. That's the Activision Blizzard story, a company that did fairly well over the years. It's never been perfect for the video game industry. It happens all the time. Sometimes the blunders, there's delays with releases. But overall, Activision Blizzard, I think has been successful, and has always found a way to pick up something that it needed. It's on a perpetual shopping trip sometimes. Even I didn't mention RedOctane but that's how it got Guitar Hero, which is another big hit for them for a while. There are just too many weddings. It's more Elizabeth Taylor wedding streak for this company. But I'll leave the wedding talk there, but definitely a dynamic company that's unfortunately no longer available as a stand-alone company.

David Gardner: That's right. I was looking back at this. We picked again, September 2nd, 2015. I picked it at $28.37. This was a sampler that was picked for five years. Almost all of the others were just for three years. We did finally review this September 2nd of 2020, the height of the pandemic in some ways, and the company was at $83.45. As you point out, not too long after that, it got gobbled up by Microsoft at 95. The total return then for this stock was 234.9% and the S&P 500 of the exact same time, September 2nd, 2015, right through the market close October 13th of 2023. The S&P was up 118.4%. Good news, we won by 116.4 points of Alpha, i.e, we about doubled up the market, Rick. Yeah, this one is over. As you mentioned, it got cashed out. I love your four weddings and a funeral analogy. I still enjoy Activision Blizzard games, but it's now Microsoft.

Rick Munarriz: It's come a long way again. I didn't know that the origin of the name is actually the four developers, that four gamers, they got active and television and merged that together to be Activision. Their very first big hit, which sold four million copies was Pitfall on the Atari. My eventual wife, before we met each other, that was our favorite Atari game. It was very different than all the other Atari games. But then again, everything else is obviously bigger than life. But it's sad to see it gone. Definitely one of my favorite video game stocks in video game companies that now because it's such a large company like Microsoft, I don't feel so financially invested in tracking it anymore.

David Gardner: Those are the particulars. Yes, as you pointed out, Rick, it's impossible to still own Activision Blizzard. It did not convert its shares into Microsoft. I guess somebody who knew Satya Nadella was going to be as awesome as he has been may have just bought Microsoft with their Activision Blizzard shares. But for this sampler and for this stock, Rick, we concluded it eight years in. It didn't get to play through to today. I think for each of these stocks, we should draw just a couple of lessons or observations, losing the trees and just forest level thinking about why, in this case, Rick Munarriz, why did Activision Blizzard work? The stock tripled, doubled out the market's average over 10 years, why?

Rick Munarriz: I think Activision Blizzard, they were able to build out a catalog that the original four founders of the company would have never been able to do on their own. They found what they needed. They built an empire that gamers of all ages, across all platforms, no matter what you're holding in your hands, or what you're watching on your TV, you can integrate yourself in the Activision Blizzard universe, and they made that work. That made the company very attractive to investors and ultimately very attractive to Microsoft.

David Gardner: Thank you, and I also want to say about the company, I liked the CEO. He was a controversial figure. Often video gamers don't love the CEOs of the companies that they buy their games from. They think they're greedy, capitalist, pigs or I'm not even sure. At different points, Bobby Kotick was maybe more or less popular. I always thought he was a great entrepreneur. I try to see the business side of things as I play the video games, and I liked everything that I saw. He was really, in many ways, the founder. He bought this company, I think, early on and really managed it all the way through to huge value creation over time. I met him once. I wrote an essay or two about that. I'm a Bobby Kotick fan. He actually makes an appearance in Money Ball, the movie with Brad Pitt, Bobby Kotick makes a cameo as the owner of the Oakland Athletics early on in that movie, fun fact. But I sometimes will want to call out at a forest level who is running this thing. Often they're admirable people, whether they have controversy in their lives, Elon Musk or not, they're great value creators. That's another thought I have about Activision Blizzard. Also, it's a fun stock to follow if you are a gamer, because you're buying something that you really know very well. For me, Rick, it's a lot more fun buying video game stock than a B2B SaaS company stock. I guess I should throw that in too.

Rick Munarriz: It's like Peter Lynch by what you know.

David Gardner: A lovely note to end on. That was Stock number 1. We're going through these alphabetically. That's as they were presented 10 years ago this week. Rick, let's move on to Stock number 2. Now for something completely different, as I think the Monty Python crew once said, because really, each of these stocks takes us in a new direction. Stock number 2, alphabetically, is Casey's General Stores. Ticker symbol CASY. I'm going to use the present tense for this one, because it didn't get bought out, taken off the market. Casey's looks like a gas station until you notice half the town shows up for the pizza. Yes, really. Over the decade, the chain quietly upgraded kitchens, apps, and loyalty. It turned its fill up and go into fill up, eat, and come back tomorrow. It's the Midwestern compounding story, small towns, good food, steady service, repeat business, Casey's General Stores. Why did I pick it, Rick? I think it's because I saw the time we had a pre existing recommendation for this and most of our sampled stocks. The reason they are samplers is because these were existing picks already, often at lower cost basis. But Casey's by this point, 2015 was the number 5 seller of pizza nationwide. But it's a convenience store, and it was only operating in less than 1/3 of the United States. A quirky, under followed growth runway hiding, I would say, in plain sight. Rick, as you've looked over this story, what's jumped out to you about Casey's?

Rick Munarriz: I walked away with three big reasons why this seemingly sleepy convenience store operator that you and I are admitting is a convenience store operator is crushing the market over the past decade. The first reason is expansion.

Rick Munarriz: They had 1,888 corporate stores 10 years ago. Today, it's 2,658. Not a huge jump in expansion. It built some from scratch, but mostly it buys chains in highly fragmented sectors. This is that kind of space. Then with expansion comes scalability, so you have this ability to grow. There's still potential. Earlier this year, it just opened its first store in Texas. It's 17 states.

David Gardner: That's amazing on its own, Rick, that they're only just now opening in Texas.

Rick Munarriz: Yes. Where you think Casey's pi originated from, but no, they just got there now.

David Gardner: In a lot of ways, Rick, even now, I look at it and say, Is this really a rule breaker stock? I think in general, it's not really a rule-breaker stock. But then again, Motley Fool rule breakers, the service or stock advisor for which I picked the stock, not always shooting for pure rule breakers all the time. But what we were looking for or some of the dynamics that some rule breakers have. For example, I can't say, Rick, this is a top dog and first mover in an important emerging industry. I can't say that, but I can say it has strong consumer appeal, which is trait Number 5 of rule breaker stocks. It's not necessarily a world-known brand. I sure isn't in parts of the US, people have never heard of Casey's, but in parts of the US that have they know and appreciate. It has a strong consumer appeal. It's not just the convenience or even the gas. It's the pizza, etc. I think that's worth pointing out often, even when a stock like this one doesn't feel like a true rule breaker, it's still a stock I'd recommend and love to have in my portfolio. Let's look at the numbers. Are we glad we had this one? Well, you did mention market crushing, and as of this week, 10 years later, having picked the stock at $104 and 80 cents, 10 years ago, it's now up to $495, 14 cents. That is more than a four-bagger. It's up 373%. The market up 223%. Now, the figure for the market is a little bit different than what I just presented for Activision Blizzard. Of course, because Activision Blizzard got pulled off the market back in October of 2023, when the S&P had overall returned 118%, but all four of the other stocks we're talking about this week, Rick, are being measured against the S&P 500 return over the last 10 years of 223.2%. We're just going to round, though, so yeah, Casey's 373 to the markets 223, about 150% point out performance, Rick. As we look over that one together now, again, forest level, big picture insights, why has Casey's quadrupled over the last decade crushing the market averages?

Rick Munarriz: I covered expansion. The second reason it's changing with the times. A decade ago, a Casey's General Stores was reporting same store cigarette sales. I'm not making that up. I looked up, like, their 2014 reports, and they're like, same store cigarette sales are up 7%. That's what convenience stores were at that time. You probably, even if you've never been to a Casey's, to me, it would pass a snap test if you lived in a rural community that depends on this. But even through the more mainstream the WoW was, the buckis of the world, that are these convenience stores that are just iconic, that's what Casey's is at that level. Again, you're talking about the pizza. This is a company that not only their favorite pizza, the quality of their coffee is something that they profess front and center. They've changed from a store that is just it's a gas station. That's the appeal. That's why you get there. That's actually my third reason, I'll just tie him as it dives right in there that it's no longer a pump play. A decade ago, the financial results would actually lead with gasoline business, how it's doing, cigarette sales, and then dive into the rest of the store. Fuel was the big draw to Casey's. That's not so much the case now. It's still important case for Casey's. But the gross profit for its inside the store business. That's everything else outside of gas is now nearly double its fuel business for the gross profit.

David Gardner: That is beautiful, and thank you for pointing that out. Companies that become increasingly relevant to their customers, when they add new possibilities, new ways to do business, some of those go away, Rick, cigarette sales, probably, I hope, not as big as they were 10 years ago. But the company just adding and augmenting its offerings for its dedicated customer base, a great sign of good management and solid steady growth, which is often all it takes over a 10 year period for a company to be a great investment. I was looking back as we closed out the Lollapalooza for this five years ago, because we said, after all, five stocks for the next five years, Casey's was actually a loser to the market. It was up 73%. The market at the time was up 81%. As we said goodbye to this sampler five years ago, I was having to say, Alas, Casey's has underperformed. What a disappointment, but we still believe in it. I'm really delighted now over a more meaningful time period, 10 years to reflect in this stock that is now more than a four-bagger. Sometimes, Rick, admittedly, we closed out, like during the pandemic, when things weren't great at different points. You can imagine Casey's probably wasn't as great a business in 2020 as it is in 2025. But isn't it nice to see companies come back and become world beaters in years 6-10?

Rick Munarriz: Definitely in this case, as terrible as the COVID pandemic was, it probably helped and basically emboldened people to, hey, this is our place that we can drive to and get a pizza because we're done with blue apron or whatever we're doing at home and go out and get something local, safe and eat. Help them become a bigger part of the community. Definitely, it's obviously the last five years have worked out pretty well for Casey's shareholders.

David Gardner: Let's move on to stock Number 3, and now for something completely different. In this case, it's not just a different business Rick. It's a different direction on the performance of the stock. Well, we'll talk about that. Stock Number 3 was FireEye. Ticker symbol FEYE. Again, we're doing this alphabetically. That's how I presented them, so FireEye. But over the course of 10 years, it took on a different name through a merger and then got merged out altogether. Today, it's part of a little company named Alphabet, ticker symbol GOOG. The return I'm giving carries it forward all the way through. If you 10 years ago this week bought my five stock sampler and owned some FireEye, your cost basis was $37 and 47 cents. I'm going to say in a little while, Rick, it's done and why. But first, some top-of-mind thoughts about cybersecurity, FireEye, 2015.

Rick Munarriz: The big lesson here is that business model surfing is not for the timid. This is a company that was in the right place in the right time. Obviously, cybersecurity is a big deal, and they basically were the leader, one of the leaders, the original breach detection hardware appliance business, which seemed to be an exciting place to be. While FireEye is a compound word, as you and I will eventually get to, it was not much of a compounder.

David Gardner: That is true. Not long after it got bought up merged with Mandiant, and threats are escalating. Cybersecurity started as nuisance-level stuff back in the day and became more nation-state stuff. That was true even 10 years ago, but Mandiant brought forensics and Intel. It was the company that you would bring in on speed dial when something had gone wrong to figure out more afterward what exactly happened. But, Rick, as history will show, Google ultimately bought Mandiant and folded that expertise into its own Cloud offerings. In some ways, we could say, this was proof the good guys business, which is always what I think about cybersecurity. I think I was saying 10 years ago, on this fairy podcast that week, the good guys always outnumber the bad guys, which I profoundly believe in this world, and that's good news for optimists, because it means it's really a tiny percentage of people who are really trying to mess with your cyber. I prefer the good guys' side of everything. In this case, this is the good guys' side of the business, but value accrues differently. Sometimes, Rick, based on business models, as you mentioned, so though I love the space and I love the mission, and it felt like a front-line operator in a market with I think we say non-negotiable demand, sometimes surprise demand at different points. This one didn't play out great.

Rick Munarriz: No, it didn't and here you have a company, again, it shifted its miles when it picked up Mandiant. I said, we're going to move away. They're still doing hardware more of a subscription-based cloud business that you and I have seen great companies take that model and make it work. They didn't, and basically sold its parts for scrap. It sold the original FireEye business for $1.2 billion, took that private. Then, half a year after rebranding itself as Mandiant that's when the Google Alphabet deal happened, $5.4 billion, again, all all-cash deal, and that was it. Again, it was at the right place. If you had a basket of 10 cybersecurity stocks about 10 years ago, you would probably have a much bigger basket today. But unfortunately, this one just did not work out. It couldn't navigate through the times.

David Gardner: Thank you very much, Rick, because it's on me to put the final numbers on things, I want to make sure I'm very clear here. That cost basis for FireEye of $37 and 47 cents 10 years ago, we have to adjust that for what happened. I'm going to give you the official numbers very shortly. I do want to mention that Mandiant purchase was in 2021. That was after the end of the review of Lollapalooza for these five stocks for the next five years. In fact, it was still FireEye when we last talked about it five years ago, this week on this podcast, and it had gone from 37.5-15, so it was down 59%. The market at the same time was up 81%. This was the obvious clunker loser, which sadly, it remains now five years after that with its 10-year return, but at least it's now moving with Alphabet stock. Here are the overall numbers in a somewhat complex situation. If you had bought FireEye stock with us ten years ago today, you would have an effective cost basis in Alphabet today of $182 and 10 cents, 182. Google is just over 211 right now. The overall investment, just buying and holding FireEye and rolling it into Mandiant, and then taking your Google money, including half payoffs of cash at different points. If you just held it all the way through, you're up. Yeah, 16% on the dot. 16%, Rick, over 10 long years. You were down 59% at one point, so it's been a comeback story. But unfortunately, as I already mentioned, the market's up 223%, so 16 doesn't even hold a candle to the market's overall performance. This is an obvious loser and obvious dud. Rick, what did I get wrong? What could I have done better here?

Rick Munarriz: David, if you want frank advice in retrospect, then we can all be geniuses here, you could have cut out the middleman and done a lot better. You bought Alphabet as a seven-bagger over the past ten years. Just get to the story, get to the finish line, and do that 10 years earlier, and it would have been great. But I don't think anyone could blame you for picking FireEye at the time. Everything was right about the bullish thesis. It just failed the execution, and others got better, while it just basically was not able to put the pieces together in time.

David Gardner: I think it's worth saying, as well, thank you, Rick, in some ways, forgiving me. I feel slightly better, but not still great on this one. I think there's something to say about an industry. Like, I had profound belief that cybersecurity was going to be a growth industry for the rest of our lives. I feel the same way today. It might be that in an AI world, we start safetying up things more. Maybe the AIs start figuring out how to make it less catastrophic or threatening the world of cybersecurity. Maybe cybersecurity declines at some point, but I don't see that point anytime soon. I feel as if we had the important emerging industry part right, but this really was never the top dog or first mover. It was a player within the industry. If there's a lesson here, maybe it's Dave, stick with your top dogs and first movers a little bit more. Or sometimes, Rick, maybe I should just ditch the industry altogether and buy Alphabet.

Rick Munarriz: Sounds good.

David Gardner: Yes, that's the total accounting then for stock Number 3, FireEye/Mandiant/Alphabet, up 16%, the market crushing it up 223% 10 years later. Let's move on to stock Number 4. Stock Number 4 was Mercado Libre ticker symbol MELI. I think you can think of Mercado Libre as Latin America's buy sell ship pay superail. It's a marketplace on the front end. It's got payments and credit in your pocket, logistics humming in the background. So what began as the Amazon/eBay of Latin America, which is how I was talking about it 10 years ago, has become the Amazon of the Amazon, as a friend of mine recently said. It's got bots in every direction, Mercado Pago, Envios sub businesses that are very similar to what Amazon does at global scale elsewhere. Volatile headlines, Rick Munarriz, steady mission, though. Volatile stock at different points. I know we'll talk about that. But ultimately, I was saying this in 2015, if you could have owned Amazon or eBay in the 1990s, that's where Latin America was, I said, 10 years ago. This was a $5 billion market cap. If you could have bought Amazon or eBay in the 90s at a $5 billion market cap, I think you would have loved to do so. That's how it felt to me, Rick. Now, I am not a native speaker of the language, Spanish; you are. You have a lot more association, I think, with this company. You've followed it carefully over the years. What have you seen that explains the fantastic outperformance that I will later reveal about stock Number 4?

Rick Munarriz: I think you've seen, again, it started with just that one verb. Just shopping, e-commerce, and that was fine. But the revenue mix has changed dramatically as it adds new offerings and different segments that had different ghost trajectories. E-commerce is still a force there. Ten years ago, its gross value of merchandise that was selling was double the payments it was processing, which is Mercado Pago, is payment platform. Today, it's completely different. Today, again, the e-commerce is still doing well, still much larger now, but Mercado Pago payment platform is generating four times the gross merchandise volume on the e-commerce end. You just don't settle for just putting your foot in the door. Mercado Libre has used its brand and reputation in Latin America to expand it to fulfillment, credit cards, trading marketplaces, loans, and all other products and related services. They've been able to take advantage of their leadership in one position, and it's the online company that people trust in that region and just expand it over time. It's been obviously very, very successful, as we'll get to soon. Thank you, and we will get to those numbers. Can't wait to share them very shortly. Have to mention Marcos Galperin because he has been a fantastic founder/CEO over the years. I don't think he's quite as active right now, but he is the genius behind this company, and like I called out in a good way, Bobby Kotick earlier for doing a great job building a company over decades that create a lot of value and had products and services, I appreciate it. I'm not an active buyer from Mercado Libre myself, Rick, but I know how many people are, and Galperin has been a genius-level CEO for this company. Definitely an underrated global CEO, because I think most people don't know that name, but now at a $122 billion market gap and counting, I'm going to say, Rick, we can clearly see we had a great CEO and founder.

Rick Munarriz: Again, just the 10 years and we're not even getting to the returns, but just the business. Net income has risen 20-fold since the end of 2014. Revenue has soared 40-fold. You don't see that too often. That's what you saw got in Mercado Libre. Hopefully, it got us some good returns.

David Gardner: It did. Our cost basis was $109 and 94 cents 10 years ago this week. Most recently, it's at 2,384. This stock picked 10 years ago is now a 21-bagger up 2,069%. The market, as we know, is up 2023. We pretty much destroyed market averages with this stock. As you and I talked offline beforehand, Rick, I could have picked four -100% losers alongside this one stock, and we would have a market crusher. Now, Rick, it's never our goal at the Motley Fool to pick bad stocks. Every one of these five, I picked with promise, and I couldn't have known ahead of time which one would win or lose or by how much. Boy, am I glad I opened my mouth and said Mercado Libre 10 years ago this week?

Rick Munarriz: Especially with this list, where two of the first three left us basically tooth fairy money under our pillow and moved on.

David Gardner: Here you have a Galileo saying, "Hey, you know what? Look what's under the tree." It is the situation where it's always good to have this heavy hitter, a cleanup hitter as your fourth pick. It is worth mentioning, Rick, as an active member of our Motley Fool Rule Breakers team. You already know this, but if you look up and down the history of the Motley Fool Rule Breakers Service launched in October of 2004, and you ask, what has been the greatest stock pick we ever made thus far at Motley Fool Rule Breakers, the answer is not Tesla. Tesla has been a total home run stock for Motley Fool Rule Breakers, and that even includes some of the downside we've seen. Some people don't like Elon Musk these days. I remain an Elon fan as a business follower and an investor, but you might think that Tesla, given that it is up 159 times in value for us since 2011, would have been our best stock ever for Rule Breakers, but no, it's Mercado Libre. The stock is up from its $14 cost basis in 2009. I think this is worth calling out as a lesson, Rick. That means that when I picked it 10 years ago this week, that was six years and way higher than we had it from our original cost basis. Our original cost basis is 14, but here we were 10 years ago, Rick, saying, we like it at 109. That is one of the more important lessons I could possibly share with you this week or any other, which is, what do winners do, Rick Munarriz?

Rick Munarriz: They keep winning.

David Gardner: They keep winning. Not every time. Not all the time, and not every one. But in general, that has been my experience. One of the things I love about the 5 Stock Sampler, the ones that worked out, and I even love it about the ones that didn't. Because I love all my children. But I love that we're constantly demonstrating adding to winners when many other people just say, I missed Apple. I'll never buy Apple or Amazon because I just missed. That's not the right mindset. Am I right?

Rick Munarriz: You're never going to catch them all to throw Pokémon thing in there. But you are getting these situations where one great pick is all you need to basically create life altering wealth.

David Gardner: Thank you for that. That certainly was true of this stock for this sampler. We're going to move to the final stock, which is not really a winner. It's a fire eye retread, so we're moving from the some of the peak of what was achievable 10 years ago, much lower into a valley. Of course, I'll be providing the overall numbers a little bit later, we'll also share, Rick, a little bit later, what we think of these stocks now. We'll have a little banter around that. But let's go to Stock Number 5 now from the sublime, if you will, not quite ridiculous, but Middleby was the fifth stock in five stocks for the next five years. The ticker symbol M-I-D-D Middleby, rolling up the gear behind your favorite restaurants. The ovens, the friars, the smart kitchen tech that makes cooks faster and food more consistent. Middleby, over many years, has been a winning company and a winning stock. Many Motley Fool members have owned some Middleby at some point. I picked it 10 years ago this week as part of five stock mix. Rick, it leaned into upgrades and efficiency. But this stock, I might as well give the numbers out right now since I've already hinted at them. It was at $107.47, 10 years ago this week. Today, it's at $136.70 or so cents, meaning it's up 27%. It is up over a long, dynamic, remarkable decade, and yet, Rick, 27% returned over 10 years is just way behind the market averages. Before I ask you why? Why has this stock underperformed so badly? Let me just first open it up with any general thoughts that you have about Middleby.

Rick Munarriz: I think Middleby. To me, again, you an they're a corporate hoarder. I counted the tiles on their brands page. I'm sure it's written somewhere, but I like to count sometimes. [laughs] It has 127 brands in its arsenal. Most of them were actually acquisitions or part of an acquisition, so it's been doing that for the whole run. To me, the most impressive thing out of the whole thing was, you've already gotten to how it's been a disappointment the past 10 years. The previous 10 years, with the same strategy, same acquiring, same growth, it was a 10 bagger, basically 2005-2015, and then this time around, its decade.

David Gardner: The stock, which I'd picked a couple of times in 2013 for Rule Breaker members, a couple of years before selecting it for this sampler, it was a monster winner for a little while there. I'm not going to go back and check the stock grafts or the numbers, but it was arcing higher and higher. It has to be the case that the departure of longtime CEO Salim Basle, longtime friend of the fool, Salim has attended Motley Fool events. He was briefly on our board. He is a wonderful, a highly entrepreneurial CEO who went on to be hired by six flags, which had its own recent merger, but Salim left Middleby. That's probably a factor in this 10 year performance.

Rick Munarriz: It could be the jump the Shark moment. There are other factors, too, but obviously, he was the one who was able to put all the pieces together. He's the one that acquired Viking to get into the residential side, all the food processing and stuff. Eighty one percent of their business is commercial food service and processing, and the balance is residential, so it's basically what you're talking about mostly restaurants and institutions. I think what held it back at least these last years, there were some macro issues. You have a case where restaurants struggling right now and folks are working from home now very often. The old commissaries that used to have to hire a lot of people, go through a lot of food, go through a lot of equipment, don't have to do that, so that's happening that. On the residential side, again, if you've priced the Viking appliance and all of some of the other appliances, they're not cheap. Right now with the real estate market the way it is, there's not a lot of activity, so a lot of people moving or up and I guess on the front burner of both these issues is the interest rates. Again, Middleby does know a thing or two about front burners, so that's why I use that is the high borrowing costs. It costs a lot of money you restaurant to finance these purchases. As consumers, it costs a lot of money to move and much less upgrade your homes now a lot more than they were 5, 7, 10 years ago. I think all this factored into stock that the company's still growing. It's still acquiring, still making the right moves, but not appreciating as an investment.

David Gardner: I feel a little bit disconnected from this one, Rick, as you know, I retired from stock picking for the Molly Fool four years ago. I'm not keeping up with everything all the time in the same way. Some stocks I do keep up with on a regular basis. My winners, in particular, like Mercado Libre. But Middleby, just looking now over the last year or so, just bouncing around 140. Some of the time it's been up to 170 briefly, dropped as low as 120. Not a particularly exciting company, Market Cap Game Show. I probably wouldn't win this if I were on my own game show, just $6.9 billion today. A company that has some treasured brands like Viking and a pretty storied history. This was a monster stock from the early 2000 when I think my brother first picked it for Hidden Gems, a real monster stock, but it's almost faded into investor awareness. I'm not going to say obscurity, but in the same way, most people never really knew the brand Middleby and knew some of those 127 other brands better, that feels like how the stock has made its own movement more and more toward obscurity here in recent years.

Rick Munarriz: I think if you look at the last 10 years, revenue and earnings have doubled over the past 10 years, which is reasonable. It's definitely a lot better than the stock chart. If you like, wait. The stocks up 20 some percent and the revenue and earnings are up, more than doubled, you could say, it trades out a lower revenue and earnings multiple now, but it doesn't mean that it's cheaper. I think that's an important point because to me, even though the multiples are lower and it's textbook cheaper, the growth expectations are different now. I think you're seeing it. This is a company that 10 years ago, nine of the 10 previous years in that great decade that I was talking about earlier, double digit growth. It's had two years of double digit growth over the last six or seven years. It growth has slowed now for the company.

David Gardner: That was quite a trip through time. That's what we do on this episodic series 10 Years Later for our 5 Stock Samplers. Let's now say goodbye to our time machine, return to the present. Rick, thank you again for bringing a lot of the stories and developments behind these companies. I've been getting to rock the numbers, and that's what I'm going to now do to close off our discussion around 5 Stocks for the next five years, 10 years later. When you blend together the S&P 500 returns of these 5 Stocks, four of them were identical. Two hundred and twenty three percent, but you also have to mix in that 118% for the prematurely concluded pick of Activision Blizzard, you end up with a blended S&P 500 return of 202.6%. As we record here, the afternoon near market close Tuesday, September 2, 2025. The market, Rick up 203%, these stocks, taken together as a basket, up 544.1% really couldn't have known it or guaranteed at the time, really happy to know that the very first 5 Stock Sampler we ever picked that was saying for the next five years has gone on. When we did this five years ago, by the way, it was up 237 to the markets 81. We're now up 544 to the markets 203. Without being cocky here, that's what I expect. I think with the passage of time, our 5 Stock Samplers will look better and better. Some of them will never look good. This one, Rick, does look a lot better than five years ago. As we draw to conclusion here, I want to do two things. First, any overall reflections you and I have about what we can learn from this group of 5 Stocks or from this overall experiment of 5 Stock Samplers, anything you want to share there, I'll do a little bit too. Then, second, I think we should talk about these 5 Stocks. Do you still like it today What do you think about that stock today? You ready?

Rick Munarriz: Yes, let's do this.

David Gardner: I'm going to kick us off with one overall thought and that is CEOs matter. I think, looking back here, the single biggest stock that on its own, pulled all of them up to the mountaintop had a fantastic entrepreneurial CEO who is highly invested in the company still is and with it all the way through. I talked about Bobby Kotick behind another of the winners, and then one of the losers, we lost our visionary CEO. In a world where too many people, I think, are looking at stock charts, or just the zigs and zags from one day to the next, I hope you and I, Rick, you've always gotten this that we distinguish ourselves as Rule Breakers by caring deeply about the character and vision and overall ability of the people running the companies themselves. That at a 10 year forest level view, seems important to me.

Rick Munarriz: Invest in people and then companies, probably in that order sometimes. It is sometimes a worthwhile strategy. My takeaway, I'm going to go with a deeper cut. I'm going to say, learn to embrace the buyouts. Because I think as an investor, when you're buying disruptive stocks, and David, you know all about this. You probably have a running list. I don't. How many Rule Breakers have been acquired over the time? It's a lot. You're a disruptive company. You're basically advertising to much larger companies, and we saw this happen in basically 40% of the stocks in this list from 10 years ago. Well, they didn't work out the way you wanted to, necessarily, you get a nice little premium. Every time that I have a stock that I own and it gets bought out, I'm like, no, but the runway was so much longer. But, you know what? Just get off, hop on a different plane. You have the money, you have the proceeds. Go enjoy that trip, where the runway may be long.

David Gardner: Rick, you as a continuing member of our Motley Fool Rule Breakers team picking stocks month in and month out, you know, I do, too. There's always another stock coming. There's always another train or plane about to leave the depot or the airport. There are always more opportunities. In fact, I think there will be more Rule Breakers born over the next 20 years than were over the last 20 years because technology its keep speeding up and getting more interesting with new possibilities. I appreciate that point about the buyouts. I generally like UIC root against my companies being bought out. I love that Amazon didn't get bought out by Walmart at some point. I think we made a lot more money that Walmart never could or did buy Amazon, but, Activision Blizzard probably is doing OK with Microsoft. I know one thing Marvel did pretty well with Disney. In some ways, I still wish we had Marvel stock. In other ways, it does diversify and make the stock safer when it gets acquired, and there's always another stock coming. Maybe one more quick thought for me, maybe one more from you, Rick, before we go to the, what do we think of these stocks today? Conversation. My quick thought is, it's an obvious forest level thought here, but one stock on its own beat all the others, and one stock on its own made the other four irrelevant. It's very hard to do that in any near term time frame, like a year or three years or even five years, but it's not uncommon over 10 years.

That's the level we're looking at today. I don't think there are many investing podcasts out there that have 10 years of results that they're reviewing this week. I think most people just don't think or act that long, but that's what we do. Just to observe that Mercado Libre could go up more than 20 times in value and make everything else picked in this 5 Stock Sampler, irrelevant almost. Is its own key lesson. As I've often said, Rick, the only way you'll ever get a 20 bagger, or a 100 bagger, or a 1371 bagger, is if you let it become that in your portfolio. I think a lot of people either don't think that could even happen or just wouldn't let it because of their own, I would say, instinct sometimes too short term, more of a trading instinct than an investing instinct. Rick, that's another takeaway I have from this one remarkable stock. Three of them of the five beat the market, by the way, and that's good. That's usually higher than my average, I think. But the key Rule Breaker lesson takeaway to me is, let that winner win.

Rick Munarriz: Don't stop at a 19 bagger. Keep going.

David Gardner: [laughs] Rick, let's just briefly talk about these companies today. Not all of them are even still public. Although if you embrace the idea that Activision Blizzard is now Microsoft and FireEye is now Alphabet, there are five stocks. We can talk briefly about which of these is like a stock that you would really favor today just as much maybe as 10 years ago.

Rick Munarriz: The value investor, you would say, Middleby, it's 18 times trailing earnings. That's a good multiple for a historic company. Or Casey's, there's a dividend, you spell pizza when you walking through the doors. I'm going to stick with Mercado Libre again. We're not going to punish a 22 bagger. It would be a big mistake. I think that's my favorite of the five, at least of the three that are still run but if I had to pick a second one, I'm intrigued by Middleby, but Casey's just seems to have that right thing, and just the fact that again, there are only 17 states in this country. I think there's still room for them to grow. Valuations a little of a concern to me. It's a little richly valued, but that's been the worst reason not to buy a stock in my experience in the past. But Mercado Libre is right supreme for me.

David Gardner: Thank you for that. As a fellow Rule Breaker, of course, have to agree with the point you just made. Thank you for that. I also love Mercado Libre today. It's one of my larger personal holdings. Just as I said, what if you could have bought eBay or Amazon at $5 billion in the 1990s? I was saying in 2015, you can with Mercado Libre. I love it at $122 billion today. I think that global capitalism is going to be on the rise. I think more and more people are going to come out of poverty and be able as middle class people to afford more and goods and services. I think Latin America is one of the safer, more beautiful parts of the world. There are some bad thoughts about economics in some of those countries, but even for a company that does some business in Argentina and Venezuela, this is a company that somehow has navigated an interesting, sometimes difficult political atmosphere and just keeps creating value, so I also love Mercado Libre. Here, obviously, my money is where my mouth. I think I like Alphabet, maybe second most. It's such an innovative company. It's such a pure Rule Breaker. Now that my FireEye became Alphabet, I would still be holding that. Certainly in my own portfolio, I do own some alphabet, as well. Do you own any Alphabet, Rick?

Rick Munarriz: I do. Yes. It's not one of my largest holdings, but I've always had a little bit of Alphabet, dating back from the original Google Days, yes.

David Gardner: Very nice. I think that's true probably for a lot of our listeners, as well, and got to love Casey's General Stores. It's the energizer bunny in a portion of the country, just keeps cranking. I like the brand. I think Casey's will be better known 10 years from now than it is today for reasons that we've sort of elucidated. There's a little bit of a future look at some of these companies. Your mileage, dear listener may vary. I want to thank Rick Munarriz for taking the time to jump into the time machine with me and get back to the 2015 week this week, 10 years ago, where these five stocks were picked and for Rick and me, to be able to sort through them together this week with you, fellow Fool and talk about what worked, what didn't, what we can learn, that's what we're trying to do on this podcast now in its 11th year itself we'll be doing our next 10 years later right about 10 weeks from now. It'll be mid November. Five Lesser Known Rule Breakers was the name of that 5 Stock Sampler. In the meantime, I want to thank our producer, Bart Shannon. I want to thank my special guest, Rick Munarriz. We want to thank you for tuning in to a discussion of, to me, the game that counts the most investing and investing over the only term that counts, the long term, how much fun it is to think back over 10 years, listen and learn. Rick, thanks a lot.

Rick Munarriz: Thank you, David.

David Gardner: Fool on.

David Gardner has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, MercadoLibre, and Middleby. Rick Munarriz has positions in Alphabet and Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Intel, MercadoLibre, Microsoft, Middleby, Salesforce, Shopify, and eBay. The Motley Fool recommends Casey's General Stores and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short August 2025 $24 calls on Intel, short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft, short November 2025 $21 puts on Intel, and short September 2025 $60 calls on Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.