How Grandpa Rock’s $2 Bets Inspired a New Way to Beat the Market

BY LANDON SWAN, FOUNDER, LIKEFOLIO

See that family snapshot below? That’s where it all started.

It was taken in 1989 at Ellis Park in Henderson, Kentucky – one of the oldest racetracks in America.

That’s me in the middle, making the “We’re No. 1” sign for the camera.

My older brother, Andy, is the tall boy to my left. Mom is behind me. Dad, in the striped yellow sports shirt, towers just off her shoulder.

Then there’s Grandpa Rock, the proud guy in the middle with the hat, suspenders, and pocket protector.

My brother and I grew up in the small town of Evansville, Indiana. Our childhood was pretty normal, with one exception: Grandpa Rock owned racehorses.

This often took us out to the racetrack, about a 30-minute drive from home. Some of my best boyhood memories are of the trips we took to the 1.125-mile thoroughbred track at Ellis Park.

My parents always gave Andy and me $2 to bet – with an important condition attached. We had to bet on Grandpa’s horse. But we could pick whether it was to win, place, or show.

I was only nine. But it introduced me to the concept of risk versus reward. It ignited a love affair with statistics, probabilities, forecasting, and handicapping that would prove useful for trading the stock market as well as betting at the track.

And it was the inspiration for the consumer insights engine that Andy and I went on to create to help regular investors get an edge over the market.

It spots the products, brands, and companies gaining momentum on Main Street before they become news on Wall Street. And it does that by capturing and analyzing millions of consumer data points from across the web every single day. This includes:

Social media posts on X, Reddit, YouTube, and Google
Company-level web traffic trends and app usage
Search trends and AI queries

In one day, it processed 1,230,030 items – from Reddit alone. That’s nearly 30 million data points a month… from just one of its data sources.

Whenever a consumer takes to the internet to talk about or search for a product, our data engine captures it in real time.

All that data gets tracked back to publicly traded stocks you can invest in. And our system distills it all into a simple 0 to 100 Social Heat Score telling us where the next big opportunities lie. (The higher, the better.)

This gives us and our subscribers an “X-ray” view into consumer trends related to hundreds of publicly traded companies.

Over the past 12 months, it’s been on fire. We’re talking about wins like:

92% on digital ad specialist Magnite (MGNI)
145% on online learning provider Stride (LRN)
461% on under-the-radar nuclear player Oklo (OKLO)
556% on trading platform Robinhood Markets (HOOD)

And that’s not me cherry-picking. The open positions in our model portfolio currently show an average gain of 83%.

But as hot as this strategy has been, it’s about to get hotter. That’s thanks an exciting new collaboration with a 45-year Wall Street veteran known as the “King of Quants.”

We’ve been hard at work testing the resulting strategy. And over the past five years, we found it could have identified a stock that goes on to double, on average, every six trading days.

All told, during that five-year span, you could have doubled your money more than 240 times using this strategy.

I’ll get into more details today – including how you can take one part of this new strategy for a test drive.

First, a little more on the career path Andy and I took, inspired by our times with Grandpa Rock at the Kentucky races… and how it led us here today.

Recommended Link

Have you seen this man on TV this week?

He’s been all over CNBC with his latest findings that Nvidia, Amazon and Tesla are ticking time bombs in investors’ portfolios. He’s a futurist known for making contrarian and highly accurate calls over the past 30+ years. Today, he’s sharing the three stocks positioned to take over as the tech kingpins of tomorrow. Get his full “Sell This, Buy That” list right here.

How a Twitter Feed Became a Forecast Engine

Since growing up on the racetrack together, Andy and I have always been inseparable.

We got our undergrad degrees together at Bellarmine University. When we weren’t studying, we were holed up in our shared dorm room trading penny stocks.

The one exception was when Andy headed to Boston University to pursue a law degree. Luckily for me, it didn’t take long for him to remember his real calling: investing.

As it turns out, Andy had his own love affair with statistics, probability, and risk versus reward. Growing up on the racetrack will do that to you.

He ditched the lawyer path to help me start our first fintech venture. We went on to found two more successful startups – a video streaming service for traders and an online financial services startup that created an exclusive Twitter stream for investors.

And it was there, among millions of social media posts and meme chatter, where we had our Eureka moment.

We saw regular, everyday people constantly posting on social media about the brands they bought or intended to buy next. They’d talk about how they felt about them… whether they’d buy again… or recommend them to a friend.

So we listened.

We found a way to use that data to forecast the sales of the companies they were buzzing about online.

And we watched as consumer insights on social media spiked – and sales followed suit. Over and over again.

The light bulb went off. The link between social media chatter and buying intent was clear.

We founded our LikeFolio research firm in 2013 to bring our data engine to life…

We secured an endorsement from Georgetown University with a study that proved our technology could “predict” future outcomes…

And we teamed up with TradeSmith to bring our insights to everyday investors just like yourself.

Over the last five years, it’s delivered 26 double-your-money or more wins to our subscribers – all by looking for stocks with three common factors:

Strong consumer demand
High consumer happiness
Macro trend tailwinds

But our drive to sharpen our edge never stopped. And we’re glad it didn’t. Because it led us to the “ultimate” stock strategy I mentioned up top.

What Comes Next Is Even Bigger

“What comes next?” is a question Andy and I have gotten into the habit of asking ourselves regularly.

We’re always pushing ourselves to make our system smarter, better, and more profitable for our subscribers.

And when we met Louis Navellier, the answer became clear. He has, hands down, one of the best track records of any we’ve met.

He launched his first newsletter in 1980, nearly a decade before that photo was taken of Andy and me at the races.

Since then, he’s recommended 676 stocks that could’ve doubled your money or more. And his mutual funds and ETFs have been ranked #1 by Morningstar and The Wall Street Journal.

The New York Times even called him an “icon among growth investors” for the impact his quantitative approach has had on Wall Street.

Louis’ approach to stock picking is much like our own. He helps regular investors see which companies are worth your attention – and which aren’t. But instead of using our Social Heat Score to guide the way, he relies on his Stock Grader system.

Stocks that get an A earn top marks. Stocks that get an F fail. Just like when you were in school. These marks are based on fundamental factors such as earnings, sales, and growth as well as momentum factors such as institutional buying.

And it’s remarkably effective. In addition to the 676 stocks it’s identified that doubled or more, it’s identified 22 stocks that went on to climb 100-fold.

Our Ultimate Stock Strategy comes from combining the two systems. We look at only Louis’ top graded stocks. Then we layer on the online and social media signals we get from our Social Heat Score.

The results are jaw-dropping.

As I mentioned, we found it would’ve spotted more than 240 doubles over a five-year backtesting period… for an average gain of 244%.

Our mission has always been to bring hedge fund-level insights to the everyday investor. And that’s exactly what we’ll do on Oct. 28 at 10:00 a.m. ET, when Louis, Andy, and I will share everything you need to know during our Ultimate Stock Strategy event.

Reserve your seat here and count yourself among the first to see this thing in action.

As a thank you for RSVPing, you’ll also be able to test out Louis’ Stock Grader tool for a limited time.

Just type in any ticker and see how it ranks. Simple as that.

I hope you’ll jump on this chance to take Stock Grader for a test drive and join us on Tuesday to learn more about the Ultimate Stock Strategy.

We believe at least one of the stocks we’ve identified has the potential to double by Christmas. So you won’t want to miss it.

How Grandpa Rock’s $2 Bets Inspired a New Way to Beat the Market