These Brothers Turned Social Media Signals Into an Investing Superpower VIEW IN BROWSER By Michael Salvatore, Editor, TradeSmith Daily About 72% of Americans actively use social media. That’s 246 million people sharing opinions, photos, and product experiences, across the U.S. Together, they create about 500 million posts a day. Think of it like a global focus group running 24/7, 365 days a year – billions of consumers constantly revealing what they love, what they’re buying, and what they’re walking away from. As we’ve been covering in these pages this week, brothers Andy and Landon Swan found a way to turn those posts into winning stock picks. They realized over a decade ago that social media posts were a kind of X-ray view into consumer demand – a way to see what people were excited to spend money on before the revenue showed up in quarterly reports. Their data engine ingests millions of data points from social media, web traffic, search trends, and AI queries in near real time. It uses machine learning to sort through the noise. Then it applies their proprietary brand-mapping technology to track mentions back to publicly traded companies. And it all gets distilled into a simple 0 to 100 Social Heat Score to show which stocks are on the verge of a breakout as a result of predictive consumer demand and sentiment. 
Energy drink brand Celsius Holdings (CELH) went up 389% after the brand started flashing on the Social Heat Score. It also flagged telehealth company Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) before it shot up 550%. And it flagged brokerage app Robinhood Markets (HOOD) before a near-600% run. (That’s in addition to dozens of other triple-digit gainers over the last five years.) In short, the Swans have turned social media data into an investing superpower. And their recent collaboration with quant investing legend Louis Navellier has produced a system that could be even more powerful: The Ultimate Stock Strategy. (For more on that, go here.) It combines the Swans’ consumer demand signals with Louis’ Stock Grader system, which uses fundamental data like earnings and sales, along with momentum indicators like institutional buying, to identify world-class stocks. The result of marrying these two powerful approaches: Stocks that are gaining momentum with consumers behind the scenes, in great shape financially, and that are benefiting from strong institutional buying. They call this the Ultimate Stock Strategy for a reason. In our backtesting, it led to more than 240 doubles over the last five years. One outlier returned 235x in just three months. That’s why I wanted to reach out to Andy and Landon for today’s Daily. I wanted to know more about how this new system works, what trends they’re watching now, and why this new team-up with the “King of Quants” could change the game for data-driven investors. Recommended Link | | | | TradeSmith’s Keith Kaplan is Wall Street’s worst nightmare. His Baltimore-based company has engineered a device that helps regular folks decide when to buy and sell based on mathematics, not emotion. “We’re leveling the playing field,” says the disruptive CEO. Click here to see it in action. |  | |
Q&A with Andy and Landon Swan Michael Salvatore (MS): For new readers who may not know you, tell us a bit about your background and how you developed your data engine. Landon: We’ve always been obsessed with finding an edge. We grew up with a grandfather who owned racehorses. And we learned about odds, risk, and crowd behavior at the Kentucky racetracks. We’ve been trading markets since we were 18. I used Andy’s account at first because he’s a little older. After selling a company to TD Ameritrade, we decided to build a system that could show people where to invest by tracking consumer trends emerging on social media. So we built software to pull data from X (then Twitter), YouTube, Facebook and other platforms to see where consumers were actually spending money. By mapping that to publicly traded companies, we could see which brands were taking off or losing steam – long before the earnings reports came out. Eventually, we automated the process. Now we track consumer trends quarter over quarter, and the insights have been incredible. MS: Social media is full of noise, bots, and irrelevant chatter. How do you filter out the junk and find real signals? Andy: Our first big discovery was an accident. We were tracking Deckers Outdoor (DECK), the company behind Ugg boots. One holiday season mentions of Uggs dropped off a cliff. We thought something was wrong with our system. But it was real. So we warned our readers that this stock was in trouble based on what we were seeing online. 
A few days later, Deckers slashed Ugg’s annual sales forecast. It was a huge blow, considering that one brand accounted for the majority of Deckers’ revenue back then. DECK stock tanked on that report. Our data was “seeing” what was happening on Main Street before Wall Street. We now focus on specific consumer behaviors – purchases, app downloads, restaurant visits, and so on. That’s where the truth lives. When those metrics shift, we know something real is happening. MS: Your system can pick up major market trends before they become obvious? How are these different from trends in stock market prices? Andy: We call them megatrends – massive shifts in consumer behavior. They’re our focus at our MegaTrends advisory, which we publish at TradeSmith. (Think about the move to smartphones, streaming, or telehealth.) Once we spot a megatrend, we look for smaller, high-growth companies within it – especially those that consumers are buzzing about positively. If the stock starts breaking out technically too, that’s when magic happens. And we get granular. Our Brand Map tracks sentiment not just by company, but also by individual brand. Apple (AAPL) is a great example. They make iPads, Apple Watches, and iPhones. Consumers chat about all of it on social media, but not always in the way you’d think. They don’t just say, “I just bought an Apple Watch.” They also use phrases like “closed my rings” – a reference to the health feature on the Apple Watch. Our tech tracks all of it. It’s a complex system. The last time I checked, we had something like 200 tags tracking just iPhone references. This approach makes sure all our bases are covered. That’s key because sometimes the breakout comes from a sub-brand no one’s watching. MS: Can you give me an example? Andy: Energy drink brand Celsius came on our radar when a hedge fund client asked us to check it out – they’d noticed more shelf space at convenience stores. So we ran the data. And mentions were exploding. People weren’t just trying Celsius – they were becoming loyal fans. It was almost cult-like. We followed the data and got in under $10 a share. And the stock took off. From our recommendation in January 2022 to our sell alert in early 2024, it went up nearly 400%. 
That’s the power of combining real-time consumer data with institutional curiosity. It creates opportunities that most investors miss. MS: What megatrends are you watching right now? Andy: AI is the big one. Not just the chips, but also how we power and apply AI. Energy infrastructure and data centers are major opportunities. We’ve been tracking this trend all year. We recommended a nuclear stock called Oklo (OKLO) because it has the potential to power data centers with its small nuclear reactors. It did something like 5x in less than six months. Another massive trend we’re capitalizing on is telehealth. People are fed up with traditional health care – the long waits, the costs, the inefficiency. They want quick, digital solutions. That’s what led us to Hims & Hers Health (HIMS). We issued an opportunity alert in November 2023 – just before HIMS launched its weight-loss platform. It’s exploded something like 550% since then. 
Now, we’re seeing the rise of AI-powered robotics. Amazon.com (AMZN), for instance, is testing replacing hundreds of thousands of workers with robots. That’s the next frontier. We’re already seeing gains from the opportunities we’ve spotted here. One small cap we found is up about 80% since September. If you think you’ve “missed” AI because of Nvidia (NVDA), you haven’t. Nvidia is like Cisco (CSCO) in the 1990s: It builds the infrastructure that makes the technology possible. The next big winners will be the companies using AI to revolutionize businesses and even entire industries. A Powerful Partnership: The Swans Meet Navellier MS: You’re now joining forces with quant investing legend Louis Navellier. How do your systems complement each other? Landon: When we first sat down with Louis, we knew it was a perfect match. His quantitative system has been outperforming for decades. He’s identified something like 650 stocks that went on to double over his career. Those are stocks that got an A grade or maybe a B, based on fundamentals plus momentum. Either of those grades would be a “buy.” Then if a stock gets a C, D, or F… just like in school… it doesn’t quite measure up. When we overlay that with our social data – the voice of the consumer – and we get the best of both worlds. A stock that’s fundamentally strong and loved by consumers is a prime candidate for huge gains. We back-tested this “ultimate” strategy. Over five years, 240 stocks doubled, 12 went up more than 10x, and the system beat the S&P 500 by 15x. The average winner gained 244%. It’s the perfect marriage of old-school quantitative rigor and new-school behavioral data: The Ultimate Stock Strategy. MS: On Tuesday, you broadcast an event with Louis to launch this new strategy. And it’s still online. What can folks expect to learn from you? Andy: It’s a true meeting of the minds. We dive into how to combine his Stock Grader system with our real-time sentiment data to spot breakout stocks early. It’s all about helping folks find the next big winners – before Wall Street even knows they exist. How You Can Get in on the Swans’ Latest Breakthrough The Swans have been knocking it out of the park for their readers of late, 461% on OKLO in less than six months… 556% on HOOD in a little over a year… plus, 145% on Stride (LRN), 92% on Magnite (MGNI), 79% on Duolingo (DUOL)… the list goes on and on. And that’s before they infused it with Louis’ Stock Grader system for this new Ultimate Stock Strategy. Stock Grader isn’t just one of the original quant systems (Louis began developing it while still a finance student in the 1970s)… it’s also one of the most successful. Louis has identified 22 stocks that went on to climb 100-fold with this system. Nearly 2,000 of your fellow readers tuned in live on Tuesday to learn about this “ultimate” strategy… and how they can use it to make outsized gains. It’s still online for a limited time. Go here to watch the replay and see for yourself what this powerful system can do. To building wealth beyond measure, 
Michael Salvatore
Editor, TradeSmith Daily | 
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