today is February 19 2020 I'm your host Irusha Peiris and with me today is Andy

Swan he is the founder of LikeFolio thanks for being here Andy yeah thanks

for having me on on today's podcast we are going to talk

about the current markets how social data can help you in your stock analysis

and then we will end the episode with three current stocks so the current

market the market continues to be in an uptrend we have two distribution days on

the Nasdaq five on the S&P 500 but the market continues to climb that wall of

War II and more importantly leading stocks are acting well in hitting new

highs Andy what are your thoughts on the market yeah I think you nailed it it's

just very strong and continues to just defy expectations I think you know it's

almost like the more negativity is in the in the headlines of the world the

higher the market goes yeah I think there's pretty good reason for that I

think that the economy is strong there's a lot of wealth being created and you

know there's a lot of great companies doing some extremely innovative things

so I think that drives a lot of this and there's excitement around around all

that plus money's pretty cheap that's true and and also you know the US

markets are now like the safe haven right this seems like the money's coming

from everywhere else and let's Park in the US markets because of that

innovation and also where we're not having as many crises as a lot of other

parts of the world that's right yes exactly and and so you definitely want

to make sure you're keeping your watchlist fresh keep an eye on those

leaders because eventually there's going to be a time for a pullback and so

they're gonna set up and give everyone an opportunity to get buy more shares or

start initial positions so Andy let's get into how you got into investing

you've been doing this for a while now and so why don't you walk us down the

path that led you to starting LikeFolio yeah so we actually it's

you know my brother and I have been partners in this since the very

beginning we actually opened our first brokerage account together we were

college roommates oh wow and this was you know this was in

college it was 1998 1999 markets were popping like even at the

gym people were watching CNBC rather than anything else it was just the

dot-com boom and everything was moving and it was a great way to get involved

in it was really like very exciting and it made sense to me the markets did I

understood not necessarily you know valuations and things like that but I

understood supply and demand and how companies can participate in in growing

the economy and that sort of thing and so there was this new era that made

sense to me I was online a lot I understood the dot-com boom and in the

in the ways that I could yeah and so I got very interested in the stock market

started studying it started trading our money and you know really just kind of

learned by going and that I think a lot of times people miss that aspect of it

it's everything's kind of academic until you have real money on the line I think

for a lot of people and it doesn't have to be a lot we started with a couple

grand in a brokerage account and that was you know very real to us and very

fun and you know it's just super interesting from the very beginning in

1998-1999 it sounds like a long time ago now but it doesn't feel like it no not

at all because that that was the time where I got exposed to the markets too

and it was remarkable how everyone was talking about the stock market at that

time let's you touched on an interesting concept here about you know putting real

money on the line and the emotions that people feel a lot of people it you know

especially more analytical people they want to do all the analysis first before

making that move and it's that paralysis by analysis but going to a little bit

more about you know just put some money on the line and learn to feel those

emotions that come out when you start doing well in the markets and then when

you start doing really poorly yeah I think I just think that it's really easy

to pretend that you're doing something and you know it's kind of like I you

know I like to make sports analogies all the time because I play basketball and

you know it's like you can't really read a book on how to shoot a free-throw and

eventually you got a step to the line with a crowd around you and with other

players on the line and the scores going to matter and that changes everything

and all that stuff that you read goes out the window and so I think it is

important because probably the most important part of investing I think is

you know understanding your own emotions and how they can throw you off track and

disrupt a strategy that you might have and so until you have those emotions

engaged you really don't know how to control them and unfortunately I haven't

found anything that really beats a couple of bad losers in terms of

teaching lessons in a really quick way and that's true though the market has a

great way of humbling all of us yeah so after you and your brother started your

brokerage account you started putting real money on the line what were the

next steps that got you more involved and really started you know enabling you

to become an entrepreneur yeah well we had we had really good success and you

know a lot of people a lot of people did at that time because it was the dot-com

boom and everything was going up but you know we had some unique advantages we

figured out we figured out like simple things like real time quotes and level 2

quotes and things like that that were kind of unique at the time so we were

always looking for that little edge and we were able to find someone exploit

them and eventually you know through the chat rooms and other message boards of

the time had actually built up a little bit of a name for ourselves through what

we were posting both in terms of picks but more importantly educationally

online and so about a little ways through law school about six weeks into

law school in fact I decided this this is not for me I don't necessarily want

to work with and surround myself with lawyers for the rest of my life

I really have something good going in the stock market and people are coming

to me constantly not for my picks but more for you know

how to get started in that educational component

so that's when land and my brother and I got together and decided let's start

something where people can actually pay us to help them get started investing we

did that we we eventually turned that into I think it was the world's first

live-streaming you know content and educational channel for that was that

was going across the internet throughout the market day and you know people

subscribe to that and we built that into a nice little business that eventually

we sold and and that got us kind of kicked off on the entrepreneurial path

that's very very cool and so now your latest venture and and is like folios

your brother involved in that one - yeah we're partners on that as well this is

our third fin tech company together and yeah we're having a lot of fun with this

the the reason that we started LikeFolio kind of goes back to those roots

and its pivoted since then but back at the beginning the idea behind LikeFolio

and the name was really we wanted to help people create portfolios based on

the companies and products that they actually liked in real life and so we

use social media to figure out what they and their friends were talking about

online and actually created a portfolio based on those products called a like

folio the the idea was to get people interested in investing it didn't take

long though for us to realize that there was a lot of value in the data itself

and in figuring out what brands and products people were talking about we

were able to see some really interesting correlations between that data that we

saw in social media and upcoming future earnings reports and savings store sales

numbers yeah and I I saw you speak in the traders Expo in Las Vegas back in

November and it was a really fascinating presentation because for us a lot of

times we're looking for stocks that aren't strong up trends you're looking

for the purchase intent in strong up trends but the stocks might be getting

hit and might be you know falling off a lot of people's radar so that's what I

liked about it it's like okay this is another way to get some of those stocks

that might have fallen off my radar back on my

yeah a great example of that would be you know last summer the our great call

on Crocs the maker of the ugly shoes and what we start you know that stock had

fallen off everybody's radar it was down around fifteen or sixteen bucks and

really kind of dead money but what we saw was a massive uptick and a really

pretty fast and accelerating uptick in the number of people talking about

buying Crocs and liking Crocs shoes and the new models that they had and there

was some influencer action behind that I think Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber

were caught in public wearing Crocs and not necessarily paid to do so and that

just started this this trend and Crocs were on a comeback and we were able to

see that through the mining of social media data you know well before the

stock made the move from I think 16 to you know forty dollars yeah and and in

the end you know the large concept that we're all looking for here is you know

that supply and demand whether you see it in the stock market or in the

products that can eventually lead to those Rises and in stocks yeah that's it

I mean I think what everybody's looking for is an edge right we don't claim to

have the golden goose that produces profits every single time no one should

ever claim that you know but what we can provide and what we do you know work

really hard to discover are those small little edges that can add up to a

distinct advantage for the investor over the rest of the market and once you get

that you start exploiting it over and over and you know those those what were

small gains can start to turn pretty large absolutely so the markets continue

to remain in a strong uptrend and we're almost done with earnings season let's

take a quick break but when we return we'll go more into this and we'll talk

more about the social data and how it can help you with your investing stay

tuned I am here with Scott st. Clair Scott's

one of our senior product coaches at MarketSmith now Scott there are a ton

of publicly traded stocks just on the US I think it's over five thousand stocks

who has the time to go through all these stocks and find the very best one yeah

most people don't right so what you need is a tool like MarketSmith we have

decades of research and what makes a great winning stock so we've done all

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those great data points so if you're looking for that next great potential

big winner orange stock ideas button you just click on it and you've got some of

the main reports that we use including the growth 250 yeah and the grow 350 is

the first list that I go through on the weekends yeah it's the most popular one

but there are others there's the breaking out today stocks near a pivot

and then the blue dot list right which is very popular it's going to show you

the stocks with the best relative strength so we've done a lot of the work

for you what you have to do is review these lists you're going to come up with

some of the best ideas in that current market environment perfect MarkSmith

saves you time and makes investment research that much easier for more

information go to investors comm slash podcast 2020

and II Swan is our guest on investing with IBD sponsored by MarketSmith okay

Andy let's go over how we can use social data to help us with our stock analysis

and I think maybe the best way to start off is with how Tesla came on your radar