How A Massive Trade Inspired My Stock-Picking Breakthrough

[Power Trends] How A Massive Trade Inspired My Stock-Picking Breakthrough We’ve all experienced a defining moment. Sometimes we realize it right away; other times it becomes clear in hindsight. For me, it was a defining moment that played out for a month, but it all started with a phone call. It was 2010, and I was heading a trading desk at Cantor Fitzgerald, the blue-chip New York investment bank. My job was to match big institutional buyers with sellers. My caller was a friend who managed money at another big bank. He wanted to buy shares of a stock (we’ll call it KDQ) for one of his big clients. Within a few minutes, I found someone who was selling 100,000 KDQ shares – about $2 million worth – and offered those to my friend. He snapped them up immediately. “Do you have any more?” he asked. I went back to work, dug into my “Rolodex,” and by the time the trading day closed, I had sold my friend one million shares of KDQ – valued at about $20 million. That’s Big Money already. But I wasn’t even close to being finished. I sold my friend another million shares the next day. And by that point, all the money flowing into this stock was lifting its price. The same thing happened the third day … another million shares … and another bump in the price. By the fourth day, I knew this was big – really big. This “foraging” mission for KDQ shares continued for about a month. By the end of that stretch, I’d sought out, mopped up, and sold my friend every spare share of KDQ that I could find – around 20 million in total. The stock had surged 70% – and people were noticing. It even made the headlines on CNBC. I had no idea who the buyer was. I just knew it was my friend’s client. A few days after I’d finished, I discovered that a $20 billion hedge fund had acquired more than 15% of KDQ. Through me and some of my competitors (who’d been tasked with the same mission), this fund had snapped up an aggregate 50 million shares of this stock. And the stock price had soared. If Only We Knew The “KDQ Affair” showed me the huge gains that were there for the taking – for investors who’d also bought the stock while that hedge fund was buying those millions of shares. Anyone who owned KDQ on the day of the first order – or who knew what was happening so they could buy it – would have gained 70% in just four weeks. But how could we have known? Hedge funds and institutions are super-secretive by nature – and do everything in their power to keep their buying quiet. This is Big Money we’re talking about – the money that actually moves stocks – so these players work to diminish the “price-increase effect” even as they keep buying shares. They spread their purchases out by buying in chunks – big chunks, but still chunks – over days or weeks. The fact is that some people do know. These shadowy Wall Street operators are fully aware of these huge trades before they happen. And they profit off that knowledge. The rest of us? We’re on our own. At the mercy of all these big operators. But not anymore. I didn’t get rich off that trade. But those four weeks and the whole KDQ Affair were a transformative event in my life. That experience put me on a mission – one that culminated in my analytics-based system and my proprietary Quantum Score that evaluates the health and potential of more than 6,000 stocks. And it does so every day the market is open. It’s a system that lets me spot [the footprints of Big Money investors]( on their own KDQ-like missions. Those footprints are not visible to most other investors – but they are to me. This system gets me and my [Quantum Edge]( readers into these stocks early – when the Big Money buying is just getting started. It’s legal, predictive – and powerful. Which is why it took years to create and master. RECOMMENDED LINK [The No. 1 AI Stock of 2023 (Not Nvidia)]( It's not Nvidia, Meta Platforms, Alphabet, or Amazon. But thanks to a recent major deal, an under-the-radar stock could become the No. 1 winner of the 2023 AI boom. "This company just teamed up with one of the biggest power players in the AI industry... yet you can still buy it for just one-twelfth the price of Nvidia – the time to buy is NOW," says Marc Chaikin. [Click here for the name and ticker]( Now We Do Know After facilitating that trade, I threw myself into the research. I analyzed every piece of data I could find. I asked the smartest people on Wall Street how they decide which stocks to buy... and how they go about buying them. Over my two decades of investing, I’ve learned how to spot these giant trades that play out over days and weeks. When a Big Money player embarks on a buying spree, it means demand for a stock is spooling up. Since supply is holding steady, there’s only one direction for the stock to move... up. So, how do I find these best-of-the-best Top 1% of stocks that the “whales” are buying and – most importantly – recommend them to my [Quantum Edge]( readers for them to make money? First, I rely on computing power. At any given time, there are more than 10,000 stocks to choose from. Some are illiquid. Some are junk. I eliminate those immediately. That gets us down to about 6,000, most of which aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. I use my proprietary “filters” – a deep-dive analysis of the technicals and fundamentals – and mix in the wisdom I’ve collected from the best minds on Wall Street. And this gets us to the Big Money. We look to see which of those remaining stocks that pass our screens are being bought by Big Money players. That’s the trifecta of investing success. Find business with the best fundamentals in the market whose stocks show technical strength and are being bought by Big Money. That gives you the highest odds of making money, and the highest odds of outperforming the market. Through years of using this system and back testing it all the way to 1990, about seven out of every 10 stocks it identifies were winners. It’s important to understand this formula for success right now… before stocks start their next run higher. It’s coming… and soon. The Federal Reserve is done raising interest rates, unless it squeezes one more in. Even so, inflation is cooling, companies are making money, people have jobs, consumers are spending. And we’re heading into the strongest time of the year for stocks from October through December. Now’s the time to get ready. Smart investors have a great opportunity to invest in stocks exhibiting these critical characteristics, and ride those share prices higher right alongside Big Money. I just recommended one such stock in Quantum Edge Trader. It’s a stalwart in its industry with strong fundamentals and technicals, and it has seen 12 Big Money buy signals already this year. If you’d like to learn about it and my other recommended stocks, [click here for more information on how you can join us at Quantum Edge Trader today](. Talk soon, [Jason Bodner]Jason Bodner Editor, Power Trends Get Instant Access Click to read these free reports and automatically sign up for research throughout the week. [3 Stocks That Could Triple This Year]( [How A.I. Investing Can Improve Your Portfolio]( [866.385.2076](tel:+866-385-2076) | support@tradesmith.com ©2023 TradeSmith, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including on the world wide web), in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of TradeSmith, LLC. This work is based on SEC filings, current events, interviews, corporate press releases and what we’ve learned as researchers and writers. Our work may contain errors and should not be considered personalized investment advice. TradeSmith, LLC does not issue securities recommendations, and no discussion of a particular stock(s) should be interpreted as such. Past, simulated, and/or hypothetical performance of any strategy published by TradeSmith, LLC should not be interpreted as representational of future returns. You shouldn’t make any investment decision based solely on what you read here. It’s your money and your responsibility. TradeSmith P.O. Box 340087 Tampa, FL 33694 [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( To unsubscribe or change your email preferences, please [click here](. [tradesmith logo]