Why Dick's Had a Great August

During the month of August 2021, shares of Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) rallied from $104.50 to a high of $144.74 on the last day of the month.

That’s nearly a 40% gain for the stock in a span of 30 days. 

Pretty nice run, you say, but so what?

The reason I’m telling you this is that these gains didn’t just happen out there in the stock universe with nobody paying attention. One analyst told anybody who would listen that Dick’s was one of their five favorite stocks for the month of August.

So all you had to do was listen to what this man had to say and you could have had that 40% gain for yourself. 

Of course, I just told you that this man had five favorite stocks for the month of August. How would you know which to trade? It’s a good question. But each of these favorite stocks averaged a 15% gain during that month. So buying all of them would have worked out pretty well.  

Now you might be wondering where to find this savvy investment information. And I’ll tell you that in a minute. I’ll also let you know how you can have these monthly stock picks for free. 

But first, I have to give you a little background.

If It Ain’t Broke, Fix It Anyway 

Six years ago, I made a critically important change to my flagship newsletter, The Wealth Advisory. 

Now, there wasn’t anything wrong with my analysis or investment recommendations. Quite the contrary — my stock picks like Starbucks at $42 and Bank of America at $9 were crushing the market and the overall track record was one of the best in the biz. 

I guess you could say I’m hard to please, but I wasn’t satisfied. I thought the newsletter could be even better…

Some people will tell you that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But it seems to me that no one ever became great at what they do by being satisfied with being pretty good. Did Muhammad Ali stop training after he took the heavyweight crown from Sonny Liston? 

No, he did not. 

Did Tom Brady start taking shortcuts after he won his third Super Bowl? 

Not a chance. 

The fact is the only thing success did for these two is make them hungrier. And if you think about it, the very essence of greatness is work. 

Sure, you can get pretty far with talent. You might even get to the very top of your field. But you’re not going to stay at the top. I was committed to making The Wealth Advisory the best newsletter out there and keeping it there.

So I decided to add a partner to help me run the newsletter. 

I knew of an analyst from the Baltimore area who was living in New York and working for Morgan Stanley. I also learned that he was already getting disillusioned with Wall Street bullshit. 

Now, an analyst that gets disillusioned with Wall Street before they turn 35, well, that can only mean one thing — this analyst had a heart, he had a moral compass. And that told me all I needed to know…

I started to recruit Jason Williams right away, to bring him “home” from New York to work with me on my Wealth Advisory newsletter. 

The Wealth Advisory Top Ten

Right now, the Wealth Advisory model portfolio has 32 stocks — 24 are up, eight are down, and the average gain for all 32 is a robust 149%.

But here’s the thing. How many individual investors can really own and manage 30 freaking stocks? Managing that many positions would be a full-time job for any individual investor. And it is a full-time job for us.

Plus, new subscribers frequently ask which stock we like best. Tough question. 

So Jason and I started doing monthly Top Ten videos where we select 10 stocks from the Wealth Advisory model portfolio that we like the best… for the next month. 

Time frames are important. We fully understand that our subscribers are real people who risk real money buying the stocks that we recommend. We take that responsibility very seriously. So if we didn’t like a stock, it wouldn’t be in the model portfolio. 

But for the Top Ten, we grab 10 stocks that we think have the best near-term catalysts. Could be that we expect a great earnings report. Maybe there’s something in the chart we like (a technical setup). Or perhaps other companies in the sector are rallying…

Then we decided to have a little fun with it. So we set it up like a fantasy sports draft. We alternate picks until we each have 10, and then we see who wins. We originally had a punishment for the loser, but I vetoed that rule when Jason had to eat a jalapeño. No way I’m doing that.

And so you know, the rules say we can each keep three, so you can count on some stocks staying in the Top Ten for more than a month.  

The Top Ten Hall of Fame

Not only is the monthly Top Ten incredibly insightful and wildly entertaining, but we’ve also nailed some pretty big winners.

I selected Rocket Mortgage (NYSE: RKT) for March, and the stock ran from around $24 to over $40 in the first few days of the month.

In May, Jason plucked At Home Group (NYSE: HOME) from the Wealth Advisory model portfolio, and then on May 5, the company announced it was being bought out for a decent premium.

In June, I got a 30% winner out of Lemonade (NYSE: LMND).  

But the record-setting month goes to Jason, when he hit a 71% winner with Maxar (NYSE: MAXR) and a 51% winner with Innovative Industrial Properties (NYSE: IIPR)… in the same month!

Now, you might notice that we just posted the September Top Ten this week, and the date today is actually September 15. It’s not because we’re lazy…

It’s because we give it to the people that PAY US first. Seems fair.

And finally, we will never reveal a monthly Feature Recommendation until it’s been in the model portfolio for at least a month…

It would be downright un-American to give some people a freebie that we charge others for. 

You can check out The Wealth Advisory Top Ten on YouTube for free. Here’s the link.

While you’re there, feel free to subscribe to the channel (also free) and click the bell to get notified when new content is available.

Until next time,

Briton Ryle

@BritonRyle on Twitter

The Wealth Advisory on Youtube

The Wealth Advisory on Facebook

A 21-year veteran of the newsletter business, Briton Ryle is the editor of The Wealth Advisory income stock newsletter, with a focus on top-quality dividend growth stocks and REITs. Briton also manages the Real Income Trader advisory service, where his readers take regular cash payouts using a low-risk covered call option strategy. He is also the managing editor of the Wealth Daily e-letter. To learn more about Briton, click here.