How to Make the Loot

My ex-wife has been out of town since Saturday. I have had the great pleasure of house-sitting. I mean that, no sarcasm. Their mom’s house is really home base for my kids. I mean, that’s where my son’s $1,500 gaming PC lives, so…

And at 18 and 16, I don’t see that much of them as it is. The eldest heads off to college in just a few months, so I am relishing every second I get with her. My kids spend weekends with me sometimes, but not as much as they used to now that they have their own lives.

Plus, in addition to an adult dog and two cats, they have a new Lab/Shepherd mix puppy at their house. I love dogs, but I’d just as soon leave all that goes along with a new puppy at my ex’s house, so yeah, I’m house-sitting.

Now, I’m not sure if the new puppy actually has Celiac disease or not. I generally figure if dogs can eat rotten meat and be fine, then you don’t have to worry much about allergies. But I was told that Chico — that’s his name, Chico — was having the sort of issues after he eats that make me extremely happy to be house-sitting rather than hosting. And that his mom (are mother dogs “moms?” or is that insulting?) never ate grain, so Chico should get grain-free food, too. 

In general, I do not shop at PetSmart or whatever the fancy-pants pet supply stores are called. I had been in there when my kids were younger and we had a lizard. PetSmart was the easiest place to get crickets for Angus (which was a perfect name because bearded dragons are Australian, and, like AC/DC guitarist Angus Young, this lizard rocked). 

It never failed that, while I was buying $4 worth of crickets, any person in front of me spent at least $100 on dog food, dog toys, dog beds, dog hats, and dog cell phones. I marveled. And I also did some investigating, but more on that in a minute…

Dog Food Profits

I go to my local Safeway, and sure enough, there is grain free-puppy food for the little snowflake. In fact, there’s a giant section for all types of specialty dog food blends. You can get chicken and rice, lamb and rice, filet mignon with a nice blue cheese sauce….

I took a picture.

It’s not a very good picture. Those light-blue sacks on the left are the grain-free puppy food. $28.99 for a 10-pound bag. $28.99!

I’m pretty sure you can buy a 10-pound bag of fully grained dog food for like $7. But this is Blue Buffalo dog food! 

Now, this Blue Buffalo section of dog food is brand new. And I bet most people have never heard of Blue Buffalo dog food. But not my Wealth Advisory subscribers. 

You see, back when I was watching people drop $100 on dog sweaters at PetSmart, my profit radar went off. I soon learned that Americans spend like $60 billion on their pets every year. That’s just a crazy amount of money. And when I discovered that Blue Buffalo was a public company that was trading under the ticker symbol BUFF and that it was crushing earnings consistently, well, it got me thinking…

As a newsletter editor and analyst who promises to find his subscribers great stocks to buy that have tremendous growth and profit potential, why not recommend a relatively new company that offers a top-notch product in a fast-growing sector? Good thinking, right?

And so Blue Buffalo was the Wealth Advisory’s Feature Recommendation in the May 2016 issue. 

It was an expensive stock — seems like I remember the forward P/E was up around 28 or so. But to me, the fact that the stock was fairly expensive was simply an indication that Blue Buffalo was hitting on all cylinders and was probably a buyout target for a larger company that didn’t want to waste time getting into the exploding fancy dog food market.

Now, if you’re thinking of checking out the ticker symbol BUFF, let me tell you: it doesn’t exist anymore. Blue Buffalo was bought out by General Mills (NYSE: GIS) a couple months ago. Wealth Advisory subscribers walked away with a 55% profit.

Even better, my Wealth Advisory partner Jason Williams and I got nice boost to our fragile self-esteem from all the nice letters we received from Wealth Advisory subscribers. They really like us… as people, too, not just for the profit opportunities we supply.

Buy What You Know

The founder of Fidelity, Peter Lynch, is credited with saying, “Buy what you know.” I can’t confirm this; I wasn’t there. But in many ways, “buy what you know” should be the mantra of any individual investor. Finding great investments doesn’t have to be rocket science.

I mean, sure, there are definitely aspects of the stock market that require very careful analysis and maybe even a calculator. And there is truly no substitute for experience. More than anything, that’s what I try to bring to Wealth Daily: my experience. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. I’ve seen a lot, I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on how the stock market works. 

So, look around. What are people buying? What are they not buying? Have you seen a great ad on TV? 

That may sound silly, but I vividly remember the light bulb that went off 15 years ago the first time I saw one of those iPod ads with U2 — “Uno, dos, tres, catorce! Hello, hello.” I don’t know if I even had a cell phone then. But I know a great product that has the “cool” factor when I see one.

I recommended Apple call options to my readers the very next day, and we made 375% in like a week.

If you’ve got any ideas, send ’em in to customerservice@angelpub.com, and we can discuss them right here in Wealth Daily.

Until next time,

Briton Ryle

@BritonRyle on Twitter

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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.