My “Secret Weapon” for Stock Profits in 2026

2026 is HERE!

It’s a new year, filled with new challenges, new surprises, and plenty of new opportunities…

And today, I thought I’d give you a peek “behind the curtain” by sharing the unique strategy I’m using in my own portfolio to maximize profits.

I’ve been very successful with my homebrewed strategy so far, and I’m expecting another banner year ahead — thanks entirely to one critical factor that so many other investors overlook (at their own peril).

Click below to start today’s video for the full story:

Video transcript:

Hello and happy new year!

Welcome to Moneyball Economics. I’m Andrew Zatlin, and I am in the middle of building my stock portfolio for 2026.

Last year, I did really well, and I think I have to chalk it up to two things. My methodology and the economic data, my proprietary economic data that gives me an edge. Today, I want to share with you both the methodology and that data in the hopes that I can help you as well. I’m a fundamental investor.

I look for growth, and I look for growth because, well, let’s face it, if a company’s growing, there’s a lot of potential for upside surprises that have not been priced in. Not only will the stock be going up as a company’s growing, it could go up a lot more. It could be hyperbolic.

So there’s a goal of targeting the right companies, but then there’s a second goal. To really turbocharge my returns, there’s a need to know when to enter and when to exit.

The problem is all that data out there, companies are very stingy. They don’t want to tell you when things are great and getting better, and they don’t want to tell you when things are bad or they’re about to get bad. And I’m reliant on the same data for all intents and purposes that everybody is, and it’s not very frequent. Companies basically don’t tell you anything except once a quarter, they pull back the curtain and there you go. Unless it’s bad news and then they throw it over the fence and it’s a surprise.

Well, I have developed a way to get an edge in the market by getting more frequent data. That is, I have an ability now to get a monthly snapshot of how a company’s really doing, because quite frankly, if I can see any inflection up, down, maybe they’re just going sideways, that tells me whether or not they are continuing to grow, whether maybe they’re going more or they’re growing less.

And that information will affect the market when it finally gets out there and the earnings release. What I have been doing for 16 years to get that edge is I have built a database of monthly hiring of individual companies, 700 plus companies that are traded in the S&P 500 and Russell 1000.

See, what this does for me by looking at monthly hiring, I’m able to capture a couple things. Number one, the frequency’s better. I can spot those inflections sooner and take action sooner. So sometimes that’s important if I want to jump in more or I want to get away from.

But I also get a real sense by looking at hiring of what a company’s really, really expecting. See, companies say a lot of things, but they don’t hire people unless they’re seeing growth. And the opposite, they’ll fire people when they’re not seeing growth.

What I have found over the 16 years of collecting this data is there is a strong correlation between stock price and hiring. And that makes a lot of sense, right? Hiring’s a great signal. Not anyone gets it, but fundamentally, it’s one of many signals that indicate company growth.

And after a while, when that signal is out there, whether it’s up, down, or sideways, the stock price responds accordingly. The market sees it. They reassess the growth potential and they realign the stock price. The stock market is very rational that way. So what that means is I can look at an individual company. I can look at their hiring and I can say, “Hey, they’re on the way up and I expect the stock price to follow.” And it also can help me identify, is it overbought? Maybe they’re going up, but maybe the stock price got overbought or oversold.

So there are also a lot of different ways to play this data. What I’d like to do is share with you two examples. One example where we’re in a place of hyperbolic growth, where this company is stepping on the gas with both feet.

At the same time, I want to share with you a company where there has been pullback and continued pullback and you want to avoid them or possibly short them. I want to share with you how the hiring signal works in real time. So let’s take a look at the first one, the growth story, and that’s Huntington Ingles. So Huntington Ingalls, HII. This is a chart showing you their hiring and the stock price, going back about five years, six years actually. Now, first off, I want to talk about the correlation. What you can see is they go down and they go up, not every month the same way.

So you have to have a longer term, say six month to 12 month horizon for this. Because again, the price could go down a little bit, get oversold, overbought. But the point is, what is that general rolling trajectory? The other thing I want to share with you is not just the correlation, the directional correlation, but quite frankly, a timing. So if you take a look at this, what you’ll see is, for example, as we came into 2020, obviously we had COVID hit, stock price goes down, hiring goes down. But what you’ll notice is going out in time, starting in say May or June, hiring moves up. It moves up strongly. And over the next, say, two years, two, three years, it continues to go up. Occasionally it sort of pulls back a little bit. That’s normal. Companies in growth mode tend to consolidate every so often.

But what you see is when you get out to early 2024, hiring suddenly rolls over and it rolls over super fast. That’s a sign of problems. And indeed, that’s what was going on. And the stock price came down. So when we talk entry exit, the hiring data says, “Hey man, starting in about June, July, you wanted to get into this company.” The stock price then proceeds to go from about a buck 60 and it goes all the way up to 250. So you would have had enormous returns until suddenly it sends the signal, “Hey, hiring’s slowing down dramatically. Maybe it’s time to cash in your chips.” And it does the same thing. You see that you would stayed out or shorted the company and then it starts to bottom by June, July. Now I’m not a fan of using this for shorting simply because there’s one nuance here.

Companies delay their hiring. They don’t want to hire unless they have to. It adds cost. And so what can happen is profits improve, revenues improve, stock prices go up before hiring starts to go up. So you got to be a little careful here about shorting a company that’s on its way down.

But nevertheless, if you followed this signal and you see suddenly in about September, October timeframe this year, just a few months ago, there’s a huge reversal in hiring. They are slamming on the gas. They are just going crazy.

And in fact, had you followed this, you’d have gotten into the stock at around, I don’t know, 250 or so. It’s now at 350 and it’s still going up. If you look at the same information on a year over year basis, you get a very similar story. But the advantage here is you can catch where something’s overbought or oversold, meaning that the stock price growth implies more growth than is actually reflected in the hiring growth.

And you can see that in this year over year snapshot looking at late 2023, early 2024, where the hiring growth is slowing. It actually goes negative by May, but the stock price is still growing. So you’ve got this divergence. You could have sold this divergence say in February 24. And as you can see, you would have caught this stock price downward trajectory.

Let’s talk about another company. Let’s talk about one that you should be avoiding or maybe shorting, and that’s CarMax. The opportunity to short may have come and gone, but let’s again take a look at this data signal. Here you see, again, hiring relative to the stock price. And you can see again, some really great opportunities to avoid or get in the entry exit points. For example, if we just follow the as is hiring, things are going sideways from November 21 into 22.

They’re not really hiring that many more people. That means they’re not growing. That’s a sign to get out. If they’re not growing their workforce, it means they’re not seeing a lot of growth anywhere else. And in fact, you should have exited the doors running by say September, October when hiring goes down. And in fact, had you done that, stock price at about 100, you could have escaped, it went down to 60.

So there’s a capital preservation opportunity here. When this hiring rebounds as it does in early 23, yeah, you could have bought back in, made some de narrows, goes from about 60 something to 80, but you see how the hiring just goes sideways. I don’t want to buy a company that’s not growing, it’s not shrinking. It’s kind of doing nothing. It’s treading water. It doesn’t do anything for me. And then you see earlier this year, again, hiring rolls over.

And that would have been again, if you had stayed in the stock, that’s a signal. Just get out. What are you waiting for?

And again, the stock goes from about 80 bucks down to 40 bucks. Capital preservation, knowing when to get out because they’re not hiring people. They’re not hiring for growth. They’re actually shrinking. And again, you could see the same kind of implication looking at year over year. When the hiring starts to roll over, that’s when you wanted to get out. That’s when the stock price growth sees it.

And again, the market’s rationale, it says, “Ah, you’re not really growing, are you? ”

Well, in which case we need to reevaluate the valuation of your stock price. Hey folks, here’s the bottom line. At the end of the day, this data, economic data can help you choose the stocks to be in, avoid the stocks you shouldn’t be in and help you time your entry and exit or even help you decide if you should double down.

If you have any questions or any stocks that you want to look at, send me a signal, drop me an email. We’ll take a look together. We did this about a month or two ago with Boeing. Boeing’s up about five, 10% because of this data.

We’re in it to win it and we’re going to do it together.

Zatlin out.