There’s a fine line between pop culture and capital markets these days. But Sydney Sweeney is utterly destroying that line and rewriting how image can move billions around the world.

If you don’t know who she is, she’s arguably the hottest Hollywood star right now. Aside from Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, of course. She’s in seemingly everything.

She’s no doubt successful and helping Hollywood studios make a bucket of cash. However, it’s her recent appearances in advertising campaigns that have set the capital markets alight.

The most recent and the most impactful (in many ways) was a simple denim campaign. Five words, plastered across subways, billboards, Times Square…and all-over social media: Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.

I don’t need to post the ad images here; they’re very easy to find if you want to see for yourself.

The ad was from American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (NYSE: AEO) and boy did they know what they were doing.

The campaign dropped just a week ago and the internet went into hormonal overdrive.

Also, depending on which political social media thread your algorithms favour, it was either a clever play on genetics or some kind of fascist atrocity.

Polarising politics aside, it’s a genius marketing campaign. And while the culture warriors bickered, the stock did something far more interesting: it skyrocketed.

Pre-market had the stock up 18%. And then 24% at one point from under $10 to over $12 in a few days.

For a company worth about $1.9 billion, that is a massive jump in value.

That’s the Sydney Sweeney effect.

But here’s the thing. The volumes for the stock didn’t just pick up on the day after the campaign was released. You can see a clear volume spike in the days before.

3 million shares one day, then 5 million the next, 9 million after that, then 17 million and then the ad dropped, and 44 million as the rest of the market caught wind of it all.

Now, for the average Joe, that ramp up in volume means nothing until after the event. But what if you had some tools that would allow you to spot an event like this before it happened? And in doing so, allowed you to place some trades in the market, perfectly legally, that would let you invest in a stock before a major deal, a major event, announcement or possibly even a major buyout took place?

Such tools exist, and I’ll tell you a bit more about them in a moment…

The Sydney Sweeney effect is one thing, but it’s not an isolated case of a major name pushing millions and billions of value in a stock higher. And not the only time when investors could predict this happening and make a pile of cash in doing so.

Lewis Hamilton and the prancing horse

In 2024, Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time Formula 1 world champion, was rumoured to be leaving Mercedes F1 and moving to Ferrari.

It was an unthinkable move at the time and was mostly played down by all sides as just that, a rumour.

But then it was officially announced he was leaving Mercedes for Ferrari F1. Hamilton is a global mega star; he transcends F1 these days in very big markets like the US, in particular. So, what do you think happened to the Ferrari stock (NYSE: RACE) when it was officially announced?

RACE shares jumped from $347 to $384 in a day. That’s a $7 billion move on the back of a single talent shift.

And guess what? The options market knew something was up. Call volume exploded 628% above average. And the real winners weren’t Hamilton or Ferrari, but the options traders holding cheaper calls from the month before. Contracts trading at a few bucks suddenly surged into the double digits.

This wasn’t random. Not magic. Not insider trading. But telegraphed by available data, swirling rumours and traders with the right tool to make wads of cash.

Options lesson: markets whisper before they shout

Most people wait for the headline before acting on trades. But the headline is already the end of the trade. What matters is what happens before.

Next Thursday, 7th August at 2pm, Southbank Research is holding a special event, hosted by James Altucher, that is going to explain to you about his “Alpha-3” toolkit. It’s a proprietary, patent-protected system that he uses to help make big predictions in the market before they happen.

He’s focusing in right now on what he calls, “Big Buyouts” the kind of buyouts that a big company might make for a little company sending stock prices racing, and options prices racing even higher.

It’s the ability to make predictive calls, like the Sydney Sweeney Effect and like the Hamilton Switch or like a massive company like Nvidia preparing to buyout a smaller tech player, that makes Alpha-3 so special.

It’s knowing what is moving, when its moving and why it’s moving to give traders the best advantage. And as I say, on Thursday at 2pm you can see exactly what it’s all about, how it works, and how you can apply it to your own investment strategy.

You don’t need to know fashion. Or F1. Or what Sweeney’s up to on Instagram. Or really what Nvidia has up their sleeve. You just need to follow what James is saying, and trust in Alpha-3.

Look, the markets are weird. They react to culture faster than policy at the moment. Be it GameStop, Bed Bath & Beyond, Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle, or F1 drivers switching teams, there are big things that happen in the market that you can’t take old, antiquated approaches to.

Sure, it’s different, but markets are simply adjusting to the way in which our world functions today.

Or maybe they’ve always been this way, and we just forgot about it for a decade of weirdness, maybe this is the reversion to normality?

But know this, all these things, you can profit from in the market with the right team, tools and trades.

Until next time,

Sam Volkering
Contributing Editor, Investor’s Daily