But the Ellises are quite grateful for another one of Nigel's talents: picking stocks. That's right. While Nigel, an 11-year old British Shorthair who has a passing resemblance to Winston Churchill, is fastidious about his litter box, he has a habit of flinging some litter and "other material" out onto the nearby floor. "He doesn't realize how strong his paws are", notes Ms. Ellis. The Ellises tried buying a larger litter box for Nigel, but as Nigel prefers working the perimeter, that didn't solve the problem. The Ellises finally decided that, all things considered, they could live with this one shortcoming of Nigel's, so they just covered the area around Nigel's litter box with some newspaper to collect the jetsom that resulted from Nigel's daily maintenance operations.
Mr. Ellis retired comfortably in 1993 after a long career in sales at a Washington D.C.-based defense contractor. After retiring, he started playing the stock market. His "night job", presented to him by his wife upon his retirement, is cleaning up Nigel's litter box. By providence or sheer luck, Mr. Ellis's post-retirement vocation and avocation synergistically combined to turn him a handsome profit.
Mr. Ellis, thinking anthropomorphically, figured that Nigel would appreciate reading the business section - the stock listings in particular - while using the litter box. Mr Ellis had put most of his money in conservative investments - blue-chip stocks, government securities, grade A corporate bonds. But as the 90s bull market started to roar, he felt that he should get in on some of the action. So he set aside some "mad money" to invest in higher-risk growth stocks. "I really didn't have a plan, I just didn't want to end up kicking myself for being too conservative."
So Mr. Ellis started researching companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange. Each evening, after perusing the daily NASDAQ listings, Mr. Ellis would clean the litter box and put the paper he had just been reading down around the freshly-cleaned box. Which meant that Mr. Ellis wasn't the only one in the house who had lots of opportunities to study the daily NASDAQ tables. One day, while on litter box detail, Mr. Ellis noticed that Nigel had left a singular small pile of spurned litter on top of the listing for a small data storage manufacturer in whose stock Mr. Ellis had been considering investing. Mr. Ellis took this as a signal and bought some shares. The company's stock skyrocketed.
About a week later, Mr. Ellis noticed the same pattern, only this time it was right on top of Microsoft. Casting aside less charitable possible hidden meanings that came to mind, Mr. Ellis decided to capitalize on his momentum and invest in Microsoft even though he had reservations about the company's ability to fend off competitors and mounting lawsuits. As it turned out, Microsoft's stock soared during the 90's, paying off handsomely for Mr. Ellis.
This pattern continued throughout the 90s. Mrs. Ellis notes that "Nigel had the cleanest litter box in Annapolis, and possibly all of Maryland, thanks to Richard's devotion to the job." Mr. Ellis, if not Nigel himself, refined his methods. Sometimes litter box ejecta would be scattered randomly on the paper; Mr. Ellis wasted no time trying to divine what Nigel was saying in these instances ("there were too many possible interpretations", Mr. Ellis says). Other times Nigel was unexpectedly tidy, and there was not a speck of litter anywhere on the paper ("That was actually slightly disappointing, even though it made the cleanup easier", recalls Mr. Ellis). Only when Nigel left a single spire would Mr. Ellis act on Nigel's tip. "Everyone has a system; I had mine," says Mr. Ellis, petting Nigel affectionately on his head.
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