There might not be any way to plan for a global pandemic and its resulting financial panic, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pay off big time to plan ahead, even in times like these.
And going forward without a plan means risking letting huge opportunities to score massive profits pass you by.
For example, anyone who didn’t have an investment plan in place this year likely ended up freaking out along with millions of other investors, lurching from crisis to crisis and making a series of bad financial decisions.
Just as bad, they even ran the risk of sitting on the sidelines confused as the market came roaring back.
Consider that just investing in the S&P 500 when it rebounded last March 23 was enough to make 65% returns in nine months.
And that’s why today, in the first of two parts to set you up for a profitable 2021, I‘m going to show you how to plan ahead, to give yourself the best possible chance of avoiding these pitfalls.
If you follow my lead here you can crush the market’s historic returns with breakout tech leaders.
The market has led us on a wild ride this year. It dropped over 35% in February and March, and in only a matter of months, some indices were already hitting all-time highs again. Just look at the Nasdaq Composite, which is up 40% this year, even with the drop.
But the most interesting moves in the market this year have been from private companies entering the public markets.
So far, we’ve talked often about the importance of the cloud, big data, e-commerce, and artificial intelligence.
But there’s another very profitable field largely flying under the radar.
And it’s set to notch a historic milestone that’s going to be a massive win for the digital economy, and for investors like us.
Here’s the thing. When most folks think of advertising, the first idea that pops into their heads is Madison Avenue that has dominated TV, radio, and print for decades.
But a new study shows digital ads – those served up online or through handhelds – are about to surpass “old school” marketing.
We’re talking $110 billion in digital ads just for 2020 alone. That’s 51% of the ad industry’s forecast sales of $214.6 billion.
With a medical program launching in 2008, the people of Michigan had a jump start in learning about the health benefits of cannabis while growers had time to perfect their craft.
By the time recreational sales started on December 1, 2019, you had an educated consumer base who could buy some of the best cannabis in the country. And Michigan smashed it out of the park, with almost $440 million recreational sales in its first year – more than both Nevada ($425 million) and Massachusetts ($420 million).
I visited Michigan in November because I wanted to see this boom for myself, which led me to one startup in particular that is accounting for 12% of all the sales in this state.
I was impressed with everything I saw, but there’s a cherry on top of all of this.
The Godfather of Cannabis himself also saw the moneymaking potential behind this startup, and he’s thrown his full support behind it as their Executive Chairman.
Just in time for Christmas shopping, I’m back on lockdown. Here’s the upside though; It’s pointing me towards a golden moneymaking opportunity.
As you may have heard, California Governor Newsom has issued strict new limits on the state’s businesses as coronavirus cases climb here.
That’s going to pose a huge burden on retailers who often count half their sales during the holidays.
I’m one of those last-minute retail buyers. Don’t get me wrong, I mostly shop online.
But I love to go to our local village and find a unique piece of jewelry for my lovely wife Tracy.
So, this year it’s going to be an all-e-commerce Christmas. And like millions of others, I will be using mobile payments for a good portion of it all.
Indeed, data compiled by cloud leader Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM) says interest in mobile payments is at record levels as they head toward a value of more than $3.5 trillion.
The concept of “the cross-price elasticity of demand,” may sound like something just for econ nerds, but I assure you that it’s very profitable for you as well.
And my own experience earning an honors economics degree and serving as a college teaching assistant in the subject can make it pretty painless too.
Simply stated, cross-price elasticity of demand means that, if whiskey is expensive relative to beer, more people will buy the latter.
But what if there was a hidden way to get the equivalent of whiskey at beer prices? I don’t know about you but I’m on board with that.
Just take a look at Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). The King of Ecommerce trades at about $3,130 a share.
But there is another leader in the same space whose stock costs less than one-third of AMZN even though its earnings are growing 10% faster.
I’m not sure I could have survived this year without shopping online, and I have a feeling many of you are thinking the same thing. In fact, e-commerce is growing faster than ever before, jumping to 16.1% of total retail sales in Q2 2020 from 10.8% last year in the United States.
That equates to billions of dollars spent online from groceries to electronics and even cars. That’s why we have seen stocks like Shopify Inc. (NYSE: SHOP), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Carvana Co. (NYSE: CVNA) skyrocket over 100% this year with everyone at home.
The best part about this is that it is not a trend that is going away anytime soon. According to a survey done by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Covid-19 pandemic has forever changed online shopping behaviors. Following the pandemic, more than half of the survey’s respondents will continue to shop online more frequently.
The pandemic has accelerated the shift towards a more digital world, and we have seen that everywhere. We talked about it with MercadoLibre Inc. (NASDAQ: MELI) in Latin America and with Sea Ltd. (NYSE: SE) in Southeast Asia.
Now I want to talk to you about an entirely different market with a recent IPO that is taking e-commerce head-on in Russia.
We have all heard of Amazon and Alibaba, but chances are you have not yet heard about Ozon Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: OZON), one of the top e-commerce companies in Russia, with a bright future ahead of it. Interestingly enough, just like Amazon, it was founded as an online bookstore in 1998.
They quickly expanded to sell clothing, music, movies, electronics, fresh food, and now offer more than 9 million products across 24 product categories.
Now you may be thinking, isn’t there a lot of risk to investing in a foreign country? Well, yes there is always some risk in investing in foreign companies. The same could be said for investing in China, where companies like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE: BABA), JD.com Inc. (NASDAQ: JD), and Nio Ltd. (NYSE: NIO) have all brought triple-digit returns.
At the time I told you about a medical device leader that had just received approval for a Covid-19 test, and shot up 120% in two months.
But this is not just a COVID testing play. From early 2019 through this past February’s correction, this stock was outperforming the S&P 500 by an astonishing 278.5%.
This firm is a leader in the medical device market as part of a trend toward remote patient monitoring that’s been supercharged by the COVID pandemic.
With the coronavirus surging once again, the investment thesis is only getting better.
I was speaking about SpaceX’s Starlink global constellation of 1,440 satellites to beam Web access down to Earth.
There’s just one problem with this ambitious plan. Outer space is filling up with dangerous junk.
We already have at least 3,100 dead satellites posing a risk of collision, according to the U.N.
With 10,000 new satellites slated to be launched in the next three years, the potential for danger is soaring.
It comes as forecasts suggest civilian space travel will boost the sector to at least $1 trillion. And just last week, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. (SPCE) scored a key NASA contract.
As long as the threat of collisions of up there, though, this new sector and its incredible growth potential are at risk.
Luckily, I’ve identified a company focused on keeping the crowded skies safe. It just made a key merger to become a true space traffic controller.
As holiday shopping comes to a close, this year felt a bit different. There was no camping out overnight in front of stores to get that doorbuster TV. Instead, everyone was in front of their computer or cell phones to buy everything they needed this year.
Cyber Monday was projected to be the largest online shopping day in U.S. history and it not only delivered, it crushed last year’s spending, increasing 15.1%. That equates to $10.8 billion spent in a single day according to Adobe’s shopping data, which pulls its data from one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites.
