Tension in the Middle East and the South China Sea… a political mess at home… sky-high stock prices.
And here’s something else to worry about…
On Nov. 1, a Wall Street Journal headline warned about the “Consumer Confidence Conundrum.”
Here’s the worry: According to WSJ writer Chris Dieterich and the folks he talked, because consumer confidence is at its highest level since December 2000, it’s time to “add this to the list of reasons investors ought to be getting nervous.”
The reason: It may signal the bull market is coming to an end.
The treatment that makes up 90% of the pharmaceutical market – good, old-fashioned small molecules created in the laboratory – isn’t going anywhere.
Yes, incredibly innovative treatments like T-cell therapy, microbiome therapies, and CRISPR gene editing are all having a huge impact on healthcare.
But we use small, synthetic molecules to create everything from aspirin and corticosteroids to sofosbuvir (Sovaldi) and ivacaftor (Kalydeco) – and we’ll keep doing so for a long time to come.
The small molecule technique dates back to the 1890s, but that doesn’t mean innovation cannot happen within that field. Scientists are hard at work in the labs, creating cutting-edge drugs, often tailored to treat a very specific disease or subset of patients.
Meanwhile, I’ve turned up a small British company that’s using its artificial intelligence platform to discover promising small molecule treatments faster – and cheaper – than ever before.
I call it biointelligence.
It’s a perfect illustration of the “Convergence Economy” we talk so much about here. By combining two or more fields of tech – in this case biotech and AI – it’s like a formula in which 1 + 1 = 3… and often a lot more that.
Today, we’re going to learn all about this tiny company and its brand-new biointelligence technology.
This company is privately held – so if you ask, Wall Street will say you can’t invest in it.
But I’ve a way you can.
In fact, I’ve found two ways.
Both of them will lead you to outsized returns – and hefty dividends.
Donald Trump promises to create 25 million new jobs over the next decade with his economic plan.
And as we’ve been discussing over the past few weeks, I think that plan is a good one – and will be very good for tech companies and their investors.
However, there’s also this…
Robotics and artificial intelligence – “automation,” in a word – will eliminate tens of millions of jobs over that same stretch.
It makes many of us planning our retirement – trying to put together enough money and investments to guarantee that our “golden years” are prosperous – wonder how we’ll do it. Moreover, it makes us worry about our children’s and grandchildren’s futures.
How can anyone save or invest if they’re looking at a “jobless future”?
One way to do it – to not just survive but to thrive in this unknowable future – is to profit from the very automation technologies that are threatening humanity’s livelihood.
And to do that, you have to “pick” the best stocks in this sector.
I’ve just spotted such a company – one whose technology could to displace millions of “back office” workers in the coming years. You know, the folks doing data entry and handling the customer service lines.
Its technology is known as robotic process automation (RPA).
We’ve been talking a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) over the past few weeks.
About how the big brains at Google’s DeepMind AI system say they may have developed a memory system they’re calling a “differentiable neural computer” (DNC) and possibly unlocked the path to truly intelligent deep learning.
About how many of FacebookMessenger’s 1 billion users are using AI-enhanced “chatbots” for their customer-service needs – chatbots that may soon be handling bill paying, shopping, delivery, and a range of other tasks.
We’ve all seen the “Trump Tweet Effect” these past weeks, as the president-elect’s unfiltered Twitter messages hit some of Wall Street’s favorite stocks.
Donald Trump took The Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) to task early on Dec. 6, for its overly lavish federal contract. The company’s stock opened 1.54% lower in a move that wiped more than $1 billion in capitalization from the books.
Later that same day, Trump reported that SoftBank Group Corp. CEO Masayoshi Son, a Japanese billionaire and technology investor, had agreed to invest $50 billion in the United States, aiming to create 50,000 jobs. And he took credit for the “deal.” Since, then Softbank, has soared nearly 15%.
Then on Dec. 12, Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT), one of our best defense plays, lost $4 billion in value in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s tweets about the F-35 Lightning program.
Now, these losses and gains say more about Wall Street traders than about Trump – or the companies he’s talking about.
But we need to watch out for this kind of “volatility” from here on out.
Unless… you go with the recommendation I’m going to show you now.
It’s offering explosive growth in a blue-chip package – 37% gains year to date.
And I can’t imagine any mere 140 characters are going to ding it…
If you’re at all familiar with the New York City Subway, you know that’s an easy route – no train changes required.
Now, consider a trek from the Bronx Zoo to Flushing Meadows in Queens, where they play the U.S. Open.
If you can figure that out, you’re smarter than most advanced artificial intelligence systems.
According to researchers at Google’s DeepMind AI project, such systems can perform pretty simple tasks like picking out the best Times Square-to-Wall Street route 98.8% of the time. But when it comes to more complex trips, they have a success rate of just 37%.
But now, DeepMind’s big brains say they may have solved that problem with a memory system they’re calling a “differentiable neural computer” (DNC). By doing that, they may have found the key that unlocks the path to truly intelligent AI and deep learning.
Today, we’ll take a look at what DNC is.
And we’ll dig up a company that’s making memory breakthroughs like it possible.
This stock is 40% off its two-year closing high.
It’s going to get back there and higher pretty quickly – and make a nice 25% in just the next year.
If you have a question or issue with a recent purchase or experience – say, a broken toaster, mis-delivered pizza, or stinky hotel room – you have several options…
You can visit the customer service desk.
You can write a letter.
You can send an email.
You can call customer service.
You can chat with a bot.
You see, over the past year or so, thousands of “brands” – everything from soda companies to tropical resorts – have unleashed bots to handle some of their customer-service load.
With these bots, you type or say a question – and the bot responds. They work pretty well – I used one to cancel my cable service earlier this year… and didn’t realize it till later.
That may seem like a small change in the “How We Live” window of the Singularity Nexus – chatting with a bot instead of a call-center worker – but these chatbots wouldn’t exist if it weren’t a major Singularity Era technology.
Artificial intelligence…
Soon, all of our “intelligent” things will have some form of chat- or voice-bot – like Siri on your iPhone – interface.
All these chatbots need the right software and platform to be effective.
One company has already developed that software and platform.
Since this summer, this company has deployed dozens of dedicated AI servers to comb through all of the data it is getting from its chatbot platform.
And as it does so, that company’s AI system getting smarter and more precise with each passing month – and those brands are seeing success and more are signing up.
Today, I’ll show you why this company is one of the best ways to play AI and chatbots.
Not least of which because you could make profits of 107% with it between now and 2020.
If you couldn’t get a piece of the largest IPO in history a couple of weeks ago, you were far from alone.
I think the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE: BABA) initial public offering will go down as the greatest wealth opportunity of a generation – but only about 4% of the $25 billion worth of stock went to individual investors like you.
As alluring as Alibaba and the white-hot IPO market can be, it’s not a place to play unless you have the “connections” needed to access the best deals – or have a special “angle” to play.
I can’t help you with the connections.
But I can give you that special angle.
And that angle will give you access to the profits rolling out of Alibaba and the IPO market – but at a much lower level of risk.
So, today I’m going to show you a far better way to gain access to Alibaba’s huge profit steam at a nearly 50% discount from the stock’s current price – and at a much lower level of risk.
Let’s face it … even though we aren’t seeing images of mass starvation every night on CNN, we’re heading for a food crisis so deadly that it’s hard to even picture.
Just this week, in fact, a quick perusal of the Web led me to reports on major food crises playing out in Somalia and South Sudan, an only slightly less severe food shortage squeezing Venezuela and a forecast of a ruinous disaster that will span the globe by 2050.
And if global food consumers and producers maintain their present course, I believe there will be plenty to fear.
The ingredients of an epic disaster are all there. You’ve got water conflicts and shortages throughout the world, an exploding global population (7 billion and growing) and escalating shortages of arable land.
In a special report back in 2008, the United Nation referred to this as a “silent tsunami” of global hunger – and correctly predicted it would only get worse. Today, the UN estimates that about 870 million people remain undernourished – 100 million of them children under 5.
A crisis like this is easy to dismiss – out of sight/out of mind and all that …
But the fact is that we’re getting some early warning signals here in the United States, where a three-year California drought and the lousy winter in the Midwest Dairy Belt have been an inflationary one-two punch for produce and dairy prices.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, wholesale food prices jumped 2.7% in April, the fourth straight monthly gain. Meat prices zoomed 8.4%, the most since more than a decade ago. And the prices of some fruits and vegetables soared as much as 50% in a single month.
The solution to these seemingly intractable problems has always been to throw money at them in the form of more and more aid.
But there’s another answer.
We can devote high-tech resources to the problem.
In fact, this is one of those great opportunities where we can employ high tech to avert a looming world disaster – and reap a windfall profit in the process.
When it comes to breakthroughs in the fast-moving robotics field, the mainstream media is once again bringing up the rear.
Last week, the major news outlets were abuzz with details about how two patients paralyzed from the neck down used their minds to control robots.
No doubt, this is a worthy breakthrough. On the other hand…
I first wrote about a similar case back in early January, four months before the New York Times got onto the story. That’s when my report on how the tech sector delivers life-changing gains ran on our sister website, Money Morning.
In fact, I got so much great feedback on that and other stories like it, I decided to launch the Era of Radical Change.
I mention this not to brag, but to remind you that by subscribing, you really will learn about key trends in cutting-edge tech long before the general public.
And that’s clearly true when it comes to robots. Just two weeks ago I wrote to tell you how a new series of smart machines will have a profound impact on the world around us.
Here’s what I said:
“Robots of all sizes are already capable of doing some very complex tasks: They can perform surgery, hair transplants, and even climb inside the human body – through the mouth – to “eat” stomach cancers.”
You may recall that I also told you to keep an eye on Heartland Robotics, a startup based in Boston that I believe is a good IPO candidate. The firm says it will produce a range of machines that will serve as “the PC” of robots.
It makes many of us planning our retirement – trying to put together enough money and investments to guarantee that our “golden years” are prosperous – wonder how we’ll do it. Moreover, it makes us worry about our children’s and grandchildren’s futures.
Later that same day, Trump reported that SoftBank Group Corp. CEO Masayoshi Son, a Japanese billionaire and technology investor, had agreed to invest $50 billion in the United States, aiming to create 50,000 jobs. And he took credit for the “deal.” Since, then Softbank, has soared nearly 15%.
According to researchers at Google’s DeepMind AI project, such systems can perform pretty simple tasks like picking out the best Times Square-to-Wall Street route 98.8% of the time. But when it comes to more complex trips, they have a success rate of just 37%.
Artificial intelligence…