I’ve got a Kubota tractor that I love to work from, but a few weeks ago, I knocked a burnt dead tree over on top of the front end loader joystick which busted a joint in it. I need to get the joint replaced but it takes time and energy to figure out what piece I need and then to try to get it replaced. I’ve got an old Scout that I worked very hard on trying to get refurbished but I lost the keys to it somewhere a few weeks ago and I can’t drive it til I find those keys. When one of the shops that worked on the Scout had it, they blew out two of the speakers from the 1990s vintage stereo system I’d been installing in it. I need to get the back area’s speakers replaced, I guess. I’ve got a beat up ol’ 4-wheeler that I bought used from a local shop but the battery gave out after the ignition key was left on overnight one too many times. It needs a tune up anyway.
We all have a million to-do items in our lives, and when you’re working hard on your career, investing, being a good family member, etc, the little things you’ve been meaning to get done around your house can build up. I’m going to try to get most of the above to-do things done in the next couple weeks during the holidays without slowing down on my work, career, investing and being a good husband/dad/son/brother/etc and I hope I do. But the point here is that we can’t allow ourselves the luxury of not staying on top of all the little things in our stock and other portfolios that need tending to.
If you’ve got a position that you need to sell, do it. If you’ve got a few stocks you’ve been meaning to finish doing homework on before buying them, get to work on it tonight. Any 401k, tax items, and other little things that don’t seem to matter much right now, can start to cost you big if you don’t stay on top of them. Your stock portfolio isn’t a vintage stereo system.
It won’t surprise you to hear me say that I’m not trading today. Steady as she goes for now.
Don’t forget this week’s Live Q&A Chat at 2pm EST at https://tradingwithcody.com/chat or email your question by hitting reply to this email and I’ll include it in the transcript.
Here’s my article from today’s business section in the USA Today.
Cody Willard: 3 key growth trends to invest in
I’ve spent much of 2014 reducing the total number of my positions, raising cash and growing more defensive. I doubt that I’ll get as aggressively long in stocks as I was from 2010-2013 until this cycle plays itself out or unless the markets crash to give us another opportunity to load up in a high-fear crisis sometime sooner than that. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find some incredible revolutionary growth trends to get in front of and to opportunistically find trades and investments to profit on.
My approach to investing is to try to find the most innovative companies in the most disruptive and revolutionary industries before the rest of Wall Street catches up to the trend. And more specifically, in today’s markets with the Fed’s endless money-printing and lending at 0% rates to banks and all the other artificial help of QE, stimuli, and targeted tax breaks for giant corporations.
The key to long-term outperformance and making big money in the stock market is find and own the best and most revolutionary companies who are disrupting or creating new marketplaces that will have huge growth ahead. Say, like Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) were positioned to do back when the smartphone/tablet and search markets were just being created.
I’ve owned the two largest market-cap stocks in the U.S. for more than a decade, having first bought Apple at $1 and Google the day it came public at $45 in the open market after it started trading. By finding the fastest-growing trends on the planet and getting in front of them before they’ve gone mainstream, we’re trying to find the next Apple and Google like I did with the first Apple and Google.
What are the three biggest growth industries about to revolutionize our world next? In order from smallest to biggest impact on our societies and economies they are:
1. Drones. Drones are going to get smaller, smarter and quieter. But drones are still just a baby industry barely getting started. No doubt we need and will get more laws and restrictions on how drones can be used in town, but the economics and features of drones are too strong to be denied. Drones are going to be delivering your packages. Driverless cars and buses, which are also a form of drones (a drone is defined as an unmanned vehicle) are going to deliver you to your destinations. My favorite drone stocks include Ambarella (AMBA) and Amazon (AMZN). AeroVironment(AVAV) is probably the purest play on the Drone Revolution, but they are not getting into the consumer drone business fast enough for my liking.
2. Robotics. Robots, like drones, are getting smarter and quieter. These aren’t your parents’ robots, and we’re not talking about vacuum cleaners. Factories are filled with robots, but the average consumer doesn’t interact with robots much just yet. Robots — which, if they’re fully mobile, would also be known as drones — are going to sell us routine tickets, provide safety checks and who knows what else over the next decade. Put simply, it’s the ability to talk to your robot that might be the single biggest reason that the consumer robot industry is finally about to take off. My favorite names in the robotics business include Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) and Honda Motors (HMC).
3. Wearables. Wearables are likely to be, by far, the biggest growth industry for the next five years. You’re going to see kids wearing HD camera recorders in their hats, sunglasses, clothes and accessories and streaming their lives up and down the Internet. You’re going to see people wearing displays and talking to themselves as they engage with their smart devices. Imagine your smartphone becoming a hub that controls your wearables and connects them to the Internet. Revolutionary on a global scale. By far the best two ways to play the wearables industry is to stick with Google and Apple. Ambarella’s name comes up here again, as they make the HD video chipsets that are quickly becoming the de facto standard. And Sony’s (SNE) another one I own, partly because they are focusing heavily on developing new wearables and wearables technologies.
Invasion of privacy is going to be an ever bigger issue with wearables, drones and robots and their ability to track and keep data, video and other private information. Remember all the invasion of privacy issues around social networks and smartphones and browsers that track your data like Google, Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT) and so on? That’s not going to go away anytime soon, but it didn’t stop these companies from revolutionizing the world.
Cody Willard is the Chairman of Scutify and publisher of TradingWithCody.com. He’s been a hedge fund manager, a TV anchor on Fox Business and was the Wall Street correspondent for the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
