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You know I get stoked when a stock I've recommended to you does well. So you can imagine how excited I am that I now get to recommend a stock all over again.
Thanks to a sell-off shortly before I first shared this stock with you, we were able to buy this stock relatively cheaply. And since then, just five months ago, the stock has moved up 131% as of mid-day yesterday.
Over the last three years, this company has increased earnings per share (EPS) by an average of 73%. For now, I'm going to be conservative and assume it grows by only one-third that amount going forward.
That would give us earnings growth rate of 24%. At that rate, profits and the stock price could double again in as little as three years.
This is a stock that provides us with a buffet of choices…
We can sell it and make our double. We can keep it and watch it quadruple. Or we can buy some more, and then watch our portfolios soar higher and our retirements grow more secure.
Today, I want to explain why this stock continues its upward trajectory.
China and Russia's $400 billion natural gas deal was one of the first shots in their energy war against the United States and Europe.
This company's products are a big part of the technology that provides our best defense in this war. And that makes this a "defense" technology we can feel proud about profiting from…
The Quiet War
When I wrote in Strategic Tech Investor in June, I noted that Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, had just reached a $400 billion agreement to supply natural gas to China. The massive deal is part of Putin's scheme to use Russia's abundant energy supplies to grow his nation's economy.
This 30-year pact threatens to upset the delicate global balance of power.
See, Europeans rely on Russia for energy supplies, and so they could pay higher prices once all that gas starts going to China. It's a quiet war that again pits the United States against its longtime adversaries.
And that's not the only front in this quiet war.
According to an article in Foreign Policy, the head of NATO recently alleged that Putin is financially and strategically backing environmental groups in order to "demonize" hydraulic fracturing, aka "fracking," in Western Europe.
There's just one problem with Putin's agenda…
The United States is itself in the midst of a major natural gas boom. And we'll likely be supplying Europe with natural gas exports in the near future.
And it's all because of fracking, the breakthrough technology process of using water, sand, and other agents to fracture rocks and earth deep underground – releasing previously inaccessible oil or natural gas.
It's a highly lucrative technology that gives energy companies economically practical access to vast new deposits of oil and natural gas in those underground bands of shale. And it's the key technology paving the way for America's new "energy independence."
From Imports to Exports
It's almost impossible to overstate what a huge impact the field of hydraulic fracking has had on the United States.
Consider that as recently 2007 the U.S. government was seriously considering importing natural gas from Russia. And this came from President George W. Bush, a former Texas oil man.
Today, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says our country could soon become a net exporter of natural gas.
This prediction brings up another key but often overlooked point about the U.S. energy industry. While the United States still imports far too much foreign oil, we rank as the world's third-largest energy producer.
The sector includes 500,000 wells and 16,000 production facilities whose annual output is worth some $134 billion. We're also the epicenter for the growing use of fracking to unleash new supplies of oil and natural gas.
Indeed, according to a recent essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, because of fracking "the resulting uptick in energy production has been dramatic." It goes on to say that America's use of energy technology means the nation is poised to become an "energy superpower."
The authors noted that, between 2007 and 2012, U.S. shale gas production rose by more than 50% each year. This sector's share of total U.S. gas production jumped from 5% to 39% in the period, a nearly eightfold increase.
But fracking doesn't stop there. It's having a dramatic effect on oil production as well.
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About the Author
Michael A. Robinson is one of the top financial analysts working today. His book "Overdrawn: The Bailout of American Savings" was a prescient look at the anatomy of the nation's S&L crisis, long before the word "bailout" became part of our daily lexicon. He's a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and reporter, lauded by the Columbia Journalism Review for his aggressive style. His 30-year track record as a leading tech analyst has garnered him rave reviews, too. Today he is the editor of the monthly tech investing newsletter Nova-X Report as well as Radical Technology Profits, where he covers truly radical technologies – ones that have the power to sweep across the globe and change the very fabric of our lives – and profit opportunities they give rise to. He also explores "what's next" in the tech investing world at Strategic Tech Investor.