This Big Data Stock Is My Top Pick for the Week

Vaccines and masks are two of the most potent weapons we've got against the delta variant of the novel coronavirus.

It's hardly as visible, but I'd argue Big Data is right up there in importance when it comes to battling the pandemic and saving lives.

Whether you're a virologist mapping and tracking the bug's genome and mutations, biotech researcher developing therapies or vaccines, a hospital system coordinating care for an entire big city, a contact tracer, a school administrator, mayor, or county executive, the availability of good data has been absolutely critical, every step of the way.

It's critical to fighting the pandemic, but I think lots of investors will soon find that it's critical for their bottom lines. I'm absolutely convinced Big Data, an important segment of the tech sector, must be near the top of every investor's list of lucrative long-term tech trends - analysts are projecting it'll be a $229 billion juggernaut in just three or four years.

When you start banking profits on this tech-sector stock, you'll be convinced, too.

"Mountains and Mountains" of Data

COVID-19 is absolutely diabolical. I'd say the best screenwriters and authors working today would be hard-pressed to write a character sketch of a villain this nasty.

It kills some of its victims slowly, horribly, while others are completely asymptomatic and don't even realize they have COVID-19. Some folks get the sniffles, other people are sick for a week or more. Still, others appear to struggle with "long COVID" for months and months on end. The symptoms, when they do appear, mimic those of a dozen or so other sicknesses out there, so that people who may have nothing worse than a common cold are compelled to isolate for fear of having COVID-19.

Like I said - diabolical.

University of Helsinki genetics researcher Andrea Ganna would probably agree. Like just about everyone else, he wondered, "Why does COVID-19 do so many different things to people?"

Ganna's embarked on a genetics study of massive proportions to try and answer that very question. Over the last 15 months, he's compiled statistics pulled from more than 3,300 researchers in 25 countries. We're talking stats about millions of people, including more than 125,000 COVID-19 patients.

And when I say "massive proportions," Ganna's project to map how our DNA affects our bodies' ability to deal with the novel coronavirus has turned into one of the largest initiatives in genetics data ever put together.

As you can imagine, the amount of data they had to sift through is astounding. In fact, the story of the pandemic has in many ways been just that - the story of Big Data.

Take the website Worldometers.info. This online statistics portal was relatively unknown until the pandemic exploded in the late winter of 2020.

Then all of a sudden, millions of us started tracking up-to-date numbers on infections, deaths, hospitalizations - all split up by country, by state, by age group, and so on. The site has done a truly admirable job of presenting all this data in a readable way for laypersons looking to make what very well could be life-or-death health decisions for themselves, their families, their businesses, and communities.

But despite the avalanche of COVID-19 details at our fingertips, this all pales in comparison to what's going on with the larger world around us.

For example, we saw more than 300 million video chats happening every day last year. Not to mention the huge rise in movie streaming once movie theaters closed down.

In fact, research firm IDC estimates 59 zettabytes of data were made and consumed in 2020. That's 59 sextillion bytes - 59,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. To give you an idea, that's almost 20 billion 4K movies, enough for centuries of binge-watching.

This data comes from the millions and millions of data generators all around us: smartwatches, medical devices, smartphones, speakers, thermostats, gaming consoles, laptops, and so on.

The thing is, just collecting this data is of limited to no value. The serious money is in the synthesis and analysis of the data, turning it into a useable product.

That's why, as I mentioned, Marketsandmarkets Research projects the Big Data market will be worth nearly $230 billion by 2025.

That brings me to today's pick - one that'll be familiar to my Nova-X Report subscribers, who got the chance to bag 56.8% on half a position last October.

The Ultimate Big Data "Pick and Shovel" Play

The aptly named Datadog Inc. (NASDAQ: DDOG) is a Cloud-management developer for businesses. Its unified cloud platform integrates all the metrics that corporate operations teams use to monitor their cloud apps and servers, as well as the logs the teams use to troubleshoot errors.

Millions of us have shifted from full-time remote work or, now, a hybrid home/office schedule, which has made Datadog's platform absolutely indispensable to corporate IT teams across the country.

That's because Datadog has some key advantages over its competitors. A key differentiator is that Datadog's platform also integrates the "traces" that a development team needs to see to determine how to fix an error once it's spotted - pretty tricky business when you're talking about peta- and zettabytes of data. When the operations team notices a slowdown or error, they can immediately look into the logs and traces to see if it's because of a hardware issue that they can solve or a code issue the development team can fix.

This merging of development and operations into "devops" is a boon worth its weight in gold to companies running Cloud services. It allows teams to constantly optimize speed and performance without getting into the blame-games or territorial fights that can plague traditional Cloud development.

Datadog even helps companies fix issues before they happen. See, the company has built-in machine learning that predicts potential issues for a company's Cloud before they happen.

The machine learning system also runs constant marketing and business analysis, so that the Devops team can optimize their systems for revenue, as well.

As a Big Data play, DDOG shares are tough to beat...

Here's a Stock Set to Double

Datadog is a company to own for the long haul. Although the shares have done better than double the S&P 500's 2021 performance, there's much upside ahead.

Datadog's latest earnings show just how popular and needed its Cloud-management platform is in a "COVID-19 world." In fact, the company's second-quarter profit, revenue, and guidance for the next quarter were all higher than Wall Street expected.

Datadog reported per-share earnings of $0.09, three times higher than expected and up 80% from the year before. Revenue soared 67% to $233.5 million, almost 10% higher than what analysts were counting on. Datadog also reported having 59% more corporate customers that make $100,000 a year or more in revenue. That's a large and growing customer base a lot of CEOs would envy.

It has to be said that Datadog's profits were short over the last three years. But that's changing as the company's sales growth is now falling to the bottom line. Given its performance, I'm projecting earnings growth of 24% for the company. At that rate, it should double in three years.

2021 will probably go down in history as the "Year of Big Data," but it's far from the only wealth-generating tech trend making headlines. I'm talking about electric vehicles (EVs), of course.

I know a tiny EV stock - costs just two bucks - that made a 10x run over the past year. That's all the proof investors need of the profit potential in this sector. But I think that extraordinary run was just the beginning for these shares. The company is currently seeking an IPO on the "Big Board" - a major U.S. exchange - and if and when that happens, it could make a historic run higher - Not up to $5, $10, or even $15 - but it could rise to well over $20 per share... netting an incredible 1,147% gain (or more) within the next year. I can tell you more about it right here...

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About the Author

Michael A. Robinson is a 36-year Silicon Valley veteran and one of the top tech and biotech financial analysts working today. That's because, as a consultant, senior adviser, and board member for Silicon Valley venture capital firms, Michael enjoys privileged access to pioneering CEOs, scientists, and high-profile players. And he brings this entire world of Silicon Valley "insiders" right to you...

  • He was one of five people involved in early meetings for the $160 billion "cloud" computing phenomenon.
  • He was there as Lee Iacocca and Roger Smith, the CEOs of Chrysler and GM, led the robotics revolution that saved the U.S. automotive industry.
  • As cyber-security was becoming a focus of national security, Michael was with Dave DeWalt, the CEO of McAfee, right before Intel acquired his company for $7.8 billion.

This all means the entire world is constantly seeking Michael's insight.

In addition to being a regular guest and panelist on CNBC and Fox Business, he is also a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and reporter. His first book Overdrawn: The Bailout of American Savings warned people about the coming financial collapse - years before the word "bailout" became a household word.

Silicon Valley defense publications vie for his analysis. He's worked for Defense Media Network and Signal Magazine, as well as The New York Times, American Enterprise, and The Wall Street Journal.

And even with decades of experience, Michael believes there has never been a moment in time quite like this.

Right now, medical breakthroughs that once took years to develop are moving at a record speed. And that means we are going to see highly lucrative biotech investment opportunities come in fast and furious.

To help you navigate the historic opportunity in biotech, Michael launched the Bio-Tech Profit Alliance.

His other publications include: Strategic Tech Investor, The Nova-X Report, Bio-Technology Profit Alliance and Nexus-9 Network.

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