5 Stocks to Buy Now to Double Your Money

By Shah Gilani


Dear Red Alert Reader,

The markets took a massive hit at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. But amazingly, people began buying at record volumes.

Millennials, boomers, and everyone in between started snapping up stocks at rock-bottom prices. Amazon.com Inc. for $1,626, Alphabet Inc. for $1,016, airlines for $20, cruise lines for $6, banks for $15.

And while the market bounced back significantly, I’m here to tell you, the buying opportunity is far from over.

I don’t say this lightly… we’re still in the midst of the buying opportunity of the century.

But not for every stock. Instead, there are a handful of stocks that are positioned for massive gains right now. In fact, the five stocks I have for you today could double your money in just 24 months, no matter what the broader market does.

Because let’s face it: What we’re looking at in the stock market today is pandemonium. The markets could go up, down, or sideways next. There are whispers of a recession, a weakened economy, and – amazingly – a stock market that is trucking forward.

Up, up, and away… or is it more, “what comes up, must come down?”

Only time will tell.

But whatever happens, there are stocks that will go up, recession or not.

These are the companies making essentials, backed by incredible leadership and a tight balance sheet.

And I’m not talking about thousand-dollar stocks like Apple or Amazon. These are affordable picks that can make you a fortune – just tuck them in your portfolio, and buckle up, because the stock markets are going to give us a wild ride.

With these big players in your portfolio though, you’ll not only survive the market’s volatility, you’ll have five chances to bank 100% gains in the next 24 months…

Stocks to Buy Now – No. 5: BlackRock Inc. (NYSE:BLK)

BlackRock Inc. (NYSE:BLK) is the preferred investment for huge institutions, top fund managers, politicians, family offices, and individual investors who want to grow their money like I want to see you grow yours – safely and with huge life-changing profit potential ahead no matter what happens next.

Its investment portfolio is bigger than the GDP of every country in the world, save the United States and China.

This company’s products dominate the investing landscape, especially when it comes to exchange-traded funds, which are a $1.5 trillion undertaking all by themselves.

Case in point, management did NOT cut or even think about restricting dividends during the dark days of the global financial crisis of 2008-09, when competitors were failing left and right.

Shares have slumped recently, and you’ve got a great entry point on your hands as a result.
With $6.32 trillion in assets under management, BlackRock Inc. is the definitive global leader in asset management and is a “money-printing machine.”

Roughly 63% of that originates in the Americas with another 29% out of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The last 8% comes from Asia-Pacific.

More than 50% of the largest endowments in the United States are clients, as are most U.S. retirement plans, many of the world’s top sovereign wealth funds, and all but a few of the Fortune 100.

All told, these groups make up about 75% of the firm’s tally, which means there is strength in size. That’s especially important because you don’t want to be wasting your time or your profit potential on lesser choices given current market conditions.

First, BlackRock is easily the world’s largest investor, which means you’re going to automatically get exposure to some of the world’s hottest investments including Apple Inc. (NasdaqGS:AAPL), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), and even Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM), where BlackRock is a “Top 3” shareholder. In fact, because of its iShares exchange-traded funds business, where portfolios are designed to track market indexes, BlackRock holds a large position in most major U.S.-listed companies.

That’s particularly critical because BlackRock is especially good at creating growth. The company frequently has access to deals that are completely unknown to the investing public and on terms you could not possibly hope to achieve on your own unless you had a few hundred million lying around.

BlackRock’s “alternatives” group, for example, can invest in a trade in a variety of markets using long-short strategies, arbitrage, and structured products in everything from currency to commodities, infrastructure, and real assets – all of which are a great non-correlated compliment to regular stocks, bonds, and ETFs.

Second, BlackRock will soon be engaged in a concerted turnaround following the firm’s first revenue decline in 2016. Share prices have recently pulled back and have not begun to climb higher because the Street doesn’t see the potential profits ahead like we do.

CEO Larry Fink changed the entire asset management model a few years ago to emphasize reduced fees, better stock selection through artificial intelligence, and a new focus on global growth.

That’s particularly important because BlackRock’s asset management business generated $10.83 billion in fees in 2019 using models that cost BlackRock zilch to create. If you’ve ever purchased an iShares product, for example, you’re a member of the BlackRock family and ahead of the game that I’m now suggesting you “own.”

And, third, BlackRock is focused on the world’s fastest-growing regions, including one that’s core to global growth – China.

That’s what really puts BlackRock “over the top” to my way of thinking.

I’d be remiss not to mention that BlackRock’s numbers look terrific.

For example, Q1/2020 results reflect a 17% YoY increase in assets under management (AUM) from $5.42 trillion to $6.32 trillion. At the same time, revenue increased 11% while gross profit shot up 13.1%.

Operating margin jumped by 40 basis points to a tech-like 41.7% even as management returned $1.3 billion to shareholders via buybacks and dividends.

Speaking of which, BlackRock generated 28% for shareholders in 2019, which is a metric that tells me there’s real traction here at a time when prices have paused.

Stocks to Buy Now – No. 4: CyrusOne Inc. (NasdaqGS:CONE)

Some companies are operating better, stronger, and faster than ever, even amid the coronavirus pandemic – or maybe because of it. Beating the coronavirus could actually catapult them to unprecedented new highs.

CyrusOne Inc. (NasdaqGS:CONE) is one of them.

It’s a real estate investment trust (REIT) specializing in enterprise-class, carrier-neutral data-center properties. CyrusOne operates 47 enterprise-class data centers in key American, European, and Asian markets with 4.16 million square feet of colocation on tap as of the end of 2019.

The company’s customer list already includes nearly half of the world’s Fortune 20 companies and more than 200 of the Fortune 1000 when you include direct connectivity to Google, Amazon, and Microsoft cloud services.

The financials, as you might expect with this kind of customer list, are exceptionally strong and likely to get stronger at a time when many companies are widely expected to take a hit.

From 2015 to 2019, revenue grew a whopping 196.55% from $330.9 million to $981.3 million. Net income over the same period swung from a $15.4 million loss to a $41.4 million profit.

At the same time, the company has a very diversified revenue profile as measured by both industry specific verticals and geographic market.

Roughly 47% of revenue is from information- and technology-related clients, followed by financial services at 15% and IT-based enterprise spending at 7%, then a smattering of everything from energy to health care.

We’re talking about nearly half of all revenue coming from cloud-related customers which are, not surprisingly, some of the strongest companies in the world, financially speaking.

Roughly 75% of the rent roll comes from investment customers according to CyrusOne, which is reassuring especially when you consider that we’re talking about top-tier companies and a weighted average lease term of 53 months as of March 25, 2020.

If you’re not familiar with REITs, they are a special investment structure with a very straightforward business model centered on the collection and distribution of rental income on various properties that are a part of the trust.

Property types more commonly include retail or residential space or Class A office buildings, but those are all suspect in my mind at the moment because of the potential economic risk associated with traditional tenants.

I’ve zeroed in on CyrusOne because of the data centers and the comparative stability they offer as a function of the coronavirus fight and recovery that will follow.

Historically speaking, REITs are a great choice for income-starved investors because of their unique characteristics including:

  1. Investing at least 75% of their total assets in real estate, cash, or U.S. Treasuries.
  2. Receiving at least 75% of their gross income from real property rents, interest on mortgages financing the real property, or from sales of real estate.
  3. Returning a minimum of 90% of taxable income in the form of shareholder dividends each year.

This last point – the income – is particularly important because REITs offer a healthy blend of appreciation potential and income to investors wishing to cash in but who don’t have the $100 million or more to sink into a high-performance real estate development portfolio.

Speaking of which, CONE has consistently issued dividends since 2013, when they first started trading on the Nasdaq, and has increased them steadily by an average of 25% a year. The current yield is 2.61%, which is 3.04X the anemic 0.71% rate on offers from U.S. 10-year Treasuries as I type.

REITs are usually considered defensive plays, but in this case, I’m more inclined to believe CONE may be the best offensive play you can make with your money as the world works its way through the coronavirus situation.

The markets WILL recover and a choice like this one that’s comparatively well insulated from the coronavirus and its economic impact could be a great way to take advantage of an otherwise dreadful situation.

Stocks to Buy Now – No. 3: iRobot Corp. (NasdaqGS:IRBT)

Based in Bedford, Massachusetts, iRobot Corp. (NasdaqGS:IRBT) grew out of work done initially at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was almost entirely geared towards military applications. One example is the Ariel, which detected and eliminated mines planted in surf zones.

Today, it makes commercial products for the far bigger – and potentially far more lucrative – consumer market.

For example, there’s the Scooba®, a floor-washing robot; the Dirt Dog®, a shop-sweeper robot; the Looj® for cleaning gutters, and the Verro® for cleaning pools. But it’s the company’s vacuum – the Roomba® – that really grabs my attention.

Not many people have ever thought about how valuable “dirt” is, nor have they thought about what it could lead to in the near future.

According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 85% of women and 67% of men spent an average of 2.6 and 2.1 hours a day, respectively, on household-related tasks like cleaning, cooking, and lawn care. That’s nearly 950 hours and one full month a year doing stuff we’d rather have someone, or more precisely something (like a household robot), doing for us.

Data from OnePoll suggests that more than one in four Americans are frustrated by the prospect of doing chores, so they delay them an average of three days. Roughly 58% of Americans would hire help if finances weren’t an issue, and those same folks will spend nearly $140,000 on chores in their lifetime.

According to NPD, GfK, and iRobot data, the global vacuum cleaner market is a $6 billion opportunity with a compound annual growth rate of 4%-5% a year. However, the global robotic vacuum cleaner market is growing at a compound rate that’s 5X larger, or 20% a year.

There’s clearly a market for household helpers.

Factor in lawn care and both wet and dry floor cleaning robots, and you’re talking about a global category that’s already $13 billion according to Euromonitor, Mintel, and HBU estimates.

iRobot believes the total near-term addressable customer base may be 4X the current installed based driven by early adopters. I think that figure is very conservative considering the company has market shares of 89% and 72% in North America and EMEA, respectively.

Early adopters are key since they’re the ones who drive consumer awareness just like early Apple fanatics who turned Apple from a small startup to a worldwide phenomenon.

The U.S. robotic vacuum market is just a notch under $1 billion. Japan represents another $450 million in potential. China’s sales grew more than 70% last year, and the total market there may be nearly $2 billion within the next five years, according to Parthenon Analytics.
That’s potentially 2X the U.S. and Japan combined.

Having spent more than 30 years in global markets and in the Far East in particular, this makes a lot of sense to me. Rapidly aging demographics in Asia are conducive to quick customer acquisition because of a cultural acceptance of robots there that may be a decade ahead what it is here in the West.

Now, I realize that you may still be stuck on the whole vacuum thing based on what iRobot produces today. Try to get past that.

It’s tomorrow that matters.

iRobot’s latest product, the Roomba 980, offers two key technologies that are the perfect entry to much more profitable products down the line.

The first is the robot itself. The Roomba 980 uses a technology called vSLAM navigation to power a “spatial context engine.” Basically, it allows the vacuum to process any house map it builds as it cleans while also providing actionable analytics.

This means the Roomba can build a real-time database of your house and everybody who lives there, never get lost, and feed that information to a next-generation home “hub.”
This, in turn, means the Roomba can potentially help you turn off lights accidentally left on, control temperature, close windows before turning on the AC, act as a security system, or even direct audio/video to occupied rooms.

To almost everyone, the Roomba is still “just a vacuum cleaner.” That’s your opening, because markets don’t yet reflect the profit potential associated with the next-generation smart home hub that iRobot engineers are counting on.

The latest numbers reflect annual revenue of $1.2 billion, up 10.77% and a record. IRBT is on track for 2020 results that may exceed $645 million. At the same time, gross margins are a healthy 40%, having remained relatively consistent with the previous three quarters despite the pandemic driving decreases in the overall markets.

iRobot’s balance sheet is truly fortress-like with some $264 million in cash and no long-term debt as of June 2020. This gives management plenty of flexibility when it comes to critical ongoing research and development, future acquisitions, and access to $150 million in an unsecured revolving line of credit with an additional $75 million accordion feature.

iRobot is trading near all-time highs at around $80 on average volume, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case for long.

I think the stock doubles within the next five years or less.

Stocks to Buy Now – No. 2: Target Corp. (NYSE:TGT)

In the last few months, household names such as Barneys New York, True Religion, and Pier 1 have filed for bankruptcy. Other big-name retailers like Neiman Marcus and JCPenney are hanging on by a thread.

As is always the case, not all companies are created equal – and some retailers are doing great. Especially the all-in-one companies that offer everything from food, clothing, personal products, electronics, household goods… all the products and, yes, services too, that consumers need and want under one roof.

Bonus points if they provide robust online shopping experiences that have become so important in today’s world, COVID or not.

Case in point: Target Corp. (NYSE:TGT).

I’m sure I don’t need to introduce anyone to Target. Most people will have already shopped at one of Target’s 1,900 stores spread across all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. In fact, 75% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Target store.

That’s a broad reach, but what I really like about Target is that its customer base skews younger than WMT and COST.

Nearly half, 45%, of Target shoppers are millennials, the generation born between 1981 and 1996, who are now between 22 and 38 years old and represent 31 million prime-age consumers.

In comparison, Walmart’s millennial shoppers only make up about 37% of its customer base.

That’s important because millennials and the upcoming Generation Z, born in the mid-1990s to mid-2010s, represent 162.61 million Americans, versus 138.01 million people who qualify as baby boomers or Generation X.

That gives Target a serious demographic edge over the next 20 years and beyond. Couple its demographic edge with the company’s strategic shift into online sales, which Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell just reported were up 275% in April and 100% since February, with Target’s flexible pickup/delivery options, and you see why I think Target has the advantage in U.S. retail.

Target’s online model has actually taken an edge over Amazon. The latter was forced to forgo two-day shipping as orders spiked, and Target picked up the slack with pickup and delivery services of its own – models that rivaled Amazon’s “new and NOT improved” delivery services.

Speaking of the company’s new shopping experiences, in the month of April 2020, Target had weeks when drive-up volume was up to seven times greater than normal; single days when the volume of order pickup was twice as high as Cyber Monday; and on the Friday before Easter, the company did more volume through Shipt (the company’s home delivery service) than it typically does in a week, according to CEO Cornell.

Clearly, the company’s customers are embracing these new shopping models, and it’s showing up in the numbers.

Since its fiscal first quarter began on February 2, the company’s same-store sales have risen more than 7% compared to an increase of 1.5% in the fiscal fourth quarter.

Driving same-store numbers are significant increases in essentials, food, and hardline items. Short-sighted analysts might point out that numbers for apparel (and non-essential items) are way off over the same period – but that’s to be expected at a time when many of the company’s younger shoppers are worried about job security in the face of COVID-19-related unemployment numbers.

I’m not too worried about the current revenue decline in non-essential goods, especially the falloff in clothing sales, and I encourage you not to be either.

Once the economy stabilizes – and it will eventually stabilize – customers will start to open their pocketbooks and start spending on higher-margin items again, and that will lead to some serious profit margin expansion.

It’s no surprise, then, that BMO Capital Markets recently upgraded Target’s stock to outperform, noting that it would emerge from the pandemic with a competitive advantage.
Additionally, TGT stock is only trading at 16.94X trailing 12-month earnings compared to WMT and COST, which are trading at 24.97X and 36.34X, respectively. And its PEG ratio is just 2.10, less than half of WMT and COST, which sport much higher PEG ratios of 4.26 and 4.31, respectively.

And just for good measure, a particularly good measure, TGT sports a 2.54% yield.

It has the demographic advantage, the valuation advantage, and its yield is head and shoulders above its competitors, not to mention its staying power.

Stocks to Buy Now – No. 1: Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA) – ONLY at $100 or Less

The final company I want to give you is Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA). Yes, that Boeing, but there is a caveat.

Do NOT buy for over $100.

Put in a limit order to buy once the share price drops below $100. Let’s not forget that before the pandemic, the airline industry took quite a hit from the 737 MAX. The coronavirus may have hit the industry more severely… but don’t be fooled. BA isn’t going to come roaring back in the next few months, not until they fix up the 737 MAX, retrain the pilots, test new software, hardware, and malware…

But all that aside, Boeing is a phenomenal investment at the right price. Founded in 1916, and based in Chicago, Illinois, the company designs, develops, manufactures, sells, services, and supports commercial jetliners, military aircraft, satellites, missile defense, human space flight, and launch systems to customers in over 150 countries across the globe, including the U.S. government and its allies.

In the last five years, the company has delivered 3,644 commercial aircraft, 1,000 military aircraft and satellites, executed 10 successful commercial production increases, and returned more than $628 million to shareholders in Q1/2020 alone, even with the coronavirus pandemic, tight travel restrictions, and the grounding of the 737 MAX.

It currently has an order backlog worth nearly $439 billion spread over three different sectors: commercial airplanes; defense, space, and security; and global services. Government services accounted for nearly half the global services revenue in 2019, giving the company strong backing only to be continued by contracts secured for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and Australian government.

This year, revenue is expected to hit $68.53 billion, down 10.50% from the year-ago revenue, thanks to decreased sales. However, by 2021, analysts agree that Boeing will come roaring back, and they estimate revenues of $74.25, an incredible 29.50% leap from the year-ago revenue.

Of course, we can’t discuss Boeing without also discussing the tragedies that have surrounded the company in the last year that resulted in 648 deaths, the indeterminate groundings of the 737 MAX, the loss of thousands of jobs, and the stock’s $300+ buzzcut.

And then, of course, coronavirus.

Boeing’s stock has been beaten so far down that it may seem unsalvageable, but that’s not the case. The company isn’t an airline, it’s a producer, arguably responsible for half of the industry, and it will come back.

But not until coronavirus passes, airports are moving a million or more people per day, and pilots have been retrained and the 737 MAX takes flight again.

That’s where we make our move.

While everyone else laments Boeing’s fall, we buy low, wait 12 or 24 months, and sell for profits.