Most investors think that the time to begin planning for the tail end of the year is in August, when traders return from their vacations and get back to business...
But actually, the best time to begin planning ahead is... now.
While you have the opportunity to protect yourself and cash in before it's too late to change course.
Now, I recently came off a television studio where I was asked to comment on the horrific shootings yesterday morning as they impacted markets.
Admittedly, it's very tough to do so without seeming crass given the nature of the financial potential we track and the overwhelmingly negative emotions associated with an event like this one.
Still, we must.
Despite a long list of things that could derail the markets by year-end - terrorism, weak economic data, political divisiveness, Europe, China, North Korea, and more - I find myself very excited by what's ahead and the investment potential I'm tracking.
There will be no middle ground.
Get things right and you're going to have a chance to laugh all the way to the proverbial bank.
Get things wrong like so many other investors (who aren't part of the Total Wealth Family) and, well...
Believe it or not, the next six months are all about growth.
Today, let's start with each of the six Unstoppable Trends. Then, on Friday, we'll shift to the specific tactics and market conditions that you'll need to maximize profits others simply won't see or recognize (even though they desperately want to).
Unstoppable Trend No. 1 - Demographics
Brilliant researchers like Harry Dent have most investors thinking this trend is cut and dry.
Dent, among others, uses demographic and cyclical analysis to predict that financial markets will fall 70% to 90% within the next three years...
But what he and his followers fail to understand is that those very same factors are no longer restraints. Instead, with the right perspective, they can be drivers.
Let me give you an example.
GDP growth has generally been driven for the last 200 years by consumers acquiring more stuff.
That's tapering off and society is reshaping itself to deal with the consequences of having done so. As such, the central challenge is not learning how to exclude liberty and personal freedom, but how to avoid manipulation by the very tools created to exploit it.
There is no clearer example at the moment than big technology. Millions of people rail against big government spying and big data yet at the same time they voluntarily contribute to things like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram which now control the single largest data repository of personal information in recorded history.
It would be one thing if that information was locked down as it should be, but those very same companies make huge amounts of money selling what they know about you to third parties and not necessarily with your permission.
That's an important distinction because Silicon Valley is populated by a good number of spoiled brats who have no understanding of the consequences of their actions - let alone the responsibility that accompanies the huge disruptive changes they've caused.
I believe we're going to see an entirely new class of company emerge and that the most profitable investments will be early stage companies focused on protecting the individual as opposed to including them.
For lack of a better term, they'll be anti-FANG stocks focused on preventing social manipulation, if that makes sense.
Unstoppable Trend No. 2 - Scarcity/Allocation
Many investors I talk to think this trend is about what happens when you don't have enough of something like, for example, oil or water.
In this instance, though, I'm talking about what happens when you have too much.
Money itself is perhaps the ultimate illustration of what I am talking about.
While many investors think it's time to pull in their horns based on nothing more than "expensive" stocks and unprecedented central banking intervention around the world, the opposite is true.
I believe that the next six months will see monetary policy transform from the presumption of weakness to strength and stability. This will cause the more than $1 trillion presently sitting in cash at various hedge funds, central banks, and pension funds to rush into markets... expensive or not.
The best choices will be large companies making "must-have" products and services that are capable of absorbing the liquidity - not to mention higher prices. These same companies will be both offensive and defensive at the same time.
Unstoppable Trend No. 3 - Medicine
For several years we've followed the money straight into single-use medical providers with critical technology, products, and services.
Now it's time for a pivot.
I think the trailing six months of 2017 will see very practical developments with hundreds of billions of dollars hitting the market. I'm particularly excited, for example, about things like the artificial pancreas approved last year that may come to market in 2018 based on approvals being filed now.
We're also going to see "nutrigenomics" enter the lexicon, based on individualized DNA analysis and its interaction with the foods we eat.
Then there's a revolutionary development I'm loosely calling "precision oncology" - a very specific technology able to predict, identify, and treat cancer.
Chemotherapy may finally be on the way out and none too soon to my way of thinking, especially when combined with artificial intelligence that can dramatically enhance doctors' analytical abilities.
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Unstoppable Trend No. 4 - Energy
Many investors are wondering if energy will come back, but I think that's the wrong question given where we're headed.
I see the industry shifting to a digital demand model that marries smart metering, dynamic pricing, and distributed power production.
Conventional power companies will struggle to meet demand even though it's increasing, all because their revenue base is shifting to distributed production that's not taxable nor, increasingly, captured.
Costs will go up and profits down, placing millions of investors who depend on previously rock-solid dividends at risk.
Anything that impacts the rate base is a potential winner, especially as government policy shifts. Paris is just the start, rather than the end that most investors believe.
Unstoppable Trend No. 5 - Technology
This is an almost hopelessly broad category for most people who focus (mistakenly) on the "next best thing" when it's the next "sure" thing that will create really huge returns.
Two areas stand out as most immediate from the laundry list of potential investments: distributed ledgers and adaptive security architecture.
Most people think of Bitcoin with regard to the former and cybersecurity with regard to the latter.
I think the more profitable developments will be in something I refer to as "sequential grouping" because that's how entire industries will solve authentication, verification, and transfer problems presently plaguing everything from simple apps to music because there is no "trust."
I'm watching one company, in particular, that could be ready for prime time within the next 30 days.
Unstoppable Trend No. 6 - War, Terrorism, & Ugliness
All three are, unfortunately, growth industries in today's highly charged geopolitical climate. Yet, not all are immediately worth your money.
For that, I think you've got to turn to two specific sub-segments on the cusp of usability: link analysis technologies and directed energy weapons.
Link analysis technologies are exceptionally promising because they offer rapid analysis, real-time decision making, and the large-scale exploitation of data.
Law enforcement and government security agencies have historically focused on very specific investigation techniques and even more specific data. Looking forward, they're going to have to include the identification of patterns and anomalies in predictive data sets that mirror human behavior - and that find commonalities faster and more accurately than humans can.
Directed energy weapons are often thought of as the stuff of Hollywood but, in reality, they're already being tested, and deployment isn't far behind.
Lasers are the most obvious, but other forms of energy transmission are a close second and include microwave radiation emitters, sound, or even sub-atomic particle beams - all of which could be used to defend against ICBMs or even local shoulder-fired missiles.
Ironically, it's the law controlling their use that needs to catch up to the technology leaving it far behind.
But that's a story for another time.
I've got my eye on a company in the American Southwest that could be just the ticket.
We'll be digging into these in more depth on Friday, when I'll be back with the Total Wealth Tactics you'll need to make your move.
Editor's Note: "Must-have" companies backed by Unstoppable Trends are a cornerstone of Keith's wealth-building strategy. But there's another type of investment he wants Money Morning Members to know about. It's one of his favorites, a kind of "desert island fund" he'd buy if he had to park his money in one place, "retire" from civilization for 20 years, and come back to a pile of money. Click here to learn more…
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About the Author
Keith is a seasoned market analyst and professional trader with more than 37 years of global experience. He is one of very few experts to correctly see both the dot.bomb crisis and the ongoing financial crisis coming ahead of time - and one of even fewer to help millions of investors around the world successfully navigate them both. Forbes hailed him as a "Market Visionary." He is a regular on FOX Business News and Yahoo! Finance, and his observations have been featured in Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, and MarketWatch. Keith previously led The Money Map Report, Money Map's flagship newsletter, as Chief Investment Strategist, from 20007 to 2020. Keith holds a BS in management and finance from Skidmore College and an MS in international finance (with a focus on Japanese business science) from Chaminade University. He regularly travels the world in search of investment opportunities others don't yet see or understand.