The Road to $1 Trillion and Beyond

 

Inflation would be the greatest thing to happen to me.

I selfishly want the government to spend as much money as possible. “You can’t print money forever!” everyone is shouting.

Yes you can. And they will.

They’ve been printing money for decades, and only now it’s making the headlines.

The reason I am selfishly supportive of inflation is that there is a well-known maxim in poker that “money flows clockwise.” If you sit to the left of the weakest player at the poker table, then eventually you will have all of their money.

Every time they bet, you raise them, scaring out all of the other players. So you are now “heads-up” with the weaker player. It’s just the two of you. Luck will give him some hands, but luck/skill will give you most of the money.

In inflation, the same thing happens. Print up a trillion dollars and give it to everyone… and where does it end up?

Eventually it’s all put in the stock market or in real estate. To be fair, some of it is now showing up in crypto.

Inflation of a currency occurs when goods that are priced in that currency go higher (IN THAT CURRENCY) year-over-year or month-over-month. For instance, gas — which you buy with dollars — is over $3 a gallon for the first time since 2008.

This is VERY important to understand. Gas itself is not different. Gas is not even worth more UNLESS it is priced in US dollars.

Everything you own goes up in value, but ONLY IF it is priced in US dollars.

What do I mean?

Here are things you might own that will go up if inflation goes higher:

• Stocks
• Real Estate
• Cryptocurrencies
• Collectables
• Services you offer

The more you own of the above, the less inflation hurts you.

And if you own “Good” stocks or “Good” real estate, then you will make a lot of money during inflationary periods.

But what’s a good stock or good real estate?

Without inflation, it is very hard to predict the stock market. When there is no inflation, the stock market will stay the same except for stocks that are growing. And it’s very hard to know which companies will grow.

Remember this: Almost all of the growth in the stock market over the past 100 years has occurred because of inflation. I don’t give a shit about “candlesticks” or P/E ratios or what The Wall Street Journal says.

So, ok, if you own a basket of stocks — and that is the bulk of your net worth — then you will survive inflation.

But how can you BEAT inflation?

It’s simple. Just own stocks in an industry that is growing faster than inflation.

Some industries are fully mature, and I would not bet on them. Sure, Exxon and Chevron will go up when gas prices are going up. But they are not interesting, and eventually their stocks settle down.

The oil industry might even be in trouble as renewable energy gets more realistic.

But just look in your life. Do you drive more? Do you use the computer more? Do you read more? Ask yourself which activities you do are “inflating.”

Is medical care rising? Are people eating more?

I don’t know the answers. These are difficult questions. I don’t even know if people are using computers more.

However, I do know this: I am using more data. And more industries are using my data.

I asked a marketer the other day how narrow they can target the people they are advertising to.

“We know how many strawberries you ate last month,” she told me.

There is so much data about all of us that they can predict almost everything about you.

A friend of mine sells software to car dealerships. The software tells the car dealership which people in their area are going to buy a car in the next three months, and what car they are going to buy.

“We use AI and data,” he told me.

“What data?”

“We know when you bought every car you’ve ever bought. We know what cars. We know what dealers. We know what features you asked for. So if you bought a Toyota three years ago from XYZ dealership… and we know you buy a car every two or three years… we sell that information to the dealership next door, and they simply call you (we have your phone number also) three months before we predict you will buy your next car. And we tell you we have the next Toyota in stock, and we’ll give you a deal.”

Simple. “But where do you get the data?”

He looked at me with pity. “The data is everywhere. And if you know where to look, you can find it. We scrape data off of thousands of different websites that are now storing all sorts of data about each person.”

This is the business of the future. This is the technology described by the movie Minority Report, where they use data to predict if you are going to commit a crime. This is the technology of the Isaac Asimov classic science fiction series, “The Foundation Trilogy” where they use data to basically predict… everything.

This is what Starbucks now uses to predict when YOU will show up at Starbucks and what you will order, and they have it in the oven five minutes before you arrive. This happens right now.

The data storage / Big Data / AI industry is growing faster than inflation.

But what stocks should you buy to take advantage? It almost doesn’t matter. You could buy all of them. (But read to the end for a hint at what’s coming tomorrow.)

You can buy storage companies per vertical (medical / vehicle / media, etc). You can buy data storage companies by function (if they make storage hardware, storage software, Big Data AI companies, Software-as-a-Service companies, etc).

Is it really that simple? Yeah, it totally is.

What’s the fastest growing industry in the past 30 years? The Internet. Who are the richest people now? Internet billionaires: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, etc etc.

In the 1950s, the fastest-growing industry was oil. The billionaires were J. Paul Getty, the Rockefellers, and the Ewing family from “Dallas.” All oil money.

Quietly, the latest billionaires are coming from the cloud storage industry. Snowflake, a cloud storage company that had a huge IPO last year, is now worth $60 billion with $600 million in revenue.

Companies typically aren’t worth 100 times revenue. That’s ridiculous. UNLESS there is inflation. In which case, it’s normal. The industry will grow, the dollar will be worth less, and the stocks will go higher and higher.

The CEO of Snowflake is probably worth over $2 billion now. All since last year.

Right now everyone is throwing a shit fit over inflation. Don’t be a complainer. Look around you, be aware of the situation, and then benefit from it.

Inflation is good for you and me. Let them talk all they want on CNBC and the WSJ.

I will sit to their left…

In fact, I’ve just finished research on a few stocks that are bound to cash in on the momentum in cloud computing.

And everything I’ve shared with you these last three days comes to a head tomorrow. That’s because tomorrow is the world premiere of my show “To $1 Trillion And Beyond.”

As you’re about to see, I’ve gone behind all four of today’s $1 trillion companies… Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google… and what I’ve found is truly shocking.

It’s a secret tech revolution only 1 in 10 Americans knows is happening… and I’m convinced THIS is where we’ll find tech’s next $1 trillion winners.

Want to see how to get in on the stocks I’m betting will hit $1 trillion next? It’s all happening tomorrow during the show.

And so much more!

All you have to do is watch your inbox at 2pm EST tomorrow for an email from me when the world premiere of my event “To $1 Trillion And Beyond” airs for the first time.

Stay tuned!

 

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The Perfect Investment Strategy

I wanted to learn a perfect investment strategy.

And when I say “perfect,” I mean: I want to buy stocks, and in the long run make a lot of money. There! Honest.

For some people, a perfect investing strategy means: Make money every day.

For other people it might mean: BUY CRYPTO!!!!!!

For other people, it might mean: Every stock I buy goes up.

That’s not what I mean. I am ultimately a very simple person. I don’t really enjoy investing. I enjoy learning and I enjoy games and I enjoy watching TV, writing, podcasting, etc. Oh, and my family. And sleeping. I really enjoy sleeping a lot.

But everyone needs to understand the basics of, not all, but many investing strategies.

So I have a simple strategy that is perfect in my view — and I can describe it 100% in this article.

ONE: The basics you will understand immediately. Identify an area of life that is growing every year at an exponential growth rate.

TWO: BUY ALL STOCKS IN THAT INDUSTRY.

And that’s it. There’s an optional third step…

THREE: RESEARCH and BUY most of the stocks in that industry to get better returns.

Simple. But let me give you an extreme example to show how well it works.

In 1965, a young Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel (which was valued at about $3 million at that time), stated a rule that became “Moore’s Law.”

He stated (and I am going to paraphrase for a more understandable version) that computer power would basically double about every two years.

Remarkably, 56 years later, he’s been dead-on correct EVERY SINGLE YEAR. What a remarkable prediction. Look at the image below:

So how can we make money from this?

Let’s take an extreme example.

Let’s say, from 1970  to 1990 you put JUST $1,000 into each of the next 100 computer companies to go public. And then you ignored them until today.

Which means you would invest $100,000 in total ($1,000 into 100 companies).

Many computer companies went bankrupt during this time. Do you remember Eagle Computer. Or Commodore?

Or the ElectroData Corporation? How could you forget the one-time third-largest computer manufacturer? The maker of the DataTron 203 that shipped for a price as cheap as $125,000. It weighed 3,175 pounds and had about 4k of memory.

Many companies went bankrupt. But how could that be if the computer industry was growing exponentially??

Let’s say that out of the 100 companies you invested in and forgot until this moment, 98 went bankrupt. Let’s say only Microsoft and Intel survived. The real facts are that many more than 2 of the 100 survived, but this is an extreme example.

So out of your $100,000 invested, $98,000 went down the drain. Only 2 companies, or $2,000 of your investment survived. That sucks, right?

Wrong! If you had done this strategy, you would have $3,500,000 today. In fact, you would have a lot more because many more than just two companies survived. But again, I use this as an extreme.

If you invest now in an exponentially growing industry, even if you invest small amounts, you will make an ENORMOUS amount of money. This is no joke.

But, you might say, “An industry like computers only happens once every 50 years.”

WRONG!

Because of the rise of the computer industry, computers now create exponential industries. There are many exponentially growing industries.

But let’s pick the absolute most obvious: storage.

Look at the graphic below to see the rise in storage from 2010 to 2019. One decade. The amount of data being stored doubled almost five times during that period. That’s exponential growth.

And without even being a genius on this, it’s easy to see that the growth could happen even faster with the rise of virtual reality, increased usage around the world of platforms like YouTube, the growth of remote work adding to the storage requirements of companies around the world, etc.

Should you buy every company in the storage sector? What does this even mean? How can we break down the storage industry to look at the fastest rising companies?

More tomorrow.

——-

Also, check out my podcasts this week with:

Robert Cialdini, the author of “INFLUENCE” and the world’s expert on persuasion.

The “millionaire’s magician” Steve Cohen, author of “How to Win the Room!” Oddly, the techniques are somewhat similar that master persuaders and magicians use.

 

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Why Arguing With My Wife Led Me to Buy Cloud Stocks

[Editor’s Note: This is the first part in a special series we are doing on innovations in cloud computing. It will all culminate on day 4… when James plans to reveal his latest research on investing in this trend — including his favorite stocks in the sector!]

Here’s my idea: I want a device that will listen to all of my conversations every day and track my every movement.

Then it feeds all the data into GPT-3, which is an amazing tech recognition software that uses AI to build an “avatar” of me. An AI version of me.

Then I will feed this new “James” all of my books, articles, and podcasts. Now AvatarJames will be a better version of me. And every day it will improve as I feed in more conversations, etc.

Then I want it to track how I move, how I make micro-expressions depending on my mood, etc. This way it can be a visual avatar of me as well.

In every way it will be a better James.

Then I want to just sit at home and let it do everything for me. People will call me later and say, “You were so friendly and charismatic. Everyone loved you!” And I would smile and say, “What did you expect?” and they wouldn’t know that they were just dealing with AvatarJames and not the real me.

By the way, this is already possible. One of the people I am working with on my “I Will Make you a Millionaire” mentorship program fed my recent book, Skip the Line into GPT-3.

He then gave GPT-3 prompts to this mini-avatar version of me.

Here’s what it came up with:

[The line in bold is what it was fed. The paragraph after is the MiniJames response… generated completely by AI. These paragraphs were NOT in Skip the Line. And yet… they feel a little like my style].

“Nobody wants to be alone…”

Nobody wants to be alone. People want to feel that they are connected to people. When you feel isolated, you feel that loneliness. You become stressed. You become less creative. I don’t know that you will succeed at being the best at something if you are lonely. But if you are the only person who feels that loneliness, then you will get better at that something than anyone else. You will be the only person who has that experience. And if you are the only person who has that experience, then you will probably know more than anyone else because you have had that experience. You will have the same perspective on the same things. You will be the only person who has that.

“The next technique you can use to skip the line in life is to …”

The next technique you can use to skip the line in life is to learn to live in the moment. I was in a bad car crash. The doctor said, “Son, you have to get out of the car. The ambulance is coming.” I said, “What? Why? I can still walk.” He said, “That’s good. Now get out of the car.” I was in a coma for six months. I was scared to death. I couldn’t even walk for two months. I was afraid everyone would think I was crazy. I remember one time I was at a party with three other guys. One of the other guys was throwing a house party. The DJ was playing loud music. The music was so loud it was killing me. It was like the DJ was controlling the house. I remember one guy sitting next to me and he started to cry. I said to him, “Don’t cry. You made me cry.” And I felt his pain. And I shared it with him. That’s how I felt. You can be the first to laugh, or the last to laugh. You can be the smartest person in the room, or you’ll be the dumb person in the room. You can be the best at something and be terrible at sharing it, or you can share and be the best.

“The best idea I’ve had in my life…”

The best idea I’ve had in my life is working on a project with one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. They were working on a drug that could treat a deadly virus. The company was the biggest, but there were many competitors. I had a lot of experience developing vaccines. But they said, “We don’t do vaccines. We don’t have a competitor yet.” I said, “Why not?” “Because we have this other drug that works much better. And it’s only been a year since we first tried it. It’s very, very, very, very little.” I had a huge idea that could revolutionize the way we treat people with mental illness. But the drug they were developing was only supposed to work for about a year. I said to them, “I’m willing to do this for free.” They said, “Okay.” And I did. The next day I sent them a prototype. They bought it. Then they came up with a great idea. They realized that in some countries, like the United States, the diagnosis of mental illness can be quite complicated. They’d like to develop this drug that could help people who are diagnosed with depression but aren’t taking their medication. They asked if I could test it. I said sure. They sent me the prototype. I took a sample. It worked. They ran a clinical trial. It was very successful. The company raised billions of dollars.

—-

Imagine if I now was able to feed it every conversation I ever had.

Imagine if you can do this also. Imagine if we all did it.

If I was going to have an argument with my wife, I could just send AvatarJames to argue with AvatarRobyn, and then — sitting on our couches while eating popcorn and watching YouTube videos of cats — we can get the final result of the argument from our Avatars. Argument over.

Anyway, good idea? Bad idea? Doesn’t matter. If you don’t use your creativity muscle, you lose it.

But… what IF everyone did this?

To make AvatarJames, I guesstimate that I am sending about 24 gigabytes of data per day into the cloud. If everyone did this….

How can we all make money from this?

——–

The minute it takes you to read this article, 31 million messages will be read on Facebook. 2.7 million videos will be watched. 300 gigabytes of data will be uploaded to YouTube.

Just this minute!

This doesn’t count all of the data being sent through the “Internet of Things.” Electric vehicles sending messages back and forth to the cloud. Pacemakers sending data from hearts to hospitals. Every cash register sending data of shopping patterns to American Express.

This doesn’t count what will happen in the future. What video is to photos, virtual reality will be to video. 100x bigger file sizes. 1,000x bigger file sizes.

This doesn’t count when every device is hooked up to the Internet and sending data back and forth.

This doesn’t count when YouTube is not just being used by 1 in 20 people around the world… but 1 in 2.

This doesn’t count thousands of things.

Apollo 11, the rocket that landed on the moon in 1969, had 2,048 bits of data to take it to the moon and back.

Above I said 300 gigabytes of video are uploaded to YouTube EVERY MINUTE.

Compare 2,048 bits to 300,000,000,000 bits a minute. Then multiply that by about a trillion.

That represents our data needs right now. And it’s tripling or quadrupling every year.

You know why I don’t care about inflation? Because I know that data storage is growing much much faster than any possible inflation.

So if I buy stocks of the companies that store that data, then I will avoid any “wealth deterioration” that results from any inflation.

We have moved from a society of “In God We Trust” to “In Humans We Trust” to finally, “In Data We Trust.”

Money has gone to data. Medicine is fueled by data. War is fueled by data. All of business is fueled by data. And the one sure thing we can bet on is that it will increase.

My initial interest was in outsourcing arguments with my wife to AvatarJames.

I was thinking about AvatarJames, and then I was thinking about data and the stock market. Those ideas had sex. This is the way ideas work. They meet other ideas in your brain and have idea sex an then have idea babies.

The idea babies are the stocks I should buy. I look at everything from Amazon (its cloud service: Amazon Web Services, is the only profitable part of the company), to CrowdStrike (which provides cybersecurity for data), to DataDog, to ZStrike and others.

When you see an industry growing exponentially — like Cloud Storage, like AI, like Big Data, etc. — there is ONE surefire technique to investing in the category.

Tomorrow I’ll dig in a bit more about that technique, along with my latest ideas.

But for the rest of today, I’m figuring out how to record all my conversations, get transcripts of them, feed them into GPT-3, and then outsource my arguments with Robyn to AvatarJames.

Ummm, do you think she will go for it?

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