- Quantum computing will be right in this stodgy tech giant’s wheelhouse…
- The market may not have liked this acquisition, but I do…
- Our 5G investment opportunity is very ripe…
Dear Reader,
Tonight’s the night.
Tonight, I am pulling the curtain back on my “Penny IPO” research. I will share with you what the “4X Window” is and why it’s going to amplify Penny IPO gains by a large margin.
It all comes down to what has happened to the IPO market.
It used to be that the world’s best tech companies went public early, allowing normal investors to buy shares of these exciting startups on public exchanges. Amazon is the best example of this.
Amazon went public back in 1997 at a valuation of $438 million. That’s walking the line between being considered a micro-cap or a small-cap company.
And, of course, it’s been well-documented that Amazon wasn’t making any money at the time. Everyday investors had the chance to take a position in what was truly an exciting startup with an uncertain future.
And those who took a chance on Amazon’s IPO got incredibly rich. The stock has gone on to deliver gains as high as 180,000%. That’s enough to turn every $10,000 invested into $18 million. All on a publicly traded stock.
But the sad fact is that this isn’t remotely possible today. Average retail investors have been locked out of the best tech companies.
Sure, hot tech companies like Uber, Slack, and Zoom finally went public last year, giving retail investors a chance to buy shares.
But these were large-cap companies by the time they went public. While the media pumped them up as though they were hot startups, the reality is that insiders had already pocketed the big gains. Normal investors got the leftovers.
To me, that’s just not right.
More than five years ago, I set out to solve this problem. I wanted to find a way to deliver venture capital-like gains to normal investors – the people for whom 1,000% gains can be life-changing.
And I’m happy to say that I’ve found it.
I discovered a secret class of “Penny IPO” stocks that go public 100–300 times cheaper than most tech stocks today. In fact, some of these Penny IPOs go public at levels even cheaper than Amazon did way back in 1997.
And best of all, these Penny IPOs are too small for Wall Street to take notice of them yet. We can buy these companies before the insiders get in.
Then, when they finally pop up on Wall Street’s radar, we can generate incredible returns. And that’s not a hypothetical – my first Penny IPO delivered gains of 432% in just 41 trading days.
These Penny IPOs are one of the last avenues that everyday investors have to generate life-changing gains from early stage companies. They are the closest thing I’ve found to “turning back the clock” to a time when retail investors could actually get in on the hottest tech start-ups, long before they changed the world.
I’ve been pounding this drum hard over the last two weeks, and that’s because we are entering the 4X window right now. Serious tech investors absolutely need to know about this burgeoning trend.
That’s why I’m going on air at 8 p.m. ET tonight.
I’m going to reveal what the 4X Window is… and why these Penny IPOs buck the trend and go public so early. I’ll show how normal investors can buy them easily from their online brokerage accounts. And I’ll explain why they can surge hundreds of percent in days or even hours.
For those who are looking for ways to invest in the hottest early stage tech companies on the market today, this is your ticket. Please join me tonight and I’ll show you how.
Simply go right here to reserve your spot.
IBM just revealed its quantum road map…
IBM finally stepped up and released its quantum computing road map.
And you won’t hear this from me often, but I was pleased with what IBM presented. The company appears to have stepped up its game in its pursuit of quantum computing.
IBM has been investing in quantum for years now, but the company has had very little to show for it thus far. Google beat it to the punch for quantum supremacy with its 53-qubit quantum computer around this time last year.
It probably should have been IBM reaching quantum supremacy first, given all the money the company has poured into research and development. IBM was a bit of a sore loser as well, trying to downplay Google’s accomplishment at the time.
I’m happy to say that the company got over this initial disappointment and laid out an aggressive road map for its own development.
IBM plans to have a 127-qubit quantum computer up and running next year. The team is calling this computer “Eagle.”
From there, the company is targeting a 433-qubit computer, code-named “Osprey,” by 2022.
And then IBM intends to launch a 1,121-qubit quantum computer by 2023. That one will be called “Condor.”
This is big…
Presuming that IBM is successful in its pursuit, it means that its quantum computing technology has the potential to crack the standard 256-bit encryption technology that the world uses to secure its data and communications.
The implications here are obvious.
It creates a risk not only to consumers but also governments, militaries, corporations, and blockchains using the existing encryption technology.
IBM’s road map shows that we are getting very close to that point.
As regular readers know, I rarely have nice things to say about IBM as a tech company.
It rose to prominence by dominating mainframe computing, but it completely missed the transition to personal and mobile computing. IBM has been on a painful decline since 2013 and is now trading at levels not seen since 2009.
Ironically, quantum will take us back to the kind of centralized computing that mainframes were known for. There will be a limited number of massive quantum computers doing all the big work.
And that puts quantum computing right in IBM’s wheelhouse. In terms of the company’s DNA, IBM should be well-suited to the world of quantum.
This isn’t a recommendation. I still remain skeptical about IBM’s ability to execute. There are far more nimble competitors working aggressively in the space.
But I am excited to see IBM throw down the gauntlet and think big again.
Illumina’s big move…
Last week, we talked about Grail filing to go public.
Grail remains one of the most interesting early stage biotech companies out there. It is developing liquid biopsies that allow for the early detection of all kinds of cancers. And Grail is backed by some big names like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Google Ventures.
Well, Grail’s initial public offering (IPO) isn’t going to happen.
Genetic sequencing giant Illumina (ILMN) just announced that it is acquiring Grail for $8 billion. That’s more than double Grail’s last known valuation. The early stage company was valued at $3.84 billion after its Series D venture capital (VC) round back in May.
And here’s where this story gets even more interesting…
Grail spun out of Illumina back in 2015 to develop this technology around liquid biopsies. The company then raised $100 million in its Series A VC round in 2016, and Illumina was one of the investors.
So we must ask – why did Illumina spin Grail out, help fund the company, and then buy it back for billions more five years later?
The answer is simple.
There is something to be said for letting a great team of innovators operate without the constraints of big corporate oversight.
Plus, some of Illumina’s competitors were Grail’s early customers. That probably would not have happened if Grail had remained strictly under the control of Illumina. And those business relationships helped Grail grow and power its development.
Had Illumina kept Grail in-house, it may not have had the freedom it needed to develop its tech behind closed doors and pursue the business relationships it needed to grow.
Illumina’s share price pulled back after it announced this acquisition. That’s because this is a massive deal, and Illumina will fund some of it by issuing new shares of stock.
But to me, this pullback is a major buying opportunity. Illumina is playing the long game here.
The market size for early cancer detection will be $75 billion within the next 15 years. It’s gargantuan!
Compare this to Illumina’s annual revenues, which are under $4 billion per year right now.
If Illumina can capture even just a small piece of the early cancer detection market, its revenues will easily more than double. It’s a tremendous opportunity.
So this acquisition makes perfect sense in the big scheme of things.
Illumina still needs to get regulatory approval for the deal. But this life-changing tech will make Illumina one of the world’s most important biotech companies for decades to come…
The 5G boom continues…
Yesterday, we talked about how fifth-generation wireless technology (5G) was being unleashed on the world, emerging markets included.
Today, we have even more proof.
Nobody has been more aggressive with the roll-out of 5G than mainland China. The country’s wireless network operators now have over 100 million subscribers on its 5G networks.
We’ve talked about how low-cost 5G-enabled smartphones are an early driver of 5G adoption, and that’s true in China. China’s tech companies have made low-end 5G phones possible, enabled by low-cost semiconductors out of Taiwan.
And that’s powered the country’s aggressive 5G push.
It’s the “flywheel” effect. Low-end phones attract paying customers, and those revenues fund more infrastructure build-out. And that, in turn, attracts even more paying customers, helping the momentum continue to build.
That said, it is still very early days for 5G, even in China.
While 100 million subscribers sound like a lot, it is just a fraction of China’s population count, which totals about 1.4 billion people.
What’s more, there are about 1.6 billion mobile subscriptions in the country. That’s right – there are more mobile phones than people in China. And that’s because it is not uncommon throughout Asia for people to have two phones – one for business and one for personal use.
So the reality is that over 90% of China’s mobile users have not yet adopted 5G technology.
And China, like the U.S., is a large geographic land mass. That makes it a challenge to build out the infrastructure necessary to cover the majority of the population. Many European and emerging market countries don’t have this same problem, as we discussed yesterday.
The bottom line is that 5G still has a long way to go. And that means the investment opportunity is still very ripe.
If you want to know the best way to invest in 5G, you can go right here to find out more about my top 5G recommendations.
Regards,
Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge
P.S. As I said above, we’re just hours away from my presentation on Penny IPOs and the 4X Window. It’s all happening TONIGHT at 8 p.m. ET. If you haven’t claimed your spot to attend for free, you can go right here to sign up now.
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