FANG And The $200 Club

I’ve been writing a lot lately about companies that transform industries and even whole economies with what Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, the authors of Abundance and Bold, call exponential technology.

While many investors deride the FANG stocks as a mere momentum fad, at least 3 of them – Facebook, Amazon, and Google (now Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)) – are extremely transformative to the global economy. It’s why I own Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) .

And it's why I recommended long-term investors buy both Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Alphabet under $750 each in June of 2016. So what you are really hearing when a pro dismisses the market rally with "Oh it's just being led by the FANG stocks again!" is "I missed that money train!"

It's much easier to dismiss FANG if you missed it, than to admit that these companies, and their hundreds of tech satellites and partners like NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) , are still creating the future of technology and commerce with their cloud, mobile, big data, and machine learning/AI strategies.

Bottom line: I say the current global technology expansion is a secular beast unto itself. Sure it will have hiccups and some demand limits will eventually hit semiconductor stocks. But for the next few quarters, don't be the investor who doesn't get the fortune-building opportunities in this crucial growth sector.

And here’s an excerpt from my recent article 5 Secrets of This Bull Market…

Secret #3: The Tech Cycle is Bigger Than the Fast Money

This one is simple: money doesn't leave the markets, it just moves around, often at light speed. Especially when interest rates are near 1%. Especially in an expanding global economy when equities still offer the best risk/reward compared to other asset classes.

But the old rules about sector rotation don't apply anymore as the economic cycle is not driven as strongly by the "boom and bust" nature of industrial manufacturing and real estate.

Today, long-term investors are focused on the transformational technologies of the cloud, mobile, ecommerce, automation and machine learning, and biotech breakthroughs in cancer research, as Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) just affirmed with their $12 billion purchase of Kite Pharma.

So it's easy to get fooled by the "risk-on/risk-off" movement of stocks by hedge funds and "algo" trading and forget that these long-term technology trends will be driving economic growth for decades, even if a recession unfolds before 2020 (doubtful now).

The Secret Meaning of FANG

In the video that accompanies this article, I also give an update on my “$200 Club” stocks, including Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX), Align Technology and Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) .

And here’s the link to my recent Mind Over Money podcast where I explain the “exponential” views of Diamandis and Kotler as they engage, encourage, and enable exponential entrepreneurs all over the world.

If I had listened better to them last year, I might have bought Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) at $200 instead of thinking it was a short after Elon Musk “bailed-in” his own green energy experiment, Solar City.

Diamandis and Kotler know Musk. And they knew that he was the model, along with Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Larry Page for entrepreneurs that create the future.

Exponential lesson learned.

Disclosure: I own Facebook and Alibaba shares for the Zacks TAZR Trader portfolio.

Kevin Cook is a Senior Stock Strategist for Zacks Investment Research where he runs the TAZR Trader service.

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