Climate Change
Global warming leads to more extreme weather events, and ServiceMaster (SERV) helps companies to prepare for and clean up after natural disasters. They will have a lot more business in the coming decades, but I don't know if their stock price will go up that much. Maybe.
Bad weather also causes shortages of clean water, so could look at holding some water companies, such as American Water Works (AWK).
There's already a move towards renewable energy, but I think there will be a tipping point when the general public starts to take it seriously. A huge percentage of people either don't believe in global warming or don't care about it, but I think that will eventually change, and it might happen suddenly. If it does, then there could be a big increase in solar installation, and people buying more electric vehicles. I think companies like First Solar (FSLR) and SolarCity (SCTY) should be good to hold long-term. People talk about Tesla too much, and I think they're way overvalued, but they'll probably go up too. Would also be interesting to look for smaller car companies that will go under when people stop using petrol. But I'm really interested in predicting the point in time when global warming becomes a fact instead of a political view. It would be great to catch this early and buy a lot of cheap options for these companies.
Automation / AI
Google (GOOG) is the leader in machine learning and AI, so they would be a good stock to hold long-term. Also the chip companies, such as NVDA and AMD. Are there any companies that should be shorted? I would like to find some small-cap companies that are old and slow, and rely on humans for tasks that might be easily automated in the near future. Small companies don't have a big moat or any budget for R&D, so they might tank quickly when a competitor comes along and destroys them with AI. It could be anything, such as accounting, law, insurance, marketing, construction, etc. etc.
On the other hand, there are probably many companies that could just fire their staff and automate everything. For example, a small company that employs a lot of truck drivers could just buy self-driving trucks and fire all their drivers. But then it's also hard to see why any company would want to sell self-driving trucks, when they could just build their own trucks for themselves, and undercut and take over the entire industry.
If you want to go long on something, many of these companies probably don't exist yet. I think we just have to watch out for IPOs in the coming years, and some of those crowdfunding platforms for startups (99% of those startups are shitty, but there might one or two good ones.) Even better if you are an accredited investor, then you can invest much earlier.
I'm also interested in stocks such as McDonald's (MCD), Burger King (BKW), and Starbucks (SBUX). They're well on their way to being automated (McDonald's has already started to introduce self-service kiosks), but I don't know about the timeframe. Also I heard that people are starting to eat less fast-food, so there are a lot of factors.
What are your ideas? I'm also interested in book recommendations.
Submitted July 24, 2017 at 01:34PM by stockman45 http://ift.tt/2tvfxeA
