Dear Reader,
Welcome to our weekly mailbag edition of The Bleeding Edge. All week, you submitted your questions about the biggest trends in technology. Today, I’ll do my best to answer them.
If you have a question you’d like answered next week, be sure you submit it right here.
But before we get to today’s question, I want to remind you of an upcoming event.
My colleague Teeka Tiwari is hosting a free investing summit next Wednesday, November 13, at 8 p.m. ET.
I’ve known Teeka a long time. Like me, he’s heavily involved in the cryptocurrency space. And I’ve always admired how he’s emphasized risk management in this space.
Next Wednesday, Teeka is unveiling a new trading system that he’s never shared publicly. And Teeka is so confident in the trading system that he even took money out of his crypto investments to devote to this strategy.
I’ll let Teeka give you all the details himself. But I’m sure it will be worth your time to hear from him. Go right here.
Now let’s get to this week’s mailbag…
Next up, we have a question on how 5G could revolutionize health care…
I would really like to know the best industry to invest in to get exposure to 5G. I hear about the amazing theories of 5G relating to future medical advancements. Would this be a good industry to look at? I could die a happy man if you could please answer these questions. Thanks a lot!
– Bernard P.
Hi, Bernard. Thanks for writing in. And first off, I hope you don’t die anytime soon; we have too much to look forward to. And I have even better news. Wireless technology is already saving lives… more on that in a bit.
My longtime readers won’t need reminding. But for readers just joining us, 5G is the next generation of wireless network technology. As we’ve demonstrated with our live 5G test, 5G speeds will be exponentially faster – at least 100 times faster than the current 4G networks.
And with that type of speed, some very remarkable technologies become possible: fleets of self-driving vehicles, holographic telepresence, and yes, even major advancements in health care.
5G is more than just fast download speeds on our smartphones. 5G connectivity is being added to cars and trucks, shipping containers, laptops, tablet computers… and wearables with health care applications.
Consider this – the chance of surviving cardiac arrest goes down 7–10% each minute that passes after a person collapses.
Right now, we typically wait until obvious symptoms present themselves – collapsing on the floor, for instance – before we seek emergency assistance.
But with the next generation of wearable health monitors, our devices will be able to alert us (and, if necessary, emergency services) at the earliest sign of trouble. This will dramatically increase survival rates.
In fact, Apple published some research demonstrating that its Apple Watch would alert participants to unusual heart conditions and urge them to seek medical attention immediately. By doing so, those people avoided heart attacks and potentially death.
But wearable health monitors will transform health care in another way…
The mass adoption of health monitors will also produce a tidal wave of data. Everything – your heart rate, your respiratory patterns, and even your sleeping habits – will be collected as data and used to inform better preventative treatments.
Already, Stanford Medical School estimates that health care will produce 2,314 exabytes of data by 2020. That’s up from “just” 153 exabytes in 2013.
For scale, an exabyte is equivalent to 100,000 times all the printed material in the Library of Congress. It’s hard to get our heads around that much data.
And with hundreds of millions of wearable health monitors poised to collect health-related data on users 24/7, that number is headed higher.
But as my longtime readers know, 4G networks are already heavily congested. They are slow, and they have latency (delay). We can often hear that delay – an awkward lag time with the other person on the line. This often results in us speaking over one another.
5G wireless technology enables near real-time connections with only a couple of milliseconds of latency. For applications where latency is critical, this makes all the difference in the world. Examples would be a self-driving taxi or a robotic surgery performed over a wireless network.
So, yes, 5G will transform health care in a profound way.
Back to your original question… We have had fantastic success investing in what I call Phase 1 of the 5G wireless boom – infrastructure. We can think of this as the hardware and devices required to enable 5G wireless networks. Phase 1 is in full swing today.
And Phase 2 has already begun – the devices. There are already more than 10 5G-enabled devices on the market, and we will see an explosion in 2020.
Consider this: an estimated 300 million 5G-enabled smartphones will ship in 2020. And every single one of those 5G devices will need one essential component in order to connect to the 5G networks. I’ve found the one company that produces that component.
I consider this my No. 1 5G stock to buy today. More details right here.
And we’ll have even more to look forward to in late 2020. By that time, we’ll have more than 100 million consumers using 5G devices.
That will lead to the creation of applications and services designed to leverage 5G speeds and low latency. This is the stage (Phase 3) when we, as consumers, will really start to see the benefits of the technology.
Speaking of 5G, another reader wants to know what happens to the 4G networks in the years ahead…
In response to Bill K’s question from the other week, if lots of heavy users on 4G move up to 5G, which is a totally different setup, why wouldn’t 4G be less congested and therefore actually speed up for those of us who stay with 4G until sometime in the future?
– Donald B.
Thanks for writing in, Donald. For readers who missed it, two weeks ago, another Bleeding Edge reader asked why I was so confident that consumers would switch to 5G services. Many people are still happy with their 4G services after all.
For my full response, you can catch up right here.
Your instinct is correct. Once there is a large shift of 4G subscribers over to 5G networks, traffic congestion will drop… if nothing else changed. That’s the nuance, though.
Between now and the fourth quarter of next year, traffic over 4G networks will increase by 40–50%.
In my travels, I often run into problems on my 4G phone where I can’t do anything but make a phone call. Emails won’t download correctly, application data won’t load, I can’t access the internet… all because of 4G network congestion.
I can’t imagine how much worse it will be a year from now.
And consumers continue to use even more data over 4G wireless networks with every month that passes. My point is that the situation is not static. There may be a shift from 4G networks to 5G networks, but those on the 4G networks will keep increasing their data consumption over the network.
And we shouldn’t forget that where there isn’t 5G network coverage, a 5G phone will simply fall back on the 4G network.
And here is another secret of the wireless industry: If the 5G network we’re on is too congested, the wireless operator will kick us back onto the 4G network… even if we are paying for a 5G wireless data plan. Ouch!
But in truth, there is no simple answer. All the factors I mentioned will affect 4G network performance, yet it will be a very local experience depending on what is happening on the network that we are using.
Let’s conclude with a question that I’m sure several readers have asked at one point or another…
Jeff, my question has to do with investment advice overload. There is often conflicting advice, even within Bonner & Partners. One says to convert everything to gold now, while another says don’t buy gold until it is down around $1,425. Another says not to buy gold at all.
I want to keep this simple and not have to sort through 30 emails every morning. What are your thoughts on this?
– Scott E.
Thanks for your question, Scott.
It’s true that not every analyst within Bonner & Partners – or within our parent company, Legacy Research – always agrees. For instance, Bill Bonner – founder and chairman of Bonner & Partners – has a very bearish outlook on the stock market and the American economy.
On this point, Bill and I agree to disagree. And that’s fine.
As a publisher of financial research, our company sometimes shares viewpoints and opinions that take differing positions. And it never hurts to test our own theories. Often, the differences in opinions come down to time frame.
A simple example is the next bear market or market crash. Yes, there will eventually be one. But I don’t see one anytime in our near future.
And if or when I change my mind, my readers will be the first to know. At that time, I would be adjusting our model portfolios accordingly and using different risk management strategies.
I provide objective, unbiased analysis on profitable investments. But it’s ultimately up to the individual investor what research they act on. And I always try to be specific on the time frame over which I believe an investment thesis will play out.
But here’s what I can say with certainty: There has never been a better time in history to invest in cutting-edge technology. That may sound like hyperbole. It’s not.
The technological breakthroughs of the next 5–10 years will dwarf all the advancements of the past 100 years.
We are on the cusp of seeing fleets of self-driving vehicles, a cure to all genetic disease, and the mass adoption of AI-powered assistants. And if that wasn’t enough, we’ll soon be able to take a vacation to space…
In the years ahead, the largest fortunes won’t be made with gold or commodities. They will be made by investing in technology. Of that I am certain.
I can’t provide any specific investment advice on asset allocation – in other words, what percent of assets an investor might allocate to real estate versus technology versus bonds and so forth. This is a very personal, individual decision.
But once someone figures that out, here’s my suggestion for avoiding email overload.
One idea would be to set up a “rule” in your inbox. The rule would sort all your important investment research into “priority” folders. That way, it becomes easier to stay on top of what is most important.
And I hope that the content investors choose to prioritize is technology-related!
That’s all the time we have this week. If I didn’t get to your question, feel free to write to me here. I’ll do my best to tackle it next week.
Regards,
Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge
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The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
