Editor's note: We're doing something special in today's DailyWealth essay. Our colleague Dave Lashmet has agreed to "unlock" a classic issue of his high-end Stansberry Venture Technology publication... which scours the markets for tech breakthroughs and medical innovations with huge triple-digit upside.
Over the next two days, we'll share an adapted version of this story from 2017. It covers an incredible medical advancement – plus, you'll learn how Dave has recommended that his readers profit from it...
In October 1957, America got Sputnik-ed...
The Soviet Union had beaten us to space and put a satellite in orbit.
Moscow radio announced the news... and within hours, ham-radio operators and amateur astronomers across the nation were listening in. "Beeeep, beeeep, beeeep," emerged from fireside radios across America.
This was the second stage of the nuclear arms race that physicist Albert Einstein warned about...
You may know that Einstein kicked off the Manhattan Project in the Arizona desert. It started with his 1939 letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about "extremely powerful bombs." Einstein also warned of a nuclear arms race – at the time against Nazi Germany.
When World War II ended, the Soviet Union replaced the Nazis in the weapons race... and in the space race that followed.
And a few months after the Sputnik launch, a new, practical application of Einstein's second theory happened to land at the U.S. Patent Office.
The file was labeled "Top Secret." Very few patent examiners can touch classified files. Among physics experts, there's only one guy... And he gets one secure cabinet. So for a decade, the file remained locked up and hidden.
Two words justified all the secrecy: "death rays." It was thought that lasers were key to a death-ray weapon... and the Pentagon was very interested in building one.
Obviously, we didn't end up with death rays. But lasers did lead to something else – and it became a powerful investment opportunity...
Lasers first appeared as a mere footnote to Albert Einstein's paper on black-body radiation... published 100 years ago.
To wit, Einstein said that it might be possible to create light particles – "photons" – by applying electricity to a material. And all this was highly theoretical: light itself was considered a wave.
By the 1950s, though, physicists proved out part of this theory with "masers": Microwave Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. (A laser is photons stimulated in the same way.)
A guy named Gordon Gould figured all this out in November 1957 – a month after Sputnik. His Top Secret patent application was soon after received by the U.S. government.
Meanwhile, physicist Theodore Maiman published proof-of-concept experiments using rose quartz crystals. Then, a second team used a gas matrix. And finally, it was proven in solid-state electronics.
From there, lasers disseminated broadly... from cutting lasers to fiber optics and ultimately to CD players. An industry with hundreds of businesses and billions of dollars in revenue developed around these electronics.
But no death rays followed. So the government unlocked the filing cabinet. It pulled out Gordon Gould's patent application. And it issued a U.S. patent for the laser to him – which everyone was violating.
Fair to say, the industry fought back. Gould trudged through a 30-year patent battle. But the Federal Appeals Court finally ruled in his favor in the 1980s. And his 40 patents on lasers lasted until 2005...
Gould retired a rich man, despite signing away some 80% of his laser patent rights to pay for the patent battle. And though he didn't win immediate acclaim for inventing the laser – thanks to the secrecy around death rays – Gordon Gould is today enshrined in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
The big developments happened with medical lasers. And the medical device segment of the laser market soon became a rich ground for investors...
Medical-device firms are a great balance for the drug developers in the Venture Technology portfolio. One key attribute of these companies is that they don't fall to zero...
Unlike a one-drug, developmental-stage company – which can fail at any time – firms with approved devices stabilize your portfolio, while allowing it to grow.
For decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") has reviewed new medical devices. That means there's government approval for U.S. sales, as well as FDA-approved marketing materials. Plus, part of the approval process is reviewing patents. So once a device appears on the list, it means that it's time for the firm to make money... not spend it.
To find breakthroughs, we must be selective...
We've found a promising new device from an established firm. It's profitable, cash-rich, growing, and trading at a fair price. Plus, the breakthrough medical procedure tied to this laser is already approved by the FDA.
Earlier, I mentioned "Einstein's last secret"... The secret is that light is a particle.
Richard Feynman made Einstein's theory of light particles (photons) stronger using quantum electro-dynamics, or QED. But again, that was just theory.
In practice, this point wasn't proven until an experiment in July 2010... where Dutch and German scientists proved that photons are physical particles.
Here's a picture from that experiment of light particles frozen in place, inside a mirrored chamber...
Now, if light is made of particles, this means you can use photons to deliver energy to a target tissue.
For surface targets, proton beams already have perfect accuracy. But protons are far heavier than photons. Think of a photon like a BB pellet... and a proton as a wrecking ball. One can crack a window – the other can bring down the house.
That's why proton beams were first used in medicine to treat eye tumors. You can set how far you want them to travel and where to stop. That spares the optic nerve and brain behind your eyes... So you cure the tumor, but don't go blind.
Eye tumors are rare. But sometimes, other late-stage cancer spreads there. And having a safe and effective treatment for eye tumors that spares vision helps thousands of people in the U.S. each year.
The FDA approved this same precision power for a new laser system. Instead of super-heavy protons, this new laser system uses much lighter photons – so it can handle more delicate surgeries.
This system allows a new type of corrective vision surgery for your eye... and it has big advantages to current surgical competitors...
Unlike LASIK surgery, you don't have to cut a flap of your eye. And unlike PRK surgery, you don't have to grind down the front of your eye.
Instead, your eye stays mostly intact and protected from the outside environment... Surgeons can wear away material inside your eye to correct your vision. Plus, this new procedure hurts a lot less because it spares your nerves.
That's putting Einstein's last secret into use: throwing light exactly the right distance to get a clinical effect, without damaging either the surface or the back of your eye... and sparing your nerves and brain.
I'll continue with the details tomorrow. Until then...
Good investing,
Dave Lashmet
Editor's note: Dave has locked in gains of 779% and 690% in the last year alone. And subscribers who've followed his advice are up 178% on "Einstein's last secret" (and still holding on). But now, you have a chance to get in on his latest investment idea... a new wave of medical treatment for a disease that affects 42% of U.S. adults. Three tiny stocks could soar up to 1,000% as this new market takes off – but you must invest early for the biggest potential gains. Get the story here while you can.
Further Reading
The board game Monopoly might not be the first thing you think of when you consider the stock market. But the rules to winning this classic board game also work in the biotechnology sector... Get the full story here: Lessons in Biotech Investing From a Game of Monopoly.
"When most people hear 'venture capital,' they think of Silicon Valley," Dave writes. But you don't have to find the next Apple or Facebook to bet on emerging technology. And we can follow the lead of one of America's richest families to find massive gains today... Read more here: Invest Like a Rockefeller With These 'No Contest' Companies.
Finding new technologies with a competitive advantage can lead to big gains. And one company is likely to see billions of dollars in new revenue based on one off-the-radar event...
A 'BAD TO LESS BAD' RALLY SHOWS THIS BEVERAGE GIANT IS RECOVERING
Today, we're highlighting a stock that's taken a positive turn...
Longtime readers know we love looking for companies that are going from "bad to less bad." Troubled stocks can fall for a long time. But sometimes, all it takes is a little good news for investors to return. Today's company is a perfect example of how this idea can lead to big gains...
Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) is a $5 billion beverage giant. It boasts a portfolio of more than 500 global beer brands... most famously Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois. Still, the company has struggled with debt... And after the COVID-19 pandemic forced folks to avoid bars and restaurants, the company saw a nearly 6% decrease in total sales volume last year. Now, vaccine rollouts are bringing consumers back to restaurants. And in the first quarter, AB InBev made more than $12 billion in sales... up 17% year over year.
As you can see in today's chart, BUD is up more than 120% from last year's bottom. Shares just hit a fresh 52-week high. It's more proof of what can happen when things get "less bad"...
