Editor's note: In today's Weekend Edition, we're taking a break from our usual fare to continue our holiday series... with timeless tips and perspectives from our editors. This piece – which we originally shared in DailyWealth in August 2020 – dips into profiting from once-in-a-lifetime innovations. In it, Eric Wade shares three qualities that rare, explosive investments have in common... and why this formula is a great guide to successful speculations.
A single investment I made in 1994 changed everything...
I was 27 years old, working as a full-time stockbroker. I had every license I could get – and I later earned a certified financial manager designation, too.
Thanks to a large group of established clients, my wife and I lived in a big house in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We drove a Porsche and a Mercedes. At night, I dreamed of bigger houses and better cars.
Looking back, I believe I could've gone on to have a long, successful career as a stockbroker.
But instead, a once-in-a-lifetime investment shifted the course of my life forever...
My business partner and I paid $7 to acquire the rights to Wallstreet.com.
That was it. I didn't buy stocks, bonds, or any pieces of real estate... I just bought the rights to a domain name long before most people even knew what a domain name was.
In 1999, when I was 31 years old, my partner and I sold wallstreet.com for more than $1 million. We locked in 14,000,000% gains in a little more than four years... on the same domain we had bought for the cost of a cheap tie.
The sale made international headlines. And as I said, my life changed forever. But as you'll see in today's essay, it wasn't so much the money that changed me...
It was the way I viewed investments going forward.
You see, on that day in 1999, I lost interest in the "little pond" I was swimming in... the world of 20%, 40%, and possibly even 100%-plus gains in the stock market. Instead, I started casting out much further for what I like to call "deep, blue ocean" investments.
I gave up my briefcase and let all of my broker licenses expire. I didn't need the stock market anymore. I was looking for bigger returns... 10,000%, even 100,000% or more.
These kinds of gains are rare. But as I'll show you today, a few key secrets go into these investments. Let's get started...
Have you ever wondered why most local stockbrokers aren't multimillionaires?
It's not because they're dumb or don't make great investments. But most local stockbrokers don't get rich because they need to spend almost all of their time dealing with their clients...
They're answering phone calls and e-mails. They're chasing down signatures or dealing with accountants. They're so busy, in fact, that they don't have enough time left to sit down and study quarterly earnings reports. So although they're qualified, most local stockbrokers end up just chucking clients' money into funds and recommendations that come from corporate higher-ups.
That's fine... Chances are, you'll still make money in the long run. And that's what I was doing for the most part. But when my partner and I sold wallstreet.com, I realized two things.
First, the domain-name sale had three crucial ingredients...
- A barrier to entry (few people understood domain names in 1994),
- A technology that connects people (the Internet), and
- A rare and instantly recognizable name ("Wall Street").
Second, when I bought wallstreet.com in 1994, I saw something that most folks had absolutely no clue about...
You see, most people weren't even using the Internet yet. At the time, only about 10,000 websites existed. And the world had fewer than 0.0004 computers with Internet access per person.
But as soon as I learned about it, I realized that the technology would change absolutely everything. I didn't even know where to start when telling people how big it was going to be. I could talk about so much...
The Internet would revolutionize the way we thought about mail, newspapers, telephones, movies, gaming, gambling, shopping, politics, education... The list was endless.
But whenever I started talking to people about how the Internet would change our lives, their eyes glazed over. They would get caught up on tiny, insignificant details... like the "baud rate" on a modem... their "download speeds"... or what ".com" stood for.
Put another way, they saw the trees. No, not even the trees... They saw the weeds between the trees. They couldn't see the forest. They likely suspected that the forest existed since they knew about the trees and the weeds, but they couldn't be bothered to learn more about it.
But the thing is... if these folks had taken just an hour or two of their time to look deeper into the Internet in 1994, they could have made a fortune.
Now, they might not have bought their own domain name... but they could have bought Microsoft (MSFT) or Cisco Systems (CSCO) stock and made fantastic gains before the boom ended. Microsoft climbed 1,800% through 2001... And Cisco soared 6,000%.
Instead, these folks sat on the sidelines. They watched one of the greatest bull markets in history go screaming past... just because they were operating on insufficient, outdated knowledge.
That doesn't have to be you.
Obviously, these opportunities are rare. But with this winning formula, you can pinpoint investments with incredible upside. You know you've found deep-blue-ocean potential when you have a barrier to entry... plus a technology that connects people... along with a rare and instantly recognizable value.
Then, all you have to do is wait for the rest of the world to catch on.
Good investing,
Eric Wade
Editor's note: Eric is our No. 1 crypto expert here at Stansberry Research. He has delivered huge gains for his subscribers – including more than a dozen 10x winners in the past five years. Now, he's coming forward with the most urgent warning of his career...
In short, three major catalysts are converging for the first time ever. And it could create a massive buying opportunity in one specific asset class in the days ahead. On Wednesday, January 3, at 10 a.m. Eastern time, Eric is sharing all the details in an online emergency briefing... Click here to save your free spot.
