Pandemic Rages on! Here Are the Biggest Losers and Winners

Every time the pandemic news seems to improve, it seems to take another turn for the worse soon after.

And when most investors think it’s time to buy, it’s often time to wait … or even sell.

That’s what we told you about in our three-part video series, Future Shock 2020. (The entire series is coming offline this week. So if you haven’t watched it yet, click here while you still can.)

Plus, that’s where the Weiss Ratings can be a big help.

In the first two decades of the 21st century, the Weiss Stock Ratings have not only protected investors from wealth destruction in bad times, they’ve also helped investors participate in nearly every great wave of wealth creation.

And that’s especially true for tech stocks!

Before the Dot-Com Bust of the early 2000s, almost every tech stock received a Weiss “sell” rating.

And as they began their great bull market in 2004, most of the best performers received Weiss “buy” ratings.

For example, if you had followed the Weiss Ratings, you could have enjoyed total returns of

  • 815% on Citrix Systems (Nasdaq: CTXS, Rated “B”),
  • 902% on Cognizant Technology Solutions (Nasdaq: CTSH, Rated “C”)
  • 914% on CGI (NYSE: GIB, Rated “C”)
  • 1,034% on Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT, Rated “B+”)
  • 1,230% on Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE: FICO, Rated “B”)
  • 1,424% on Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU, Rated “B-”)
  • 2,836% on Ansys (Nasdaq: ANSS, Rated “B-”)
  • 3,450% on Tyler Technologies (NYSE: TYL, Rated “B-”)
  • And an amazing 15,621% on Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL, Rated “B”).

Looking ahead, however, the outlook has changed in two ways:

First, thanks to the sheer acceleration of change in the pandemic, the profit potential is even greater. Gains that used to take years or even decades to achieve are now possible in much shorter bursts of time.

Second, also thanks to the pandemic, the risk of a rapid downdraft in the market is also greater.

Indeed, we now live in two separate worlds — one dominated by a traditional brick-and-mortar economy in shambles … and another dominated by the digital economy that’s booming.

No one can predict the future with certainty. But I think it’s safe to say that the next two years will deliver some of the greatest opportunities — and dangers — of a lifetime.

And here’s one thing we do know with certainty: No one alive today has ever seen anything quite like what we’re experiencing in the world right now.

Even before the shock waves of the pandemic began to sweep through society, we were already witnessing a massive shift of people and wealth from the brick-and-mortar world to the online word.

In fact, long ago, Weiss Ratings Technology Analyst Jon Markman named this megatrend …

The Great Digital Transformation

Now, it’s here, bigger than ever.

The International Data Corporation recently reported that digital transformation spending — or DX as they call it — is projected to hit $7.1 trillion by 2023. And they say more than 50% of all IT spending is shifting toward digitization — right now.

A United Nations study is even more on point. They say the digital economy continues to evolve at breakneck speed, driven by the ability to collect, use and analyze massive amounts of data about practically everything.

In fact, IP traffic — data flows on the Internet — has grown from about 100 gigabytes per day in 1992 to more than 45,000 gigabytes per second in 2017. By 2022 it’s projected to reach 150,000 gigabytes per second.

Think about that. From 100 gigs per day to 150,000 gigs per SECOND. That means Internet usage will have expanded by nearly 13 million percent.

This gives you just one sneak preview to the sheer enormity of the digital transformation.

The pandemic is accelerating this process. It will send select stocks soaring … and it will also be devastating for companies that are left in the dust.

Which ones?

Our Weiss Stock Ratings model does a good job of identifying them based on massive data crunching and based on 90 years of research going back to the late 1920s, when my father, Irving Weiss, first worked as a stock broker on Wall Street …

The Biggest Losers

Among big oil companies, the big names with the worst ratings include Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM, Rated “D+”), Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB, Rated “D”), Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY, Rated “D+”) and Halliburton (NYSE: HAL, Rated “D”).

Among the nation’s industrial giants, they are Boeing (NYSE: BA, Rated “D”), Raytheon Technologies (NYSE: RTX, Rated “D”), General Electric (NYSE: GE, Rated “D-”), DuPont (NYSE: DD, Rated “D”), Ford (NYSE: F, Rated “D”), Dow Inc. (NYSE: DOW, Rated “D+”) and Altria Group (NYSE: MO, Rated “D+”).

In the travel and transportation sector, they include companies like FedEx (NYSE: FDX, Rated “C-”) and Booking Holdings (Nasdaq: BKNG, Rated “C-”).

Plus, retail giants like Walgreens (Nasdaq: WBA, Rated “D+”) and mall operators like Simon Property Group (NYSE: SPG, Rated “D+”) are also among the losers.

All of these companies are in the S&P 100 index. So, they’re big. And most of them merit a Weiss Stock Rating of “D+” or lower, which means “sell.”

The Biggest Winners

Here are three of the six opportunities we cover in Future Shock 2020

Future Shock Opportunity No. 1
Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Here’s an example from our own shop …

I just gave you a list of losing stocks that was gleaned from six terabytes of data on our computers — nearly everything you could possibly want to know about the 57,000 investments and companies we track.

We teach the computer how to crunch that data, and then the computer teaches us a lot about the companies. But we’re just beginning to enhance this process with machine learning, which is a form of artificial intelligence (AI).

But of all the companies in the world, the one that uses AI the most is Amazon.com.

It has the biggest Artificial Intelligence platform in the world. Even its Alexa digital assistant, which some people were skeptical about at first, is becoming a huge AI platform in its own right.

Anyone who shops on Amazon can see how that works. But behind what you see is a mammoth engine of complex data crunching.

It not only learns what you like to buy, but also how and when, down to the exact time of day. It learns and maps out your shopping habits in the finest detail. And thanks in large measure to that giant data crunching engine, Amazon now dominates the world of e-commerce.

Still, to most people, artificial intelligence is something that happens in far-away computer labs that no one knows about or understands.

But it’s already a huge part of our lives. Just last year alone, businesses have spent $1.3 trillion on digital transformation strategies. So, it’s happening a lot closer to home — in schools, offices, stores, factories, hospitals, clinics. And it’s coming on fast.

So, each of the next opportunities also uses AI …

Future Shock Opportunity No. 2
Educational Technology (EdTech)

At its peak, the virus caused nationwide school closures in 190 countries. That impacted 90% of students on the planet, almost 1.6 billion kids in all.

It drove shock waves through the entire world of education. So it should come as no surprise that educational technology, EdTech, is now taking off like rocket.

EdTech includes the virtual classroom, which gives each and every student a front-row seat next to the teacher and her whiteboard.

Image

It teleports students into a world of augmented reality where they can test mechanical models and design the machines of the future.

And it has given a huge boost to the EdTech industry — a $100 billion industry back in 2015 that’s expected to grow to $300 billion by 2025.

One of the first movers in this sector was 2U. Jon interviewed the founder soon after it went public and recommended it at about $14 per share before is surged to $98 a share.

Or consider Google Classrooms. It had about 50 million active users in early March. Now it has more than 100 million. And one of the features we like the best is that teachers can manage the entire class on the go with their iPhone or Android device.

Future Shock Opportunity No. 3
Work-at-Home Technology

Before the COVID crisis, Zoom, now the most popular online video conferencing tool, had about 10 million daily meeting participants. Last I checked, they had 300 million.

This insane 30-fold growth is what helped drive the stock through the roof.

And it’s why Jon Markman recommended Zoom call options to his subscribers before it took off. If you had bought them at the market when he issued his “buy” alert and converted them into shares, you could have seen gains of 2,000% or more.

My company is also benefiting in another way. With tools like Zoom, we now hire skilled staff from anywhere — in small towns all over the United States and in English-speaking countries all over the world. This lets us tap into an online labor market like never before.

And it gives a new opportunity to folks who previously couldn’t even dream of landing a job with a company hundreds or thousands of miles away.

But the ship has mostly sailed with Zoom. And many companies, ours included, has moved beyond Zoom to other platforms, such as Microsoft Teams.

No matter what the platform, however, working online is fast becoming the norm. According to an MIT study, before the COVID crisis, only about 15% of the U.S. workforce was online. Now, it’s about 50%. That’s a massive migration to virtual workplaces.

And here’s something that may surprise a lot of people: Nearly everyone assumed that working at home is less productive. But in most cases, working remotely is more productive.

The thing is, productivity doesn’t happen automatically. People need to learn how to do it. And Jon has found a unique company, ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW, Rated “B-”), that’s a leader in helping companies get there. He also interviewed this company’s founder in its early days, and since then, its shares are up by over 1,600%.

These are just three of the six opportunities and future winners we describe in Future Shock 2020.

And even these pale in comparison to the profits that are possible with our Future Shock Strategy, revealed in this video.

Just remember: All three videos will come off line later this week!

Good luck and God bless!

Martin

About the Weiss Ratings Founder

Dr. Weiss is the founder of Weiss Ratings, the nation’s leading provider of 100% independent grades on stocks, mutual funds and financial institutions, as well as the world’s only ratings agency that grades cryptocurrencies. He founded his company in 1971, and thanks largely to his strict independence, has established a 50-year record of accuracy. Forbes called him “Mr. Independence.” The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that his insurance company ratings outperformed those of A.M. Best, S&P and Moody’s by at least three to one. And The Wall Street Journal reported that investors using the Weiss stock ratings could have made more money than those following the grades issued by Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Standard & Poor’s and every other firm reviewed.

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