The best stocks to invest in 2018: follow these megatrends

“This is an aging bull market. A crash is coming.”

“This Fed-fuelled bubble market is going to crash.”

“Trump is going to crash the market.”

For most of 2016 and most of 2017, investors have been reading these types of headlines.

I’ve been telling readers that stocks were a good deal. And I told people that they should buy stocks instead of panicking and selling.

My suggestion was to simply buy the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSE: DIA).

If you were one of those who bought this ETF, it is now up 65%. Well done and congratulations! You deserve it because I know how difficult it can be to buy when the markets are down.

It also took a lot of guts on his part to buy when most people told him to sell.

Those earnings were hard-earned by you.

But now that buying stocks isn’t scary anymore, you may be wondering if it’s time to cash in your hard-earned profits and sell everything.

Stocks are certainly a more popular trade than they were in February 2016.

After all, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 28% in 2017 alone.

However, 2017’s big gains mean there’s a good chance 2018’s gains will be smaller. My best guess is something like 8% to 10%, maybe as high as 15%.

The way I get this estimate is by using my GoingUpness system. GoingUpness is the system I use to pick stocks.

The GoingUpness system is based on the potential supply and demand of shares. GoingUpness focuses on the most important benefit of owning stocks: rising stock prices.

After two years of gains, my GoingUpness system says that at higher prices there are fewer people going to buy stocks than in 2016 or 2017. That also means you’ll see some periods where some people will cash out and sell.

The bottom line: less demand and more supply means you’ll see smaller gains in 2018.

A focus on megatrends reveals the best stocks to invest in

However, for certain segments of the market, like those that I focus on for my paid services, I think we’ll get much higher returns.

The reason for this is that these stocks will experience higher growth. More growth means more demand for your shares and higher profits.

The reason for these gains, I think, is a focus on megatrends like IoT, precision medicine, and millennials.

And in 2018, we will add new trends:

• Financial technology, or fintech (which includes the use of technologies such as blockchain, mobile payments, peer-to-peer lending, and artificial intelligence agents).

• New energy (including natural, sustainable, and renewable energy, lithium and hydrogen-based energy sources, and portable, storable, and local sources).

This focus on megatrends is why I think stocks will continue to outperform. And their contributions to market indices like the Dow and S&P 500 are the reasons why I expect the broader market to continue to go higher.