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Everyone knows that Nvidia is doing really well making chips for Generative AI; depending on the day, it’s the world’s most valuable company. I am trying to find an undiscovered stock that might benefit from Gen AI. I read something about liquid cooling in the data centres…does that make sense?

Fifteen years ago, American investor Kevin Vogelsang caught the bug for buying Chinese stocks. He took a position in FAB Universal Corporation, a brand created in 2008 that had over 12,000 self-service kiosks located throughout China where customers would download music, movies, and TV episodes while watching video ads. After several tumultuous years, by 2017, FAB Universal finally ceased operations, making the shares worthless. Looking back on the experience in the Wall Street Journal, Vogelsang admitted he should have paid more attention to the company’s AMEX ticker: FU.

In a prior article, we discussed some common mistakes investors should try to avoid when looking for big winners. A lot of times with investing, “simply” avoiding big mistakes is half the battle. It helps to cut off those left tail risks and bad outcomes and hopefully, at worst, keep mistakes small and easy to recover from. So, by tilting our odds of success away from some common mistakes, we can now look at what we think are common factors to look for when trying to determine if we have found that next big winner.

There are over 250 million people born between 1997 and 2012 in the developed world – the Gen Z generation – and soon they’ll be the majority of workers as Boomers age out. This will give them the cultural and financial clout to set tastes and habits much different than those of preceding generations. The global alcohol and beverage industry, like many others, will have to adapt to a large consumer base that does not make getting plastered a rite of passage.

My husband and I are busy professionals with two young kids. Neither of us wants to spend time managing our investment portfolio. In good news, we are rapidly building up a solid nest egg. We outsourced the management of our investment accounts and hired a financial planner a few years ago. He charges us a flat fee of 1% for advice and he structured a portfolio of mutual funds as per the chart below. We are paying closer attention to the impact that fees have on long-term investment returns, and we are wondering if we should shift to a self-directed Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) strategy.

A dream of most investors is to find the elusive “Big Winner”—that life-changing stock that goes up by multiples of the price you initially paid. In many cases owning (and holding) just one of these stocks can make a material difference in someone’s life. It can mean that down payment on a house, a catalyst that jumpstarts the compounding of a diversified portfolio over the long-term, or some inheritance money you always hoped to leave behind for your family.

We took our daughter clothes shopping in downtown Toronto on her birthday. Many of the stores we visited are owned by publicly traded corporations. Always attuned to investment prospects, I noted that Aritzia has been among the top performers on the TSX over the past year, and the company’s boutique was indeed crowded with customers. Along with Aritzia, we visited Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, Urban Outfitters, Reitmans and Winners (TJX).

A recent visit to several local auto dealerships found salespeople pitching an assortment of sales on their vehicles, some of which had been on display for a year. High inventories of slow-selling vehicles, particularly luxury brands, appear to have made salespeople even more overzealous than usual.

The real bargains, however, appear to be in their companies’ shares.

It was a dark and stormy night...

The crack of the COVID bullwhip could still be heard and felt echoing down Bay Street.

Restaurants and clubs, once flourishing, now were boarding up the windows out of fear of what unpredictable event might befall them on this ominous night.