On August 19, 1986, I landed at the JFK airport, and my dad's old college classmate, James, picked me up. After a few days of staying with him and his family, he dropped me off at college in Montclair, New Jersey.
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Coming to the United States was a new beginning for me. Going to college was like diving into a whole new world, where I had to figure out something new each and every day. It forced me to work out how things worked bit by bit.
And so many things that are so obvious today... were so hard to figure out on my own back then. For example, I didn't know how to dress for cold weather, and, as a result, I was cold almost all the time in the winter.
What's going on in the stock market reminds me of that time, because today most people are completely baffled. Unless you have experience and knowledge of how markets work, you're going to make all the wrong decisions.
And you could end up missing out on something that could absolutely change your life in 2017...
This critical thing is a bull market in stocks.
And I'm not just talking about a major new bull market in stocks that is going to propel the Dow Jones Industrial Average to 50,000... and then beyond.
I believe that when this bull market ends, the Dow could easily be 100,000.
I know that many of you think that this seems crazy. However, think back to 1982, which was the beginning of the last major bull market in stocks. People were pessimistic about the future of our country.
One easy way to measure the negative mood of that time period is to look at one of the most popular magazines back then: Time.
The September 6, 1982 issue of Time featured the new bull market that was just beginning.
Inside the issue were doubts that are similar to the ones that people have today about the stock market:
No one predicted it. No one can explain it. No one dreamed that it could keep going day after day after day. But last week Wall Street continued on one of the most unbelievable stock-trading binges in financial history... The frenzy has broken records, and then broken them again... Is this a suckers' rally or the beginning of a sustained bull market? Why has the momentum been so strong when the prospects for economic recovery are so uncertain?
Now, when you go back to 1982, you'll find two incredible similarities to 2017.
First, there was an incredible technology - the personal computer was just beginning to emerge as an enormous economic force in our economy.
Second, you had the coming of age of the baby-boomer generation, the oldest of whom had just turned 34.
And today, we have the same two things going on.
First, we have this incredible technological development - the Internet of Things is beginning to revolutionize how our bid and ask price world works in everything from our roads to cars to our health and every part of our lives.
Second, we have the coming of age of the millennial generation - the biggest generation in U.S. history at 92 million strong.
An Astonishing Bull Market Rally
The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared from 770 in August 1982 up to 11,750 in January 2000 - a gain of 1,426%.
In other words, if you put $10,000 into the Dow index at the beginning of this bull market and simply held, you'd have $14.2 million by its end. Incredible, phenomenal, astonishing gains purely through buying in at the beginning of the bull market!
Now, I understand that many of you might be skeptical of what I've just told you.
However, I've spent a decade researching bull and bear markets through history. And this combination of a major technological change and a new generation coming of age is as close as you are going to get to a sure thing in terms of a formula for predicting a major new bull market. And it's one that I'm staking my credibility and reputation on.
You could also buy a focused exchange-traded fund (ETF), such as the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSE: DIA), to benefit from this major new bull market.
However, if you want to make life-changing gains that can give you financial freedom, you have to find single stocks with the potential to go up 300%, 500%, 1,000% or even more. This is the focus of a new service my publisher is launching early next year. Keep checking back here if you are the type of investor who wants these kinds of gains.
These kinds of gains may seem unimaginable today, but just remember that in the last major bull market we had incredible winners such as Home Depot that went from $0.15 a share to $52 - a gain of 34,567%. There are going to be astonishing winners just like Home Depot coming in the years ahead.
A 20% return on investment is considered a very good return if it was consistent, however, a 100% return is possible and very realistic if you managed to buy at the bottom of a bear market.
At bear markets stocks are battered to the extent that they sell to very big discounts from their original value. If you managed to buy at the bottom, you will make very generous returns, and you may not need to do any further steps rather than watching your portfolio grow in value every day for years.
How to know it's the bottom
First of all you have to know that determining the exact bottom is not possible but instead you can know that you are close to the bottom (see my article determining the stock market bottom). Buying close to the bottom will bring you very generous returns; you just have to look for some signs that can tell you that the market is close to the bottom. The following are the signs that can help you know that stocks are trading near to the bottom:
* Bad news have no effect:The market always reacts to bad news by going down but when bad news are released and the market doesn't move or responds with very small reactions then know that stocks won't go down any further
* The market moves sideways: The market never reverses its direction before moving sideways for a few days or even weeks.
* All bad news are discounted in price: When all of the bad news are discounted in the stocks this means that the market is about to start its journey up. For example, if the market went down 20% in one week as a reaction to an announced recession, then what else can bring the market down? The recession which is the worst news has already been discounted in price. If however, new news are being released everyday then you might want to be patient before the news is over.
* Avoid the trap: Just like the sun rises from the east the market moves up after significant drops, if the market went down 20% it must go up 5% in the next two, tree days, or even the next week. Some people confuse this and think that it's the next bull market but few days later they lose the gains they made. In order not to fall in this trap make sure that the market moved side ways before it moved up