Editor’s Note: As regular readers know, Bill sees trouble ahead for U.S. stocks. Investors who blindly buy “the market” will get thrashed when the bear market finally descends. That’s why tonight we’re sharing a special evening edition of the Diary.

Below, E.B. Tucker, one of the few analysts Bill ever trusted to make investment recommendations in his monthly newsletter, reveals why most investors are walking into a trap… and shows the areas that you should be putting your money to work…

In the fourth quarter of 2018, the S&P 500 went from 2,925 down to 2,350. It effectively fell 20% in a quarter. Of course, it’s since rallied back to around 2,800.

You might think, “Okay, well that was just a scare.”

But it wasn’t just a scare.

The market went down substantially and still hasn’t fully recovered. At writing, the S&P 500 is still 4% below where it was in early October. That’s a wild ride. A lot of people don’t want to go through that again.

What if the ride down isn’t over? What if the S&P 500 falls another 30%… and then rallies 25%… before falling another 30%? That’s not something you want to sit through again if you have a lot of money on the line.

Staying on this roller-coaster ride could turn out to be really expensive.

Glory Stocks

To be clear, I’m not saying to bail out and move everything into cash.

You still want to have skin in the game. You just don’t want to have that much skin in the game.

You also don’t want to fall for the trap most investors will fall into. I’m talking about owning the “glory stocks” of the last boom.

Specifically, I’m talking about the Big Techs; companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Netflix.

All had great runs. But their valuations are sky-high. Plus, they’re now under attack by the federal government in the United States. The European Union is getting on their case, too.

Of course, Amazon’s a great company. It’s convenient that you can buy a pair of shoes on Amazon in the morning and it will show up at your house 12 hours later. But that doesn’t mean you should buy its stock.

Huge amounts of capital have flooded into Amazon and the other Big Tech stocks in recent years. But this won’t continue forever.

Markets tend to fade hot stocks like this. Eventually, people get carried away. They overexert themselves. The market corrects. Money then rotates into something new. That’s just how these things work.

So, in this environment, we want to own companies that provide services and goods that people need. We also want exposure to major trends, but we also want to have as little money on the line as possible.

We’re happy to invest in those companies, regardless of whether there’s trouble on the horizon or not.

So where do you look instead?

Forgotten Land

One sector that I find very interesting is offshore energy services.

I say this because a lot of offshore drilling companies in the Gulf of Mexico went bankrupt after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion happened.

But oil company BP recently announced it found a billion barrels of oil in the Gulf. That’s huge because the Gulf is not a dangerous place to operate. There aren’t any pirates like you’d find off the coast of Somalia. There aren’t people tearing apart the rigs and stealing oil. And barring hurricanes, which the rigs are designed to withstand, it’s very safe.

We think the Gulf is a forgotten land, metaphorically speaking.

How should you play this sector?

Right now, I like oil services companies a lot.

These companies sell machinery and equipment to oil producers. They also provide services like seismic testing and rig transportation.

You can think of them as the “pick-and-shovel” companies of the oil industry.

Oil production in the Gulf is very capital-intensive. Wells there produce for years and years.

A shale oil well, on the other hand, produces a lot of oil in the first six months, but it’s barely squeaking out oil by year two or three, relatively speaking. By year 20, that sucker is tapped.

It’s very different in the Gulf. When a company taps a well there, it churns oil out for decades. Because of this, oil producers spend a ton of money on the front end. We’re talking billions of dollars.

And they spend that money on the right oil services companies to help ferry the parts to the rig.

EV Revolution

Here’s another money-making sector I like in 2019: electric vehicles.

I know, I know. You may be wondering how I can be bullish on oil companies AND electric vehicles.

But I’m not an ideologue. I’m a mercenary. I won’t disregard specific investments if I think the opportunity is right.

And I’ve found some very interesting service companies that will thrive during the electric vehicle (EV) revolution.

EVs are here to stay. There’s going to be a lot more of them. Now, this isn’t going to happen a year from now. But there will eventually be a lot more EVs on the road.

They’re going to require a lot more power and a lot of batteries. And we want exposure to those kinds of companies. I’m really interested in opportunities where we can pay pennies on the dollar for quality assets. That way we don’t have to invest a lot of money to capture a ton of upside.

Plus, everyone these days walks around with a smartphone in their pocket. That phone has a lithium-ion battery that will keep a charge for days, if you don’t use it. It’s very similar to the ones that power EVs. At the same time, most people drive cars powered by gasoline. And they get on planes that run on hydrocarbons.

We’re going to witness a shift towards all kinds of things that are battery-powered. The technology’s going to improve. Charging times are going to shorten. The life of the useful battery is going to grow. And the size is going to get smaller, as well.

But again, this shift won’t happen overnight.

Oil is still going to have a place in commerce. The world still consumes around 90 million barrels of oil a day. So the price of oil won’t go to zero.

Gold $1,500

And while you’re looking for investing opportunities this year, remember to always protect yourself.

As I’ll show you tonight, owning physical gold is one of the best ways to do that.

It has limited downside and big upside from here. Not only that, it has also survived every major financial crisis in history. This makes it the ultimate safe-haven asset.

In December, I went on Kitco News in New York City. I predicted gold would hit $1,500 an ounce in 2019. At the time, gold was trading at around $1,220 per ounce. It’s now at about $1,329… so the price of gold has jumped about 9% since then. And yet, gold still isn’t getting much press.

I still believe gold can hit $1,500 this year. And I think there’s never been a better time to own it.

Regards,

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E.B. Tucker
Editor, Strategic Investor

P.S. If you haven’t heard yet, I’m hosting an urgent online event at 8 p.m. ET, in just a few hours. I say it’s “urgent” because, if you’re serious about potentially making 10 times your money this year, then you can’t afford to miss this presentation.

No, it’s not an announcement about weed stocks, cryptos, or options. It’s something else entirely. I’ll give you all the details myself in the next few hours. But you have to attend the event for me to do that. Go here now.