I'm not sure about Santa, but unicorns are real.
New research shows the 'Siberian unicorn' walked the Earth with humans as recently as 39,000 years ago.
Radiocarbon dating has shown the 8,000-pound animal, which is actually a rhinoceros, was alive and well with humans in Eurasia after the last Ice Age. It was originally thought to have gone extinct as long as 200,000 years ago.
Some are arguing the creature is the basis of the unicorn myths that have been passed down for generations.
In investing, like in ancient Eurasia, unicorns exist.
The term was first coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee in 2013 to describe software startups that reach a $1 billion valuation.
Since only 0.07% of them are ever valued that high, reaching that level is as rare as finding a unicorn.
Rare or not, as a retail investor, you may not want to find one. And even if you do, you may not be able to invest in it. Most of them stay private forever.
And if they do IPO, the upside is eaten up privately before shares are offered to the public. An IPO is a cashing out event for insiders, not a boon for retail investors.
According to a Bloomberg article earlier this year entitled "Got Shares in a Blockbuster IPO? Dump Them, Quick":
"Investors lucky enough to secure shares in a big IPO and not be constrained by a lockup would be advised to offload them immediately.
And if you're eyeing the next blockbuster like Xiaomi Corp., don't even bother.
While most IPOs do well on debut, the majority go on to decline over the following six months and one year."
None of the world's biggest tech IPOs have climbed in the year after they IPOed. Not Alibaba, not Snap, not Twitter.
Buying shares of Snap or Xiaomi would have been a great way to lose money.
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It's like hosting the Olympics. It's popular and seems cool, but hosting them is a guaranteed fiscal failure.
One way I've been successful in the startup space is through early-stage investments in companies that are using equity markets to raise capital. This allows all investors to get in as opposed to just Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
My latest such opportunity is closing this Friday, November 30th, which is why I wanted to write to you about it today.
I find overlooked or undervalued companies across all sectors that have the pieces in place to deliver outsized returns for investors.
They don't talk about the stocks I invest in on CNBC, but that's just fine with me. The returns are real. Let the talking heads blabber on about tech unicorns all they want. In my experience, chasing billion-dollar companies after sophisticated investors have already fed at the trough for years is not the way to make money.
Instead, I use my network and boots-on-the-ground approach to find the tiny companies that won't be tiny much longer.
It's how I've led investors to over 300 quadruple-, triple-, and double-digit gains in the past decade. We've literally watched 15-cent shares we owned climb to over $2.50.
Again, all the details of what I think will be the next big winner are here. But you need to see them now.
I will be taking the info down on November 30th.
I don't know if this company will reach unicorn status, and quite frankly I don't care.
My readers have made more money on companies whose names the public will never know than they would have on the companies whose names are on the tip of every suit's tongue.
Call it like you see it,
Nick Hodge
Nick is the founder and president of the Outsider Club, and the investment director of the thousands-strong stock advisories, Early Advantage and Wall Street's Underground Profits. He also heads Nick's Notebook, a private placement and alert service that has raised tens of millions of dollars of investment capital for resource, energy, cannabis, and medical technology companies. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world. For more on Nick, take a look at his editor's page.