The Bull Market to End All Bull Markets...

For those of us old enough to remember, the story of tech really began in 1984.

That was the year two things happened.

First, Steve Jobs — a then youthful, rebellious computer nerd — and his company Apple introduced the first Mac.

The now famous 1984 commercial they used to introduce the revolutionary all-in-one “computer for the people” during Super Bowl XVIII was the kind of marketing coup de grace Jobs would become known for…

And to this day, it’s still considered one of the greatest commercials of all time.

But that’s only part of the story…

That same year, one of my favorite movies, Revenge of the Nerds, hit theaters, forever cementing the concept of a “nerd” in our common vernacular as something not to ridicule or laugh at, but to embrace, to respect, perhaps even to fear.

Today, more than a quarter century later, the revenge of the nerds — be it real or fictional — is still going on.

Ever since the first PC booms of the 1980s, the world of technology has been reinvented, shaken to its foundations, redefined, rebuilt, and reevaluated numerous times.

And yet somehow, it always manages to come out more relevant, more aggressive, and yes, more profitable…

Apple apparently “died” in the mid 1980s only to come back stronger than ever 10 years later, ultimately culminating into the monster it is today.

Microsoft — the operating system king that appeared to be on the verge of Congressional crucifixion in the late 90s for its alleged monopolization of the x86-based operating system — is trading today for basically the same price it was trading for going into that potentially destructive legal proceeding. Its emperor Bill Gates remains the second richest man alive.

The hits just keep on coming…

Steve Jobs, who everyone thought had reached and fallen from his peak in the mid 80s, returned to Apple, sending the company on an earning streak unseen anywhere — in any sector — before or since.

Introducing the iPod and iTunes, he redefined the music industry in the first decade of the oughts just as he had redefined the computing industry 15 years earlier and the animation industry in the 90s.

The imprint Jobs left on the tech industry — and on all of our lives by extension — goes so deep that most people don’t even know just how far his influence stretches.

Thanks to the work he did developing Pixar, his influence on the entertainment industry will continue to be felt probably for as long as animated movies are made. When he died, Jobs owned $4.6 billion worth of Disney, making him the company’s largest shareholder.

And then there’s the Internet, which I don’t even know how to begin to tackle…

Looking at the list of the richest people in the world, it’s a veritable roll call at a retirement home, with the mid-50s being the equivalent of a toddler in a sea of 70-, 80- and 90-year-old Scrooges.

And then you hit the 24th and 25th richest individuals on the planet. Both have yet to celebrate their 40th birthdays and both are self-made.

How does that happen?

In a word, Google.

Over the last decade and a half, the Internet has proved to be the fastest and most popular way of making extremely young people extremely rich.

Google is a big and universally-known example, but what about the smaller, still well-known examples like YouTube, Twitter, and Groupon?

All of them made hundreds of millions for their founders — and usually in less time, from concept to buyout — than it takes the average American 20-something to get through three years of a four-year college degree.

What’s most amazing about this sector is that while the rest of the economy is questionable at best; while other technologies, resources, and commodities can be the topic of controversy, this one just keeps marching forward — for better or worse — coming up with newer and more surprising ways for us to spend our time… and our money.

In a way, it’s a financial mirror to Moore’s Law, the decade-old technological axiom that states that every 18 months or so, the density of micro-processors, and therefore the speed at which they operate, effectively doubles.

So where will it take us next?

Futurists like my personal favorite, Ray Kurzweil, say that the event horizon of a technological singularity is drawing near.

They claim the moment when machines become smarter than us is inevitable because that’s essentially the end toward which machines have been developed in modern times.

They’ll continue to be made smarter and faster until such a moment when they’ll be able to make themselves smarter and faster at a rate that surpasses human ability.

After that, the only human role to be played in technological evolution will be one of oversight and control.

At that point, of course, the super-smart machines will either recognize us as useless, stupid task-masters — leading to the inevitable visit from a monotoned Arnold Schwarzenegger in a black leather jacket — or we’ll somehow become one with them and live on forever as enlightened cyborgs.

I certainly don’t know what will happen.

In fact, nobody knows what the future holds in store.

What we do know is that unlike the case is with oil, or gold, or the retail market, the tech market really has no ceiling, no limits, and no boundaries other than those dictated by human imagination.

In many ways, today feels like 1994: the start of the Internet revolution and the Internet bull market.

And of course, Wealth Daily will be ahead of the curve — just as we were with Peak Oil.

To your wealth,

Brian Hicks

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Brian is a founding member and President of Angel Publishing. He writes about general investment strategies for Wealth Daily and Energy & Capital. For more on Brian, take a look at his editor’s page.