Markets
How the World’s Most Elite Growth Investors Pick Stocks
Investing can be extremely psychologically demanding.
Not only are you up against the world’s best investors, but you’re also up against yourself. It’s easy to get caught making irrational decisions based on your own personal blindspots or cognitive biases, and these mistakes can lead to buying when you should sell, and vice versa.
For the above reasons, the most successful investors are often those that have rational and proven systems in place.
Having a method to your madness allows you to have confidence in your decisions, while also taking advantage of the strategies and heuristics that have performed well for the world’s most elite investors.
How to Pick Growth Stocks
Today’s infographic comes to us from Investor’s Business Daily, and it details the basics around the discipline of growth investing, including the differences the school has with value investing.
More importantly, it also provides a framework for choosing growth stocks used by elite investors such as William J. O’Neil.
Growth investing is all about identifying the companies that are exhibiting behavior that suggests that they will be tomorrow’s leaders.
The benefits to this strategy, if successful, are easy to see. Think about buying Microsoft before it dominated the software industry, or Starbucks before it conquered the United States with its new approach to coffee culture.
The question is: how can these stocks be found reliably?
The CAN SLIM Approach
Fantastic growth stocks don’t just grow on trees – instead, you have to have a system to sift through them.
One easy place to start your search for the next growth leader is with an approach pioneered with investing legend William J. O’Neil. Developed in the 1950s, the CAN SLIM strategy identifies seven characteristics that top-performing stocks often share before making their biggest price gains.
Each characteristic is represented by a letter in the CAN SLIM acronym:
C – Current quarterly earnings
A – Annual earnings growth
N – New product, service, management, or price high
S – Supply and demand
L – Leader or laggard
I – Institutional sponsorship
M – Market direction
Importantly, each of these traits can be a catalyst to influence other traits. When they compound, it can lead to big price movements that beat the rest of the market.
Breaking Down the Factors
Let’s look at each characteristic of the CAN SLIM approach in more detail:
Current quarterly earnings
Look for companies with a minimum earnings-per share (EPS) growth of 25% in the most recent quarter, though 50% or higher is even better. These companies should also have 20% sales growth in the quarter, and a 17% ROE to ensure that growth is sustainable.
Annual earnings growth
Look for companies with annual EPS growth of at least 25% to 50% in each of the previous 3-5 years. This helps confirm that the company is showing long-term growth.
New product, service, management, or price high
What is the company doing that is new or game-changing? To be a market winner, a company must constantly reinvent itself to position itself for higher-than-average profits.
Examples: Consider Google’s monetization of search ads, or McDonald’s novel approach to food. These innovations set the companies up for massive profits and success.
Supply and demand
A stock price increases when more investors demand an increasingly limited supply of shares. Spikes in price, along with volume accumulation, mean that demand is increasing. If this is coming from institutional investors, who tend to buy and hold, it’s even better.
Leader or laggard
The leading companies in leading industries – the best of the best – will be the companies that have the most growth potential.
Institutional sponsorship
75% of all market activity comes from professional investors, such as mutual funds or pension funds. Not only does the smart money help validate a potential growth stock by being involved, but they can trigger big price increases.
Market direction
CAN SLIM investors believe you should invest with the market, as opposed to against it. That’s because an individual stock moves with the market 75% of the time.
Putting it Together
Understanding how the different CAN SLIM factors work together – and how they can help bring massive bouts of growth for the underlying stock – is key for the successful growth investor.
Using a rational system like this also helps you in overcoming cognitive biases or making other mistakes that may affect your investments, as well.
Markets
Graphene: An Investor’s Guide to the Emerging Market
The market value of graphene could reach $3.75 billion by 2030. As the emerging industry shows fast growth, it also faces obstacles.


Graphene: An Investor’s Guide to the Emerging Market
Graphene is an atomic-scale “honeycomb” that is revolutionizing the world of materials and capturing investor attention.
Experts predict that its market value could reach the billion-dollar threshold by 2027 and soar to a staggering $3.75 billion by 2030.
In this infographic sponsored by HydroGraph, we dive into everything investors need to know about this exciting industry and where it’s headed.
Promising Properties
Graphene possesses several unique physical properties which contribute to its wide range of potential applications.
- 200 times stronger than steel
- Harder than diamonds
- 1,000 times lighter than paper
- 98% transparent
- Higher electrical conductivity than copper
- Heat conductivity: 5 times that of copper
- 2,630 m² of surface area per gram
Since its first successful isolation in 2004, graphene’s properties have opened the doors to a multitude of commercial applications and products.
Applications of Graphene
Graphene has permeated numerous sectors like electronics, energy, and healthcare because of its impressive array of end uses.
Industry | Revenue CAGR of Graphene Across Industries, 2022-2027 |
---|---|
Biomedical and Healthcare | 52% |
Electronics and Telecommunications | 34% |
Energy | 25% |
Aerospace and Defense | 16% |
Other End-User Industries | 17% |
Graphene’s antibacterial properties make it highly suitable for medical instruments and implants. Furthermore, it has shown remarkable potential in helping treat diseases such as cancer.
Another one of the material’s applications is its ability to emit high-speed light pulses, or to combine graphene’s thinness and high-conductivity to create the tiniest possible light sources.
All in all, it’s difficult to sum up graphene’s properties and potential applications in one place. The supermaterial has been covered and cited in thousands of academic journals, and comes up with over 2 million search results on Google Scholar.
Graphene Commercialization
Graphene has evolved from a scientific breakthrough to a commercial reality in less than two decades, putting it firmly on the radar of many future-focused investors.
But despite the strides the industry is making, it is still in its infancy, and therefore challenges exist on the path to widespread adoption. Here are the top five commercialization obstacles perceived by industry players.
Obstacle | % of survey respondents |
---|---|
Cost | 31% |
Production Methods, Scaling, and Distribution | 21% |
Material Quality/Consistency | 17% |
Lack of Knowledge/Awareness | 15% |
Dispersion/Handling | 14% |
When transitioning cutting-edge materials from the laboratory to consumer products, challenges like these can be expected. But one company is tackling them head-on.
By producing 99.8% pure graphene, and ensuring batch-to-batch consistency, HydroGraph is helping meet the growing demand for graphene products across industries while addressing challenges like cost, scale, and quality.

Interested in learning more? Explore investment opportunities with HydroGraph now.

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