There are lots of stocks that will rise a lot over your lifetime. Invest in these stocks at an early enough age, and there's a good chance you'll get rich. You'll just get rich slowly.
But not everyone is still a spring chicken with a really long investing timeline. And many investors simply don't want to wait 30 years or more to make a lot of money from their investments. If you fit into one of these categories, I have good news and bad news for you.
First, the bad news. You won't find very many stocks that can deliver tremendous returns in a short period of time, say, over the next decade. Now for the good news. There are a few fantastic growth stocks that you can buy right now that have a good shot at making you a lot of money relatively quickly. I think that investing $5,000 in these three stocks could make you a fortune over the next 10 years.
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1. Guardant Health
David Gardner, co-founder of The Motley Fool, thinks that investors should "make your portfolio reflect your best vision for our future." One really positive vision for the future is a world where most cases of cancer can be detected early enough to be successfully treated. Guardant Health (GH 1.71%) is on track to make that future a reality.
The company is a pioneer in developing liquid biopsies that detect cancer by finding fragments of DNA broken off from tumor cells in the blood. What's revolutionary about this approach is that it could make possible the detection of cancer at really early stages -- even before people notice any symptoms -- using only a blood test.
Admittedly, Guardant Health's first liquid biopsy products don't achieve this goal. Guardant360 matches people who have advanced-stage cancer with the best therapy, while GuardantOMNI helps drugmakers select patients for clinical trials evaluating experimental cancer drugs. But sales are skyrocketing for these products with year-over-year revenue growth of 84% in the first quarter of 2020 despite a negative impact from the COVID-19 pandemic late in the quarter.
Guardant Health's LUNAR program, though, includes two assays in clinical testing that could enable the early detection of cancer and monitoring for cancer recurrence. The company has an addressable market of more than $50 billion annually in the U.S. alone for its current and experimental products. With Guardant Health's market cap currently well under $10 billion, this stock holds the potential to deliver ginormous returns over the next decade.
2. Innovative Industrial Properties
Thirty-three U.S. states have legalized medical cannabis with more probably on the way to doing so. There's now a big medical cannabis market in the country. And Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR 1.16%) ranks as one of the top companies positioned to profit in this market.
IIP is the leading real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on the medical cannabis industry. It buys properties from medical cannabis operators then leases the properties back to operators. These sale-leaseback deals provide cash to the medical cannabis operators while giving IIP a nice long-term revenue stream.
As a REIT, IIP must distribute at least 90% of taxable income to shareholders in the form of dividends. Because its revenue and earnings have soared, so has its dividend payout -- up a whopping 567% in the last three years. IIP's dividend yield currently tops 5%.
By my calculations, IIP would need to buy and lease between six and eight new properties each year while keeping its dividend payout at least at current levels to double an initial investment within the next five years. The company has completed eight sale-leaseback deals so far this year. I don't think it's out of the question at all for IIP to turn a $5,000 investment into $30,000 or more over the next 10 years.
3. The Trade Desk
Advertising is going high-tech. Instead of back-and-forth negotiations, ad agencies are turning to software to buy ad spots from media companies. And those ads are increasingly digital instead of on billboards or in print. One company dominates the buy-side digital and programmatic advertising market: The Trade Desk (TTD 2.14%).
The Trade Desk's software platform helps ad agencies pick from over 500 billion digital ad opportunities each day. Its applications enable these agencies to get the best bang for the buck for their clients by targeting specific audiences most likely to be interested in their clients' products and services.
The company's revenue and profits have grown significantly as the advertising world has shifted to digital and programmatic advertising. In the first quarter, The Trade Desk reported year-over-year revenue growth of 33% and adjusted earnings growth of 84%. This growth could slow somewhat with the COVID-19 pandemic as companies trim their ad budgets, but the long-term prospects for The Trade Desk remain very strong.
Just how great are those prospects? The global advertising market is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2025. Programmatic advertising currently is a $34 billion slice of this market but is growing rapidly. It wouldn't be surprising if digital video makes up close to half of the total ad market by the end of the decade. The Trade Desk is in an excellent position to profit from the growth of digital and programmatic advertising.
