In last month’s issue of Smart Tech Investor I mentioned that we are expanding our coverage.  We’re moving beyond just tech companies to a universe that covers companies swept up into, and profiting from, the information technology revolution. That revolution is spreading because of the growing power of computing, cloud, mobile and data. Almost every type of business can benefit from the explosive combination of innovation and integration that defines our propriety concept, “innogration.”

Until recently, most tech sector advancements focused on improving the underlying technology itself so that it might function faster, cost less, and be more accessible. In less than 20 years we have seen smartphones become the preferred personal computing device, the emergence of the cloud as the primary form of data storage for large businesses, and data analysis as the most reliable form of predicting behavior.

That has been exciting to be a part of, and vast fortunes have been made by those who bet on companies such as Apple and Microsoft before their extraordinary wealth-creating power became apparent to the masses.

However, the next tech revolution is just starting, and there’s time to invest in developing companies before they grow into giants in their fields. This next revolution is already happening in healthcare, as witnessed by the explosive growth of biotech stocks, the most promising of which we began covering last year with the addition of Dr. Joe Duarte to our team of analysts.

We will continue to follow the biotech sector closely, but it is now time to expand our coverage further into new fields just starting to reap the full benefits of technology. For that reason we have added Ben Shepherd to our team, leveraging his experience in global investing to include companies all over the world in our coverage universe.

Over the years Ben has been a key analyst for many of Investing Daily’s most trusted services beginning with Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street, and currently including Personal Finance and Global Income Edge. In this issue’s In Focus article Ben takes a look at the rapidly expanding “Internet of Things,” which includes his recommendation for one of the surest ways to benefit from its enormous growth.

When we launched Smart Tech Investor in December of 2013 we did so knowing its mission statement someday would expand to a broader range of companies. But we felt at the time the global economy was too risky for us to recommend companies in these new growth markets. That’s why we initially focused on the largest tech companies, believing that their strong balance sheets and high dividend payments would insulate them from weakness in the overall stock market.

That hunch proved correct, and our readers who followed that advice were richly rewarded. But now with the global economy stabilizing we believe the time is ripe to shift our focus to companies in the early stages of their enormous growth potential. That also means it’s time to make a few other changes, including a new name and new portfolio direction.

We are changing the name of Smart Tech Investor to Breakthrough Tech Profits to better convey our expanded coverage. We are also creating a new portfolio – Breakthrough Tech– to replace the current Next Wave and Medical Profits portfolios. Many of those companies will transfer into the new portfolio, but some will not, as enumerated in the Portfolio Update article in this issue. The Special Situations Portfolio will transfer over with no changes, and the Investments Portfolio will be merged with the Smart Tech 50, which already includes all of that portfolio’s holdings.

We will also begin to issue more frequent short-term trading recommendations to augment your longer term tech holdings.

Even though we are making some major improvements, rest assured you don’t need to change a thing. You will now receive weekly BTP issues every Monday and in-depth monthly issues of BTP on the third Thursday of every month (except in May, which will be on the fourth Thursday due to our annual Investing Summit earlier that month).  Your new email issues will click through to a new Breakthrough Tech website, including the new portfolios and articles. The Smart Tech website will remain accessible until May 31, when we will move all archived articles and issues to the new website.

You will also be pleased to know that although the price of BTP will be considerably higher to new subscribers than what you paid to join us, we will of course continue to honor our agreement with you (you’ll be getting a separate email from us explaining in detail exactly what that means).

I’m sure you will have many questions, all of which I will be happy to answer. As always, you may use the “Stock Talk” function at the bottom of this article to provide us with feedback or to let us know what else we can do to help you get the most out of this publication. We thank you for your patronage, and look forward to a rewarding future.