A lot of important tech stocks are filing their quarterly financial reports this week, many of which are included in our portfolios. We don’t attempt to predict short-term earnings, which can be manipulated and are also subject to too many random variables such as how bad weather this winter may have affected consumer demand or the impact geopolitical tensions in the Ukraine influenced investor psychology.

However, we do attempt to predict long term results based on factors that not only are impervious to ephemeral conditions, but are almost inevitable based on our interpretation of how technology will evolve over the remainder of the current long term macroeconomic wave. Even though unexpected interlopers like the Fed’s massive Quantitative Easing program can temporarily delay the ultimate outcome of our model, the eventual result cannot be avoided altogether.

To that end, this month’s In Focus article once again compares the current expansion of the internet to the development of our National Highway System during the prior long wave to illustrate the significance of the Cloud and Big Data. But this time we drill down a bit deeper to show how individual companies are formulating strategies to carve out a niche in this rapidly expanding space, similar to how the fast food restaurants and hotel chains scrambled to control the most desirable real estate along the off-ramps of our National Highway System as it was being constructed.

Of course, some of the biggest success stories from that era were not the largest restaurant chains and hotel companies near big cities that were already enjoying success without the benefit of access to the interstate highways. As they moved cautiously and were beat out by much smaller and more nimble competitors, a new generation of future corporate giants was launched. For that reason, this month’s Sector Spotlight article examines a new breed of Big Data companies that could very well grow into tomorrow’s tech titans, and introduces the first addition to our newest portfolio.

Since we launched Smart Tech Investor four months ago we have recommended stocks in two portfolios with very different objectives; our Investments Portfolio which makes long term buy recommendations of companies that have obtained the highest Smart Tech Rating (STR) score based on our proprietary methodology, and our Equity Trades Portfolio which recommends trades – both buys and sells – that are based on short term conditions.

All along we have planned to add a third portfolio of small-cap tech stocks that do not necessarily score as highly based on the STR, but do possess a combination of strategy execution and financial wherewithal to make them viable contenders for eventual dominance within their respective product categories. In this month’s Portfolio Review we will introduce the first set of these recommendations to you, and will add others in the months to come.