“This is an aging bull market. A crash is coming.”

“This Fed-fueled bubble market is going to crash.”

“Trump is going to cause the market to crash.”

For most of 2016 and most of 2017, investors have been reading these kinds of headlines.

I have been telling readers that stocks were good business. And I told people that they should buy stocks instead of panicking and selling them.

My suggestion was to simply buy the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (NYSE: DIA).

If you were one of those who bought this exchange traded fund, you are now up 65%. Well done and congratulations! You deserve it because I know how difficult it can be to buy when the markets are down.

It also took a lot of guts on his part to buy when most people told him to sell.

Those earnings were hard-earned by you.

But now that buying stocks isn’t scary anymore, you may be wondering if it’s time to cash in your hard-earned profits and sell it all.

Stocks are certainly a more popular trade than they were in February 2016.

After all, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 28% in 2017 alone.

However, the big gains of 2017 mean that there is a good chance that the gains of 2018 will be smaller. My best guess is something like 8% to 10%, maybe as high as 15%.

The way I get this estimate is by using my GoingUpness system. GoingUpness is the system I use to pick stocks.

The GoingUpness system is based on the potential supply and demand for shares. GoingUpness focuses on the most important benefit of owning shares: the increase in share price.

After two years of earnings, my GoingUpness system says that at higher prices there are fewer people who are going to buy shares than in 2016 or 2017. That also means you will see some periods where some people will cash in and sell.

The bottom line: less demand and more supply means you’ll see smaller gains in 2018.

A focus on megatrends reveals the best stocks to invest in

However, for certain segments of the market, like those where I focus on my paid services, I think we will get much higher returns.

The reason for this is that these stocks will experience higher growth. More growth means more demand for your stock and higher earnings.

The reason for these gains, I think, is a focus on megatrends like IoT, precision medicine, and millennials.

And in 2018, we will add new trends:

• Financial technology, or fintech (which includes the use of technologies such as blockchain, mobile payments, peer-to-peer lending, and artificial intelligence agents).
• New energy (including natural, sustainable and renewable energy, lithium and hydrogen-based energy sources, and portable, storable and local sources).

This focus on megatrends is why I think stocks will continue to outperform. And his contributions to market indices like the Dow and S&P 500 are the reasons why I expect the broader market to continue to rise.