Futurist Eric Fry thinks a major tech company could trigger the biggest stock market shake-up since the dot-com crash.
It's already on the way and Agentic AI “Applier” Stocks will be the big winners.
The Teaser
A powerful phenomenon is playing out right now. One that has played out many times before throughout history.
Professional investment newsletter teaser host Chris Hurt introduces Eric Fry as America’s “Top Trader” of 2016.
He's done some other stuff over the past decade too like tease AI Survivor Stocks and Next-Gen Stocks, which we have reviewed here.
In this one, Eric isn't talking about problems in the Middle East, $100 oil, or advances in software, although these have and are actively happening too.
Instead, the powerful phenomenon Eric hints at is an emerging and highly disruptive technology that he's calling “Agentic AI.”
What exactly is Agentic AI?
The way Eric explains it, ever since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, artificial intelligence has basically been a smart assistant.
It promptly answers questions and performs simple tasks on command.
However, what’s rolling out now is fundamentally different.
Agentic AI is capable of…
Going out into the world, making decisions, taking actions, and completing entire jobs from start to finish, without a human being involved
Indeed, Agentic AI is representative of a new breed of AI systems that are semi- or fully autonomous and thus able to perceive, reason, and act all on their own.
The implications are in a word, massive.
It means entrepreneurs with little technical skills can now compete with seasoned developers. Startup costs and barriers to entry also collapse to near zero and the time needed to scale up a business is also lowered.
As we can see, the potential disruption could be an order of magnitude bigger than the internet.
Agentic AI will affect nearly every industry to one degree or another and make some go the way of Blockbuster.
But there’s also a specific type of company that actually gets stronger during a disruption that could be approaching as soon as May 19th.
The Pitch
Everything, including Eric's Agentic AI “Applier” Stocks have been packaged into a research report called The Agentic Reckoning: 3 Applier Stocks Poised for 1,000%+ Gains.
To get it we'll need to subscribe to a premium research service called The Speculator. It promises 12 to 24 new recommendations every year and goes for $1,799 upfront for the first year, which is a discount from the regular $4,000 price tag.
Agentic AI's ChatGPT Moment
One date is at the center of Eric's teaser – May 19th.
According to our presenter, whenever a new technology causes widespread market disruption, it usually follows a three-stage process.
- Stage 1: The companies closest to the disruption get burned, which he says has already happened with Salesforce and monday.com, whose stocks are down 28% and 50% year-to-date, respectively.
- Stage 2: The panic starts to spread out to other sectors, which we're starting to see now with insurance, travel, and business-to-business services.
- Stage 3: The panic spreads to almost everything.
We're not at stage three, yet. But Agentic AI's so-called ChatGPT moment is supposed to come at this year's annual Google's I/O developer conference.
Normally, this is a tech industry event for programmers, engineers, and product announcements. However, this year could be different.
This is because Google's Gemini is widely expected to unveil a full agentic AI platform.
Not as a demo or a prototype, but as a live, working platform that can be used immediately.
If this happens, the market will do exactly what it's done every single time a revolutionary technology goes mainstream…it will broadly correct.
This is where Agentic AI “Applier” stocks come in.
Among the indiscriminate selling will inevitably be businesses that will use Agentic AI to transform their operations in ways nobody is yet anticipating.
Eric thinks he's found a few of these businesses and their stocks will make new record highs, while others crater. Let's find out what they are.
Revealing Eric Fry's Agentic AI Applier Stocks
Eric doesn't mince words. He says the Agentic AI fallout is “going to be brutal for many investors.”
However, “Applier” stocks will buck the trend and build momentum.
One such stock is revealed at the very end of the teaser as Omron Corp. (OTC: OMRNY).
A Japanese company that designs and sells essential components for automated factories, including semiconductors.
Eric follows this up by naming one stock he believes we should sell, ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE: MAN). A global staffing and recruitment firm that could suffer multiple blows from AI.
Unfortunately, apart from these names, no hints, references, or clues are provided about the two additional “Applier” stocks.
What we do know is most of Eric's criteria for identifying his picks, which may help us ferret out some potential “Appliers.”
Eric's Apogee stock rating system evaluates ten different factors, but the three most important ones are:
- Factor 1: 40% off it's 52-week high.
- Factor 2: The company's revenues need to be growing, not explosive growth, but not stagnating either.
- Factor 3: Low price/sales, as sales are harder to manipulate than earnings.
I ran this criteria through a stock screener and a few names came back:
- Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)
- C3.ai (NYSE: AI)
- Dutch Bros (NYSE: BROS)
Could these be Agentic AI “Appliers” that come out of a potential shakeup better off?
1,000% Winners…at a discount?
The shift toward more autonomous systems started with the industrial revolution and arguably ends here with agentic artificial intelligence.
Investing in businesses adopting the latest technology throughout history or so-called “Appliers“, would have yielded above average results. So Eric is leading us to the well.
But he's not helping us drink.
We know who the “builders” and infrastructure providers of AI are…the likes of Microsoft, Alphabet, TSMC, etc. But the biggest non-tech adopters?
This takes some digging.
When we apply the additional criteria that Eric has set, it gets even harder.
His top pick, Omron, is decent, but apart from it's low price/sales of less than 2x, it's other valuation and key metrics are decidedly below average, starting with a profit margin of only 3%.
The other three stocks that meet the “Applier” criteria, per our screener results, aren't much better.
Dutch Bros is the most interesting, as it is still a small-cap and growing by double digits.
However, it's underlying economics are average and total debt/equity already sits at 126%, suggesting equity dilution is in store down the road as a financing mechanism to keep funding growth.
The “Applier” stock theme is sound, but Eric's pick and potential picks aren't likely to be 10 baggers.
Quick Recap & Conclusion
- Futurist Eric Fry believes the biggest stock market shake-up since the dot-com crash is imminent and Agentic AI “Applier” Stocks will be the big winners.
- Google's annual I/O developer conference, where Gemini will unveil a full agentic AI platform, could be the spark that spreads panic.
- Eric's Agentic AI “Applier” Stock picks have been packaged into a tidy research report called The Agentic Reckoning: 3 Applier Stocks Poised for 1,000%+ Gains. To get it we'll need a subscription to InvestorPlace's premium research service, The Speculator, which costs $1,799 upfront for the first year (normally $4,000).
- Eric's top “Applier” stock is revealed at the very end of the teaser as Omron Corp. (OTC: OMRNY) along with a stock to sell or stay away from, ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE: MAN).
- Although “Applier” stocks as a theme should provide above-average returns over the long-term, OMRON is a below-average business by every metric.
Will Agentic AI cause a major market sell-off? Let us know what you think in the comments.