Kiplinger

7 Hot Technologies to Buy in 2018 (And How to Do So Safely) 

Successful investing in the tech sector is about looking around corners. You don't win by betting on what has happened, or what is happening, but what will happen.

The PC era of the 1970s quickly succumbed to the local networking era of the 1980s, which was replaced by the Internet boom of the 1990s, the development of clouds in the 2000s and the mobility boom of the present decade.

Investors want to know who will win in each new wave of technology. History shows they should invest in companies that are both focused and large enough to reach the market at scale. Scale gave International Business Machines (IBM) an advantage in the PC era, but Microsoft (MSFT) added focus to scale, and you could argue it "beat" IBM in the 1990s. Focus gave Google - now Alphabet (GOOGL) - a key advantage over rivals, and focus with scale gave Apple (AAPL) the bulk of mobile profits during this decade.

The good news is that, in the tech sector, opportunities come faster as time goes by. Where once there was one fundamental technology change on the horizon, or two, now there are several. Each will change the world in important ways, creating new value while eliminating old jobs. The key is to be ready to invest in scaled, focused players as these technologies emerge, getting out of yesterday and embracing tomorrow.

The following seven technologies may be key

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