Celebrating America: Extreme Hardships Breed Extreme Success …

Martin is celebrating President’s Day, and I hope you are, too. So, let me take this opportunity to give you my personal perspective on this special day …

Hardship Breeds Success

That’s true for individuals, companies and entire nations.

It’s why the United States will spring forward as we begin exiting the COVID-19 pandemic.

And it’s a fundamental principle that can unlock great investment opportunities for you in the months ahead.

My mission is to show you exactly how and where. But first, let me tell you where I come from — so you can better understand why I believe in this so passionately.

Tokyo, 1955

In a small noodle shop in Tokyo, a beautiful young waitress serves American GIs stationed at a nearby base. That’s considered acceptable behavior.

She then courageously ventures to go out on a date with a young soldier. That’s not so acceptable.

She speaks very little English; and the solider, even less Japanese. Still, the romance blossoms, and they’re married after a few months’ courtship.

Like clockwork, I come nine months later, and life is wonderful for the young couple.

My father is no Marlon Brando. And I don’t like clichés. But if my story conjures memories of the movie “Sayonara”, the images you remember are probably not very different from the scenes I’m describing.

Soon, however, the soldier is transferred back to Ft. Lewis near Tacoma, Wash. Before we can join him, my mother and I have to wait months in Japan for space on a naval transport ship.

The queue is long and hundreds of other war brides are ahead of us.

“Onegai! Amerika-ni ikanaide!” are the last words of desperation my grandmother shouts as she watches the ship depart. “Please! Don’t go to America!”

Tacoma, Wash., 1957

My mother should have listened — her marriage was over the day my father left Japan.

When our ship arrives, we find ourselves in a strange land with no family, no friends and no money. We spend our first two months in America living under a bridge.

But despite our plight, my mother refuses to return to Japan. “In America,” she later drills into my head, “you can make something of your life if you study hard and work hard.”

Fortunately, on a cold Saturday night, a kind stranger takes us into her home and becomes our personal savior. Her church adopts us and introduces my mother to Ken Sagami, a humble vegetable farmer who becomes my new father.

Intensive truck farming — maximizing the soil’s yield with hard labor, the most advanced irrigation techniques and some gutsy risk-taking — is all he knows.

But in our community, it’s the foundation for the success of future generations.

Success

That’s what happens to Mom and me. Our first months of hardship are replaced by many years of hard work on the farm. And ultimately, hard work on the farm has led to some great successes in my life.

My most ambitious venture was a web-based company that provides communication and collaboration tools for small businesses — online meetings, remote desktop access and online customer support.

That was decades ago, before most people even dreamed online meetings might be possible.

But the success of that business is one reason I have followed the tech world so avidly, for so long.

And now it’s really paying off — in more ways than one.

You see, whenever the U.S. has faced a life-threatening, existential crisis in the past, new revolutionary technologies emerged. And from them, entire industries arose from the crisis that never even existed before. 

In the Wake of Every National Crisis, We
Reinvented and Rebuilt the Entire U.S. Economy

During the Great Depression, America undertook some of the greatest engineering marvels ever in history. We built the massive Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. We erected the famous Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco to Marin County. 

Then, soon after World War II, the country engineered the mass production of automobiles and homes. These stimulated the postwar economy and provided millions of jobs for both men and women. 

Following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the online shopping revolution created literally thousands of new businesses and new industries. 

Companies such as Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) developed state-of-the-art automation technologies to move billions of packages in a month.

And in the wake of 2008-2009 debt crisis, the development of wireless video created new industries and technologies that also transformed our everyday lives by creating the opportunity to communicate instantly, watch films anywhere and even build huge audiences by creating their own videos. All on pocket-sized devices with more computing power than was needed to take man to the moon.

Each of these brand-new industries created rare opportunities for investors to make 10, 20 even 200 times their money — simply by investing small amounts in the one or two companies that were dominant in each. 

And today, as Yogi Berra used to say, it’s déjà vu all over again. 

History is repeating itself right now, as we speak. 

America is once again in the midst of a rare national emergency. 

The entire country is once again mobilizing its vast resources to meet a life-threatening challenge. 

What exactly are those resources? 

America’s vast financial resources quickly fund breakthrough technologies and create brand-new industries virtually overnight. 

America’s unparalleled creativity in literally dozens of fields — from software to healthcare — creates new business and employment opportunities that never existed before. 

Now, we once again face a grave national emergency. And we have not seen a mobilization of America’s resources on this scale since World War II.

Stay tuned. In the days ahead, I’ll guide you to the key sectors leading the way … and to the companies that I think have the best chance of dominating in each.

Best wishes,

Tony Sagami