I like to compare buying stocks with going to the supermarket. You can't read all the info on all the packages in the entire shop to find the most promising package of food ever. But food is grouped in categories, and you know which categories you are interested in. Then, you can make your selection in many different ways. You can read about the nutrition values and make some kind of fundamental choice, you can simply buy something because somebody you know was happy about it, you can buy because of commercials, and you can buy because you tried it in the past and liked it, or use a combined approach. The same applies to shares.

You start with the important question: which market sectors you want to invest. The benefit of knowing market sectors is that you can easily compare companies in the same field, as you compare grouped foods. Here's a simple overview of the big market sectors. Each of these sectors is divided in subgroups until we arrive at the direct competition.

Ofcourse, as new technologies emerge, new sectors and subsectors are created. Bio technology, space exploration, new energy... it is in these new sectors that smallcaps.com believes lies tremendous growth. Strangely enough, large companies seem to forget about sectors in delevopment, until a new leader emerges and it's too late for them to catch up.

As an example, let me tell you about one of the companies I'm following since many years: Akamai Technologies (AKAM). Akamai is a content distribution provider, whith a network of more than 20.000 computers around the globe that delivers webcontent from a place close to the end-consumer, speeding up the internet experience. I remember becoming aware of the future market sector in 1998, so I bought ITVU (now aquired by AKAM), as I imagined that as the internet would grow and connections would get faster, the quickest way to deliver content was providing content servers around the globe, close to the place where content had to be delivered. Back then, there was not much demand for such services, and the big companies didn't invest in this technology. Many years later, AKAM has finally emerged as the undoubted market leader without competition. And content distribution is now a new market sector.

After determining the market sectors to invest in, fundamental research is needed to get to know the companies in these sectors. Smallcaps.com uses the CANSLIM en NAIC methods to find winners, as it screens emerging sectors for promising smallcaps. These companies are then featured in our selection center, and sent out to you by email.