Building fortunes without depending on luck
Have you ever dreamt of winning the lottery?
You see the billboards or signs in stores advertising the size of the jackpot, and it’s easy to get lost in your imagination.
What if…?
Well, a 56-year-old Michigan man recently won a $1 million Powerball prize. That isn’t so unusual except for how he picked the numbers.
According to Michigan Lottery Connect, the winning numbers were generated by a Zoltar machine in Las Vegas 30 years ago. You’re probably familiar with these machines that have sat in arcades all over the country for decades.
Credit: Kirk Fisher
The lucky lottery winner used the same set of numbers for nearly three decades.
And Zoltar finally paid off!
With his winnings, the Michigan man plans to pay off his house and car, take a vacation, and save for retirement. All the things you might have thought about when daydreaming about winning the lottery.
Stories like that capture our imagination because they speak to something universal: the belief that life can change in an instant.
But while many people spend their lives, or at least 30 years of it, hoping for a lucky break, a small group of investors quietly builds wealth differently.
Putting Yourself Ahead of Winners
Some investors position themselves ahead of major shifts before those shifts become obvious to everyone else.
That’s how fortunes were made in:
- the early internet
- smartphones
- digital payments
- Tesla
- and already – and increasingly – AI
It may be happening again right now – in the financial system itself.
One investor who believes we may be approaching that kind of moment is our technology expert, Luke Lango, editor of . Luke has spent much of his career studying disruptive innovations before they go mainstream.
Long before AI became a household obsession, Luke was urging investors to pay attention to companies like Nvidia and Palantir.
Years before that, he identified AMD as a major opportunity before the stock soared thousands of percent.
His specialty has long been recognizing the repeating pattern that can help build wealth.
A new technology emerges, and many people dismiss it early…
Then suddenly, the world changes around it.
A good example is Luke’s recommendation of Seagate Technology Holdings (STX). Here is Luke’s description of STX from when he recommended it in August 2024:
Seagate is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of data storage solutions.
The widespread rollout of AI applications over the next few years will require a significant buildout of high-performance data storage solutions, meaning we are likely sitting on the cusp of a massive boom in the data storage market.
For the first six months after that pick, the stock mostly moved sideways.
But since then, the need for greater data storage solutions has only become more desperate. And STX’s early sideways chop?
As you can see below, it turned into the “massive boom” that Luke predicted.
Since Luke’s initial recommendation, the stock is now up around 800%.
Despite this return, the numbers suggest there are more gains ahead. Here is Luke’s summary from STX’s recent quarterly earnings report in late April:
Monster quarter from Seagate Technology (STX) strongly suggests that this AI memory boom cycle has legs and therefore that STX stock has lots more upside left.
Big Q3 beat+raise report. Revs +44%. Datacenter revs +55%. Gross margins +11 points. Operating margins +14 points. EPS +116%. Q4 guide calls for 40%+ revenue growth and 90%+ EPS growth next quarter.
AI is driving a memory demand boom. And it is showing no signs of slowing down. Management said they have exabyte-scale supply agreements with nearly all major cloud and hyperscale customers, nearline capacity is almost fully allocated through calendar 2027, and discussions are starting for 2028. Those are not signals of a one-quarter AI sugar high, but rather, a durable AI memory demand boom.
Finding the Next Winners
According to Luke, the next major shift may not center on AI, electric vehicles, or even space technology.
It may center on something far bigger, and more significant for every person, regardless of whether they have ever invested a dollar:
The system that moves money itself.
For decades, the financial system changed little.
We moved from cash to credit cards, and we replaced bank branches with mobile apps…
But the underlying system stayed largely the same.
- Banks held your money.
- Brokerages handled your investments.
- Payment companies moved money between them.
Now, according to Luke, that entire structure may be on the verge of a massive transformation.
And one of the people pushing hardest to reshape it is one of the greatest technology and financial minds of our era, Elon Musk.
People think of Musk as the man behind Tesla, SpaceX, or AI.
But Luke believes Musk’s most ambitious project yet may involve something even bigger:
Rebuilding the way money moves through the economy itself.
It’s a vision Musk has reportedly pursued for decades — one that could eventually combine payments, banking, investing, and digital commerce into a single financial ecosystem.
And if Luke is right, the companies positioned at the center of that shift could see enormous gains as the trend accelerates.
explaining:
- why he believes the financial system is entering a historic turning point,
- how Elon Musk fits into the story,
- and which stocks he believes could benefit most if this transformation unfolds the way he expects.
Because while some people spend decades waiting for the right lottery numbers…
Others build wealth by recognizing where the world is heading before everyone else catches on.
Enjoy your weekend,
Luis Hernandez
Editor in Chief, InvestorPlace
