Ah… the satisfaction, the bragging rights, the monthly portfolio statements: Come on down, dear investor, collect your trophy – you’re a star. Bet on a fancy smart phone named for a fruit? A luxuriant forest operator in China? When you said infrastructure was sexy, others scoffed. You said ‘potash,’ they said ‘pshaw.’ Enjoy the last laugh, write David Parkinson and John Heinzl.
Encana (+ 459%)
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For a company that didn’t even exist when the decade began, EnCana ECA-T did pretty well for itself. Formed by the 2002 merger of Alberta Energy Co. Ltd. and PanCanadian Energy Corp., EnCana became Canada’s biggest energy company just in time for the greatest bull run ever seen for oil and gas prices. Now, it’s come full circle – last month it split in two again, spinning off its attractive oil sands assets as Cenovus Energy Inc. while continuing the EnCana name as North America’s biggest natural gas producer. Together or apart, EnCana’s assets have made investors a lot of money. D.P. |
Potash Corp. of Sask. (+895%)
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Unless you’re a farmer, or a Saskatchewan premier, you probably had barely even heard of potash 10 years ago. (It’s what? A fertilizer you mine? What is this, a story line from Fraggle Rock?) But toss together global population growth, a few years of bad crops and a couple of booming, billion-person emerging economies, and suddenly everyone needs more fertilizers to squeeze more yield out of their crops. Potash prices went through the roof. And guess who produces more potash than anyone else in the world? For a while, it was like Potash Corp. POT-T owned a money-printing machine. D.P. |
Gold (+281%)
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Lifted from the pages of The Insatiable Investor Cookbook, here’s the recipe for the perfect bull market in gold GC-FT: -Take one massive crisis in the global banking system; -Add a sinking U.S. dollar; -Mix in obscene amounts of debt-financed government stimulus that gets people worrying about inflation in the midst of a recession; -Sprinkle with widespread fear, mistrust and paranoia. Heat for a year or so. When it pops out of the oven, you have gold pushing $1,100 (U.S.) an ounce and ads on late-night TV offering cash for your unwanted fillings. D.P. |
Oil (+210%)
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Okay, let’s see a show of hands. How many of you had ever heard the phrase “peak oil” 10 years ago? No? How about “speculative commodity hedge funds”? Whether you blame irreversibly dwindling supplies, derivatives smoke-and-mirrors or mass public hysteria, the fact remains that oil CL-FT went from afterthought to a $150-a-barrel monster in the course of the decade, redefining not only the energy marketplace but the entire global economy along the way. D.P. |
SNC-Lavalin (+1,379%)
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Infrastructure was a good place to be in the 2000s. Want to cash in on the rapid modernization, urbanization and industrialization of massive emerging economies in China, India and elsewhere? They need roads, bridges, highways, dams – in other words, buy an infrastructure company (like SNC-Lavalin SNC-T). The global economy teeters on recession, forcing developed-world governments to throw trillions of dollars at the problem, money just begging for big job-producing projects on which to spend it all? Hey, that would be roads, bridges, highways – again, buy infrastructure. Can’t lose for winnin’. D.P. |
Apple (+720%)
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Sure, they break constantly. And prolonged use can damage your hearing. And you’ll never listen to all the 40,000 songs on the hard drive, most of which suck anyway. Other than that, iPods are terrific fun – especially if you’re an Apple AAPL-Q shareholder. Launched in October, 2001, the iPod single-handedly revolutionized the music industry, building on Apple’s success with its iMac and MacBook computers and sending the stock up the charts faster than a Lady Gaga single. J.H. |
