With the tax deadline less than two weeks away, thinking about ways to reduce your tax liability and/or eliminate your future taxes by opening or contributing to an Individual Retirement Account, or IRA, should still be at the forefront of all investors’ minds.
Yesterday, I examined five great ideas for the conservative investor looking to contribute to their 2012 IRA. Today I’m going to mix things up and turn my attention to younger investors who are concerned less about capital preservation and dividends, and are more likely to seek out big growth potential and take on more risk. Here are five smart stock ideas to get younger investors started in building their perfect IRA.
1. Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ:CELG) : Biotechnology company Celgene isn’t going to offer investors a dividend, but it’ll make up for it in a number of ways.
To start with, Celgene’s management announced plans at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in January to double its sales and triple its total profit by 2017 with nothing but organic growth! Sales of the company’s multiple myeloma drug Revlimid remain strong, and its other cancer drug, Abraxane, gained FDA approval to treat non-small-cell lung cancer in October and has shown demonstrable efficacy in treating pancreatic cancer when combined with Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE:LLY)’s Gemzar.
It’s also all about Celgene’s pipeline. Pomalyst, the company’s newest multiple myeloma drug, was approved in February as an advanced-stage treatment and could fetch in excess of $1.1 billion in revenue by 2017 according to Piper Jaffray. Psoriasis drug apremilast is another pipeline contender worth watching, with the potential for $1.1 billion to $1.75 billion in peak sales if approved by the FDA, according to the company. Celgene is the type of biotech that could morph into what we now refer to as “big pharma” over the next decade.
2. QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) : Market value is just a number; despite being valued at $113 billion, there’s absolutely no reason that QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) can’t double in size over the next decade.
QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) should be an attractive investment to all young investors, as it’s the only true vertically integrated mobile components supplier. The company’s CDMA wireless technology is found in a myriad of electronic devices from companies ranging from Apple to Nokia. It also introduced the RF360 in February, a chip able to process RF bands on the front end that could make RF chips obsolete in future 4G LTE models. Between its Gobi LTE modems and its dominant Snapdragon processors, there’s not a more dominant company in wireless technology.
The other half of the argument for why QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) is a no-brainer buy is the sheer number of opportunities that exist in the emerging markets for QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) to make its mark. Russia and its highly saturated market is yet to move beyond 3G capabilities, while Latin and South America are rapidly trying to upgrade their networks. QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM)’s dominance in wireless technologies is expected to span decades, not just this decade, and it could make for a smart long-term IRA investment.
3. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) : No, you don’t need your glasses; that really does say Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)! Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) might be referred to as a bloated blimp by some analysts — and even a few of my fellow Fools — for its lack of bottom-line profits, but what I see in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is a trifecta of growth coming from its marketplace, its cloud systems, and its streaming content.
In terms of marketplace, I give Amazon a one-up over eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) because of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s first-in-class focus on mobile access and its Kindle Fire, which gives the company a differentiable factor that eBay simply doesn’t have.
With regard to cloud computing, Amazon’s EC2 virtual data center and S3 storage farm are the models by which other cloud providers develop their own clouds. In streaming, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is giving Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) a run for its money by expanding overseas and utilizing its enormous cash balance to strike advantageous content deals.
