If your career was a stock-picking game - what will you invest in?

Many years back, in 2005, here is how I justified my choice to study law to my father:

 Engineering is an overheated stock. It may be great, but the popular demand for it means it is overheated and overhyped. Return on investment is likely to be bad. Law, on the other hand, is not a very popular career option right now and there is little competition while it has a great future ahead. By stock market analogy, it is a hidden gem.

Turns out I was right. By the time I was graduating from law school, my friends were finding it hard to get engineering jobs that paid half as well as my law firm job. And the law has become an increasingly popular career choice in India while this country saw mass closure of engineering and MBA colleges a few years back.

So being good at stock picking is really useful for your career. Even if you don’t pick actual stocks, using those analogies work quite well.

Here is another analogy: just because the economy is down, do not think that your career has to suffer. The economy is down, but the stock market is on the 7th heaven!

 While almost every economy around the world is down in the dumps, with potentially much worse times ahead of us, and hopes of a quick recovery looking totally bleak, stock markets are reaching record highs every other day!

 For instance, Apple reached a market cap of 2 trillion, the first company ever to do so.

 The US stock market has reached an all-time high buoyed by all the government stimulus money, perhaps!

 In India, we are seeing an incredible bull market that is not making any sense even to the RBI governor who plainly said that the share market is clearly disconnected from the economic realities of the day.

 Still, people are making real money in the stock exchanges these days.

I personally am staying out of this speculative market though, not a great time to invest right now.

Still, I want you to think about this.

What would be the stocks you would put your money behind if you had some spare money to invest right now?

Automation and robotics stocks? WFH and social distancing forced companies to heavily invest in automation - from factories to offices, everyone is trying to replace human workers with automated software or hardware if possible.

Would you buy shares of global pharma companies, which might be looking at a windfall from sales of medicines and vaccines?

How about all the large global SaaS companies about to do their IPOs? SaaS has been a huge winner during the pandemic.

EdTech, video conferencing software, online gaming, and digital media have multiplied in a few months. Great investment opportunities too, perhaps.

Even companies that sell sanitization products and cleaning agents are seeing massive growth in demand. That sounds like a no brainer anyway.

Big hospital chains are doing pretty well too!

So what are your picks?

No problem if you are not going to invest in stocks. Think of your career in terms of investment too, that is always a good idea.

 Are you missing out on a huge opportunity right now by not upskilling yourself for these world-changing trends that could make or break your career?

 Can you focus your career on these bright spots during a terrible economy that may stay cold for a while? What skills and knowledge will help you to serve industries which are booming rather than shrinking? Are you prepared for what is ahead?