Skate to Where the Puck Is Going

Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky once said: “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” Jeff Brown uses this principle as the foundation of his technology investing approach at Brownstone Research. The idea is simple but powerful: if you want to profit from technology trends, you need to identify where technology is heading before it gets there, not chase trends that have already played out.

In the MAGI presentation, Brown applies this philosophy to artificial intelligence. He argues that most investors are looking at where AI has been (companies like Nvidia that have already had massive runs) rather than where it is going (the next phase of AI that involves robotics, AGI, and physical-world applications). As we explain in our full review of the MAGI presentation, Brown calls this next phase “the final and most explosive phase of this AI boom.”

The Gretzky Approach Applied to Tech Investing

Brown’s track record demonstrates the Gretzky principle in action. He did not pick Nvidia after it was already the most valuable company in the world. He picked it in early 2016, before shares jumped as high as 36,000 percent. He did not recommend Tesla after it was already the most valuable automaker. He recommended it in 2018, when JPMorgan was telling clients to dump it, because he saw that Tesla was “an AI company” before anyone else on Wall Street did.

He predicted SpaceX’s IPO, Starlink’s commercialization, and that Grok would beat ChatGPT. All of those calls required looking ahead to where technology was heading, not where it had been. On March 17, 2020, during peak pandemic panic, he told his readers it was “one of the best opportunities to make investments over the course of the next decade.” The S&P 500 is up over 200 percent since.

The hockey analogy is apt because it captures something essential about technology investing. By the time a trend is obvious, the big gains are gone. Brown’s approach is to identify the trend while it is still forming, which is harder and riskier but also where the largest returns are found.

For more on Brown’s background, see our profile of Jeff Brown.

Where Brown Says the Puck Is Going Now

In the MAGI presentation, Brown identifies where he believes AI is heading next. He calls it MAGI, Manifested AGI, artificial general intelligence that “escapes the digital realm and manifests itself in the physical world through robotics and autonomous systems.”

The specific elements of this thesis include:

  • Tesla’s Optimus robot with its patented 25-motor hand that can “delicately crack an egg, thread a needle, or swing a sledgehammer.” Brown calls this the missing piece that makes humanoid robots genuinely useful. For more, see our article on the Optimus robot.
  • The Terafab, planned as the world’s largest AI chip fabrication plant, designed to produce up to 200 billion chips per year, roughly 10 times what Taiwan Semiconductor currently makes
  • Grok 5, described as “at least three times more powerful than the latest version of ChatGPT,” which Brown believes will be “the very first artificial general intelligence or AGI”
  • SpaceX’s satellite-powered AI, using free solar energy from space

Brown frames the scale of where this is heading: “Elon is predicting growth of more than 7 million percent for this new industry. That’s enough to turn a single $100 bill into more than $7 million.” He contextualizes this: “Even if Elon is only 10 percent right, that would still be enough to grow $100 into more than $700,000.”

The Infrastructure Build Behind the Trend

To support his thesis about where AI is heading, Brown cites specific infrastructure spending numbers. Big tech invested about $400 billion in AI infrastructure last year, $725 billion this year, and nearly $850 billion planned for next year. He calls this “the largest capital-expenditure wave in history,” bigger than the Apollo Moon program, the Manhattan Project, and the U.S. Interstate Highway System combined.

This matters because infrastructure spending is a leading indicator. When the largest companies in the world are spending nearly a trillion dollars annually on AI infrastructure, they are positioning for a future that has not yet arrived. Brown’s point is that individual investors can position alongside them.

The free ticker Brown reveals, AMD, is a direct beneficiary of this infrastructure build. AMD’s Instinct MI300 and MI350 series GPUs are “winning huge deals with OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and others because they deliver strong performance for a lot less money.” Earnings are expected to jump 76 percent this year. For more, see our article on AMD stock.

The Election Cycle Timing

Marc Chaikin adds a timing component to Brown’s “where the puck is going” thesis. Chaikin’s election cycle pattern, which he says has never failed since 1950, identifies when to buy. Buying during midterm election year corrections has produced gains 12 months later in 100 percent of cases, with average gains of nearly 40 percent for the entire market.

The last time this pattern aligned with a technology revolution was 1998, the midterm year during the dot-com acceleration. During that window, stocks like Qualcomm turned $10,000 into $366,000 in 14 months, and Harmonic turned $10,000 into $360,000 in 18 months. Brown and Chaikin argue the current moment is a repeat of 1998, but with more transformative technology and more capital.

Chaikin says: “This is not a prediction. This is a market cycle that IS happening this year, guaranteed.” The “guaranteed” language is strong, and the 100 percent track record should be understood as a historical pattern. Past performance does not guarantee future results. But the combination of Brown’s forward-looking technology thesis and Chaikin’s historical market timing data provides a framework for understanding both what to buy and when.

The Gretzky Lesson for Investors

The core lesson from Brown’s hockey analogy is that technology investing rewards those who can see around corners. Brown’s career demonstrates this: he was inside the semiconductor industry at Qualcomm, NXP, and Juniper Networks before he became a newsletter presenter. He advised the Department of Commerce, NIST, and the Defense Intelligence Agency on technology matters. His track record of calling major technology shifts before they happen is specific and verifiable.

The MAGI thesis is another example of looking ahead. Most investors are focused on AI as a software phenomenon. Brown is looking at AI as a physical phenomenon, moving from screens into robots, factories, and the physical world. Whether or not the specific projections (7 million percent growth, $1 quadrillion wealth wave) materialize as described, the underlying direction of AI moving into physical-world applications is real and worth understanding.

For investors who want to apply the Gretzky principle, the MAGI presentation provides a framework for identifying where technology is heading and which companies are positioned to benefit. The combination of Brown’s technology vision and Chaikin’s quantitative timing is genuinely more useful than either alone.

Ready to learn more? Click here to access Jeff Brown and Marc Chaikin’s full research.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.