Stock Market News: Into the Future

Legal Advice will be done by computers with 100% accuracy instead of the human 70% accuracy. It’s already happening in the US with a company called IBM Watson. Don’t bother studying law. It will be for specialists only. Cancer will be diagnosed 4x more accurately by a nurse thanks to technology. At the moment the hospitals are producing more scanned images than the humans can diagnose and the demand will only ever rise. Medical diagnosis will be automatic, a piece of paper will pop out of the CT Scan or the MRI. You won’t have to wait for some overworked doctor who pays $100,000 a year for insurance so you don't sue him to type you a letter with his personal opinion about your condition. No private cars. You won’t want a car. You will order a driverless  (Google, Amazon, Tesla, Apple) car on your phone. It will turn up. You will be able to work in it on the way to work. They will not be cars they'll be "Blobs" and you will be able to order an office blob, a bar blob, a party blob, an exercise blob, a make-up blob, a Pilates blob...and do whatever it is you want to do on your way there. You will not have to park it. Owners of their own cars, like smokers, will be disadvantaged by regulation. Cars will cease to be status symbols, they will be a commodity. The result is that there will be a lot less cars, no need for parking, no need for every house to have a garage. It will free up your block for a bigger house and level huge City blocks used for car parking. Your kids will not need to learn to drive. Traditional car companies will go bust. One of the major driverless car companies will have bought Uber for their software and database – it will not go out of business as Hamish Douglass suggests…it will be snapped up first. People will live further from the City because they can work whilst they commute…so can be in a car longer. It will diminish the value of inner City and increase the value of the suburbs - that’s if anyone bothers to go to a ‘workplace’ any more. No car insurance – they won’t crash. No Paramedics attending to road victims, no death toll advertising...it will be zero (ish), no points on your licence, no drink driving (you can drink anywhere any time - buy beverage companies) , no traffic cops, no RBT (!)  All the cars will all be electric. They will all be silent (no engine noise), no need for all that double glazing in the City or all those kilometres of Freeway sound barriers next to Patterson Lakes. And you’ll be able to come home late at night and not wake anyone up. No need for an office - With the development of quick, unglitchy communication (like Skype on a very fast network) you will not need a physical presence at work, just walk into your ‘communication centre’ at home and get to work. Free electricity - Electricity will fuel everything (sell oil stocks). The battery and solar technology will develop to a point where electricity is in abundance, there will be too much of it. The national grid is already threatened by home solar, they are discouraging you to put it back into the grid. They will get washed away by the technology in the home. This will have other consequences…water. Desalination plants are expensive because they chew up electricity. They will become common place. Abundant water where there was drought. As much clean water as you like, for almost no cost. Technology takes over some functions from doctors - There will be great leaps in Medical software. Breathe into your phone, do a retina scan and do a blood test (we need a new word for phone) and the phone will do a hundred biomedical analyses and diagnose you. No more visits to the GP because you have a cold. Phone software will also be able to detect lying, your mood, and anyone that you meet or walks past you will immediately pop up on your ‘phone’ for you to see who they are with all their personal details determined from their facial recognition, including their credit rating, criminal record, medical history and anything else where they have come in contact with the internet. 3D printers - They used to cost $18,000, now $400. There will be a lot of things manufactured by 3D printers. Stop thinking of it as a ‘printer’, it is a miniature manufacturing device with infinite flexibility in what it can make. And you will have one in the home making ‘stuff’ for you...bits of the space station if you want. 10% of everything produced will be made by 3D printing within 10 years. Growing meat off the hoof - Petri dish meat manufacture will replace real animals…no more beef cattle. Education – You can already educate a child on the internet with interactive software and videos. Schools and universities will not teach academics. That will be done at home. They will take on more social responsibilities like sport and human skills not academic skills. And languages won’t stand in the way with software that will listen and instantly repeat into your headset in another language. Some professions will disappear - 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years including financial planners, stock analysts, stock brokers, real estate agents, lawyers, GPs, taxi drivers, office cleaners, teachers, farm labourers, not to mention…being a cow. I think the painters and landscape gardeners are safe. Any other enlightened ideas for stocks of the future feel free to email gratefully received.