Eventually the crisis will subside and the economy will begin to recover. While we are in crisis, we tend to examine what is going on at the moment on a real-times basis; where are interest rates, what are the spreads on credit default swaps, how much TARP money to the banks need. Eventually, after the panic, we have to step back and look at the broader picture and long term trends. An understanding those trends that will lead us to where the investment opportunities are as we enter the next bull market. When seeking a trend line, we find it useful to try to go as far back in time as possible. The economy evolves through a continuum, and evolution occurs slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, over five, or ten, yearsThis chart shows the percentage of the economy devoted to agriculture, industry, services, and information technologies, since the beginning of the industrial revolution. 
Citation: Huitt, W. (1999). Success in the information age: A paradigm shift. Revision of paper developed for a workshop presentation at the Georgia Independent School Association, Atlanta, Georgia, November 6, 1995. Retrieved 9 February 2009, from
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/context/infoage.html
Agriculture and industry represented 77% of the economy in 1870, and today they represent 23% of GDP. The information and service sectors reached that same 77% of GDP about 20 years ago. These long term trends will continue. There is another important trend underlying these statistics. The agrarian economy began 6000 years ago, and it represented virtually all domestic commerce until the 19Th Century. Our farming techniques, at that time, became developed sufficiently, so we could begin to commercially extract metals and coal from the ground. These techniques formed the basis of the industrial revolution and the invention of machines. Over the next 100 years, we learned to make machines ever smaller, faster, and cheaper, fueling the manufacturing age of the 2oth Century. We eventually achieved miniaturization of machines (transistors, semiconductors, microchips) which allowed for the advent of the Information Age. That process has continued, and it has now progressed down to the atomic level. And so we are about to usher in what we will come to understand is the Molecular Age. Investors who partcipated in the advent of the Industrial Revolution created enormous wealth -- and progress. The same is true of the founders of the manufactruing companies of the 20th Century. And the greatest wealth boom ever occurred in the creation of the Information Age. We will now reach new heights of wealth creation in the dawn of the Molecular Age
In healthcare, we are already seeing the sucessful early entrants. Consider Myriad Genetics (MYGN), a molecular diagnostics company which creates and commercializes gene based testing to identify the risk of major diseases. Myriad is seeing its sales and earnings grow at a pace of 70% per year and has seen its stock more than double in the past 12 months. The paradigm shift taking place in medicine is moving treatment away from treating symptoms toward seeking to prevent, or cure, the underlying disease. This requires diagnosing a condition at the molecular level and treating it genetically.
We currently spend 17% of GDP on healthcare and 78 million baby boomershave reached middle age. We will be at 20% of GDP in 5 years and will be spending well over $3 trillion per year. The only hope for getting healthcare under control is to intervene in disease before the patient is sick. Many companies arte developing these molecular tools. Many are publicly traded but largely unknown. This blog will be reviewing these technologies and the opportunity they represent
