It’s hard to underestimate the importance of understanding business and financial trends for successful investing. After all, it’s hard to be an effective investor if all you watch are the stocks in your portfolio.

This is why analysts, market watchers and researchers always try to understand industry trends and follow a great number of stocks comprising sectors of interest.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been telling readers about one trend that’s definitely worth watching — namely, the developments in the burgeoning field of “personalized medicine.”

Why is it so important? Here’s what I said in that article:

“…we find ourselves on the cusp of another generational shift in medicine — one that could not only lead to longer, healthier lives for a lot of us… but one that stands to make a fortune for investors with the foresight to get in on the early stages.”

Make no mistake, if there is one area you want to pay attention to over the coming months and years, this is it…

We’ve already nabbed some quick gains this space over at Fast-Track Millionaire — but that’s just the beginning. In fact, my bold prediction is that I think this will be the most lucrative opportunity of my entire career.

As you can understand, I have to reserve my top picks in this space for Fast-Track Millionaire readers. But today, I want to do something special…

I’m going to give you a watch list of mid-sized and large biotechs with stakes in the burgeoning field of genetic therapies, as well as those whose business is based on the study of the human genome.

These are just two of the fields within “personalized medicine” that you’re going to be hearing about a lot more in the future.

Your Personalized Medicine Watch List
Today’s watch list focuses on companies with market capitalizations of $2 billion or more. Moreover, all the companies on this list already have at least some revenue-generating products or other sources of income, and these revenues have been growing at fast speeds over the past two years.

I use revenue growth here for two reasons. First, many of the companies in the biotech sector whose efforts are concentrated on gene therapies are still losing money, so the metric of revenue seems more appropriate than the many profit-based metrics (such as net income or earnings per share). Second, all the companies on today’s list have been growing their revenues at a brisk pace. This is an appropriate — and telling — measure to assess the health of their businesses and the promise of their prospective pipelines.

Let’s take a look…

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At least two of the companies on this list should look familiar to my Fast-Track Millionaire readers. One, whose name I will withhold out of fairness to my premium subscribers, has an approach to treating cancer that has resulted in one approved product already on the market. It’s been in our portfolio since October 2018 and remains a “Strong Buy” at this time.

#-ad_banner-#Another was just added to the portfolio this week.

Readers may also be familiar with Sarepta (Nasdaq: SRPT), a gene-therapy company whose Duchenne muscular dystrophy therapy Exondys 51 has been helping many boys deal with this deadly disease. This stock, which has already rallied more than 200% since I first recommended it, carries even more long-term promise, as SRPT continues to leverage its gene-therapy expertise to develop additional treatment and therapies.

Large-cap biotech Vertex (Nasdaq: VRTX) is a partner of the gene-editing pioneer CRISPR Therapeutics (Nasdaq: CRSP). Not only are these two companies partners in co-developing and co-commercializing CTX001 (an investigational gene-editing treatment using the CRISPR/Cas9 technology), but Vertex is a large investor in CRSP, owning about 10% of that smaller company.

I also like Amicus Therapeutics (Nasdaq: FOLD), the smallest company on the watch list. This company collaborates with the University of Pennsylvania and its Orphan Disease Center on so-called adeno-associated virus vector gene therapies. Its efforts are aimed at four genetic disorders, including Pompe disease (a rare but often fatal disease impacting heart and skeletal muscles) and Fabry disease, which can also be fatal.

After acquiring smaller peer Celenex and its 10 gene therapies last September for $100 million, including two that are already in clinical trials, FOLD has become a much more important force in the industry. Celenex was a biotech founded by movie producer Gordon Gray and his wife Kristen to research gene therapies addressing a rare but fatal disease of the central nervous system called Batten disease — for which there is still no treatment today.

This acquisition, together with the ongoing collaboration with scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, make FOLD an interesting stock to watch.

Not to be ignored, Swiss giant Roche Holdings AG (OTC: RHHBY), already a force in gene-based research, has increased its industry presence with its acquisition of Spark (Nasdaq: ONCE).

It’s slower growing than the rest of the companies on this list, but it’s also highly profitable. After acquiring Genentech, a company widely considered the founder of the biotech industry, in 2009 for nearly $47 billion, Roche has become a de-facto member of the biotech elite. And its $4 billion acquisition of ONCE (which was announced on February 26) means that this giant takes gene therapies very seriously.

And so should we.

Keep in mind, this list is just to get you started. They’re not official “buy” recommendations. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t a few triple-digit winners here — at least.

In the meantime, over at Fast-Track Millionaire, my research staff and I will continue to watch gene-therapy stocks, large and small, and report to subscribers on the fastest-growing and best-valued deals in the space. As I mentioned earlier, we already own a couple names — but this trend is going to be so huge that we’ll want to have broad exposure.

P.S. Every year, 600,000 people die of cancer in America. 1.2 million have a heart attack. 30 million are walking around with diabetes. But with personalized medicine, that’s all about to change…

It’s coming around the corner — and faster than you know. Genetic editing is bringing us to the doorstep of a colossal jump in our lifespans. Over the next decade, survival rates will soar for dozens of diseases.

There are a few companies working in this area that stand to deliver massive returns for investors. But the most promising of all may be a company with first-mover advantage… To learn more, go here now.