A few weeks ago, I talked about how my Top 10 Stocks readers and I were able to book a 60% gain from one of the most innovative companies in America.

I told you about how Alcoa (NYSE: AA) recently underwent an impressive transformation from being a boring aluminum giant to becoming a high-tech materials powerhouse.

But I also mentioned that Alcoa wasn’t alone among American companies when it comes to ground-breaking innovation.

That’s why today, I want to tell you about a company that I think is the single most innovative company in America. If you buy it today, there’s a strong chance it could lead to the same kinds of returns as we made on Alcoa.

#-ad_banner-#But before I tell you about this company, let me first back up and explain what’s happening.

In short, I believe a subtle but powerful shift is underway in American industry.

While places like China and Latin America have huge advantages over U.S. firms when it comes to lower production costs and cheap labor, savvy U.S. firms are using ingenuity and expertise as their primary competitive advantage in the global economy.

And this powerful, developing trend could deliver incredible gains to investors who pick the right firms.

I like to call these firms “American Innovators.”

Think about it… If you turn on CNBC or read the Wall Street Journal, you may see headlines that talk about “the Apple of China” or the “Google of Russia.”

While these may in fact be great investments, there’s a reason why they’re considered the foreign version of an American idea.

That’s because the United States has long had a dominant hold on innovation. According to a recent study by Thomson Reuters, 45 of the 100 most innovative companies on the planet are based in the United States. The next most innovative nation was Japan, with 28 firms making the list. China failed to produce even one innovator in the study.

But as my readers and I have witnessed firsthand in the case of Alcoa, it’s not just high-tech firms like Apple and Google that have a lock on innovation. In fact, the company I want to talk about today traces its roots as far back as 1848.

That year, a motley crew of farmers, merchants and bankers met in a non-descript corner on Water Street in Chicago to solve a big problem plaguing the nation — volatile wheat prices.

Shortages during winter months caused havoc for consumers who faced skyrocketing wheat prices. Oversupply during harvest season forced farmers to burn their wheat for fuel — rather than suffer losses from shipping it to a market in the big city.

This group had no idea that their solution would lead to the some of the world’s most sophisticated financial products — much less that the company with its hands on all of these products would become one of the most compelling investment opportunities in the market today.

But that’s what happened.

The solution these men came up with was the futures contract — and the Chicago Board of Trade (or CBOT) would be the gatekeeper.

The group moved on quickly from its focus on wheat and grew into a number of new arenas, sparking a pattern of innovation that would last a century with things like cattle futures, precious metals futures and mortgage interest rate futures.

Today, that legacy of innovation continues with CME Group (Nasdaq: CME), which resulted from the merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with CBOT in 2007.

And it’s exactly this spirit of invention and reinvention that’s creating the big opportunities for CME.

You see, I think CME Group is now poised to do it all again — reinvent itself another time over. And today the change involves a space that’s literally larger than the gross domestic product of the entire planet…

The latest innovation for CME is coming from swaps, a type of “derivative” financial product that’s been in the news lately.

At the end of last year there were $545 trillion of swaps sitting on the global financial landscape.

And that has global regulators worried. Up until recently there was little oversight of this massive market.

Most swaps trading has historically been done in the over-the-counter market, meaning that buyers and sellers of these instruments negotiated directly with one another — leaving little information available to outside parties (including regulators) on prices and volumes for these trades.

But lawmakers have set out to change that. Last year, rules came into effect requiring the majority of swaps to now be traded through central clearing houses. This will provide a third-party exchange that verifies buying and selling — and keeps stats on all the action.

That’s where CME comes in. It’s exactly the kind of service CME has been providing for decades in the futures market.

And the company has jumped to apply its expertise to the now-transparent swaps market. CME was one of the first clearing houses to receive registration for handling swaps — and in 2013 the firm already cleared $15.3 trillion in swaps trades.

Most of that trading came at the end of the year — when deadlines for new swaps trading rules were enforced. This means that this new revenue stream was only up and running for a few months of 2013.

CME’s new swaps business could significantly add to revenues and profits for 2014 — the first full year where the new swaps rules will be in place.

In fact, you can already see it happening. In the first quarter of 2014, the average daily contract volumes handled by CME jumped 11%. The company’s revenues from clearing these contracts rose 10%, to over $650 million.

I’m looking for 2014 to be yet another transformative year for this serial innovator. And I believe the big profits coming from the firm’s swaps operations are going to take a lot of investors by surprise.

There are a lot of other reasons to like CME Group.

Perhaps one of the most important for today’s market is the firm’s reliable and resilient income stream from being a middleman of financial markets.

As you can see in the chart below, CME’s revenues and profits didn’t skip a beat during the financial crisis.

Another of the most intriguing aspects of CME is its valuation, which is currently 50% lower than what it was trading for in 2007. What happened? Nothing, in terms of CME’s operations. As I mentioned, the firm’s revenues and profits have been robust and rising.

Rather, I believe today’s low valuations have everything to do with perceptions of the financial industry.

Even if CME were to return to a price-to-earnings (P/E) valuation in line with what the company enjoyed in 2007, it could mean gains of 66% from today’s $76 share price. And that’s not even counting the 2.6% dividend yield that the stock pays right now.

Opportunities like this don’t come along very often in the stock market. We saw the gains that can be realized by owning an American Innovator with the Alcoa trade I mentioned earlier. And if CME’s profits rise the way I’m expecting on the company’s swaps business, the upside could be even greater.

Note: Whether it’s market makers like CME Group, 125-year-old revolutionary stalwarts like Alcoa, or iconic tech leaders like Intel, American Innovators are solid companies that you could buy and potentially own for years or even decades. These companies dig a wide moat around their business, continuously innovate, and then shower shareholders for years with dividends and buybacks. With this in mind, my research staff and I have identified a list of 10 “Forever Stocks” that we believe are the absolute best to own right now and for years to come. To learn how to get the full list of Forever stocks, including their names and ticker symbols, watch this presentation.