Anyone who wants to claim that “retail is dead” should take a look inside an Ulta Beauty (ULTA) store. It looks like Disney World for anyone interested in makeup and beauty products. This “makeup superstore” is a key part of any shopping trip for millions of American women. While many brick-and-mortar retailers have struggled since 2009, Ulta is one of the world’s top performing stocks, up 1,370% since the end of 2009. Those are the kind of returns we’re looking for in my new Microcap Millionaire Project – and, back in the day, Ulta was itself a great small-cap play. So it makes a great case study for us now.

In yesterday’s MoneyWire, we talked about how you need to hunt elephants and not mice when picking microcap stocks. Well, there’s a more technical term for that, too. It’s considering the company’s total addressable market, or TAM for short. Simply by doing that, you can find stocks that turn the average investor into a millionaire. The TAM is basically the potential size of a specific sector or trend in dollars. The larger the TAM, the larger a company’s upside potential. For example, a restaurant that offers everything from burgers to pizza to vegetarian food has a much larger TAM than a restaurant that offers only plant-based Ethiopian food.

Microcap stocks – the small companies just at the beginning of their growth cycle – are where you make the big money. The really big money. Venture capitalists know it. You and I know it. And I’ve made it pretty clear over the last couple of days here in MoneyWire. Now let’s talk about how to pick the right microcap stocks for your portfolio. Start by asking yourself: Am I hunting elephants or mice? That sounds like something out of a children’s book. But what I’m saying is… do you want to invest in a company that’s going after something big, something in the middle, or a little niche? Here’s an example of where you can go wrong if you invest in mice… a tiny niche.

Investing in small companies – what are often referred to as microcaps – is the best way to make big money in the current and future bull markets. If you’re ready to take your portfolio to the next level, then let’s look at the big picture. Understanding the past also helps us understand the powerful opportunity ahead of us in smaller companies set to grow large over the next decade. After a long stretch of basically going nowhere, the S&P 500 rallied 227% from December 31, 1979 through the end of 1989. There were huge winners during the 1980s. The best performers were consumer stocks.

What would you do with an extra million dollars in cash? Retire tomorrow? Buy a new house? Buy a Ferrari? Put it in the bank and massively increase your financial freedom? Sure, it’s nice to daydream about having an extra million dollars in the bank. But I’m asking you this question because it’s a real-life situation the financial backers of early stage companies – venture capitalists, or “VCs” – often find themselves in. When it comes to extreme wealth creation, few endeavors can compare to being an owner of a small company that grows large. An early investor in Microsoft (MSFT) could have made over 9,000% during the 1990s. That type of gain turns every $5,000 invested into $450,000.

What can I say? I love technology. Most of my investments are based on the future of technology. But man, sometimes I hate technology. It’s been a crazy busy week here at the InvestorPlace office (I can’t wait to share some big news with you next week), and to make it even crazier, we had some technical difficulties filming this week’s MoneyLine podcast. There’s no video this week, but that’s probably okay – I get pretty worked up about one topic I discuss, so you can’t see the veins popping out of my neck. Despite the difficulties, we still have another big show for you. You can head over the MoneyWire website now to check it out.

Did you know there’s a deadline on economic expansion – and when it hits, we’ll automatically fall into recession? Well, me neither. Because it isn’t true. But you’d never know that from watching the folks they put on TV these days. Every year that passes, the calls just get louder that the end of the bull market is approaching. I have to wonder… are these people seeing the same data I am? For instance, according to a nonfarm-payrolls table from LPL Research, the average increase in payrolls for this economic cycle is 170,000 jobs. So, the 2019 data is above average – with the smallest unemployment rate AND the most wage growth in this economic expansion.

Big things are stirring in the biotech sector, and it’s got me incredibly bullish on the opportunity to make a lot of money here. I’ve made it pretty clear that I see long-term, revolutionary potential in investments like select cryptocurrencies. But in the meantime, 2020 could easily go down as The Year of Biotech… This year marks the 20th anniversary of the project to sequence the first human genome. We could see quite the celebration, as researchers’ efforts to develop new drugs in a variety of categories are starting to pay off in amazing ways. I’m talking about plans to “fix” errors in our genetic code.

Three weeks into the new year and already the stock market has been hit with plenty of headlines. Futures swung around wildly overnight when the U.S. and Iran traded missile strikes in Iraq… and it’s happening again with a new virus out of China called the coronavirus. This is a good example of why you need more than just stocks in your portfolio. Days after hitting new highs, the S&P 500 is up just 2.7% for the year so far. But so is gold, which usually gets people’s interest in times of trouble. Meanwhile, bitcoin is up 20%. That’s better than gold did in all of 2019. And frankly, in the world of cryptocurrencies, that performance is nothing.

The stock market is hitting a new all-time high. Cryptocurrencies are breaking out. And we are only 17 days into the Roaring 2020s! The S&P 500 is up 3%, the Nasdaq surged 4.4%, and the Dow is closing in on 30,000 for the first time ever. Keep in mind the index closed above the 29,000 level for the first time on Wednesday. I talk about this great start to the year in my new MoneyLline podcast. I also discuss the similarities between today and the start of the 1990s, which is a good thing. The decade of the 1990s was one of the greatest in stock market history – the Nasdaq gained a blistering 794%.

2020 has been quite a year already. Marijuana stocks had one of their best days in 12 months after bullish headlines from Organigram (OGI) and Aphria (APHA). Tensions with Iran suddenly ramped up, and in the aftermath, bitcoin has actually turned out to be a better store of value than gold. That’s no big surprise, for those of us who’ve paid attention. For example, bitcoin was already the top asset of 2019. Even S&P 500 stocks, with their nice 29% gain, were left in the dust last year. Bitcoin’s annual return was nearly three times higher (at 85%), and that’s even after closing the year well off its highs. Other asset classes, like bonds, real estate, the U.S. dollar, and overseas stocks, fell even further short. I definitely expect this to continue through 2020.