Investing in Drones

[Austen Heller]

What do you folks think of investing in the aerospace defense contractors right now, as a VP bet?  Seems like the American public is sick of all the wars, especially ones that require boots on the ground.  Therefore, new conflicts will rely more heavily on the drone technology.  I would think the Lockheed Martin (LMT), Boeing (BA), and Northrup Grumman (NOC) will all be taking advantage.  These stocks are up huge over the last few years, perhaps I have already missed the boat on this one.

[MachineGhost]

Theme investing would be speculating at this juncture, not investing.  I'm pretty sure those companies are just as overvalued as everything else in the market.

But I too would like to speculate on drones.  I just don't think those companies are pure enough plays.

[dualstow]

I've done well with LMT and poorly with Boeing (my fault, poor timing; I thought the stock would drop when they were finding cracks and were getting that barrage of bad press). Also iRobot (IRBT). I never bought any of these because of drones, but I'll certainly continue to hold all three for the time being.

There's no way to know what tiny little company will create the drones that everyone wants, but some of these bigger firms will eventually profit

[dualstow]

Or GOOG(L) perhaps.

[Sam Brazil]

Might as well throw this new ETF out there: http://etfdb.com/etf/ROBO/

[dualstow]

Might as well throw this new ETF out there: http://etfdb.com/etf/ROBO/

Nice! I hadn't seen that one before.

I wonder if it's too late to buy AVAV.

[MachineGhost]

NOC is the market leader in UAVs, but I'm not sure I would technically call them drones.  They're weapons.

It does have interesting geo-political ramifications to think about if we can delay the "decline of Rome" with UAVs.

[Austen Heller]

I wonder if it's too late to buy AVAV.

AVAV hasn't had the same run-up as NOC or LMT.  AVAV focuses on the commercial applications of the drone technology.  In the long term, I'm sure people will embrace the technology and AVAV will do just fine, but in the short term, the deep pockets of the gov't are what gets me more excited about LMT or NOC.

There is no doubt that it's all speculation though, not investing.