Not a day goes by when someone doesn't ask me about what to do about Apple (AAPL).

After all, it is the world largest company. It is the planet's most widely owned stock. Almost everyone uses their products in some form or another.

So the widespread interest is totally understandable.

Apple is a company with which I have a very long relationship. During the early 1980's, I was ordered by Morgan Stanley to take Steve Jobs around to the big New York institutional investors to pitch a secondary share offer for the sole reason that I as one of three people who worked for the firm who was then from California.

They thought one West Coast hippy would easily get along with another. Boy, were they wrong. It was the worst day of my life.

Today, some 200 Apple employees subscribe to the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader, looking to diversify their substantial holdings. Many own Apple stock with an adjusted cost basis of under $5. Suffice it to say, they all drive really nice Prius's.

So I get a lot of information about the firm far above and beyond the normal effluent of the media and stock analysts. That's why Apple has become a favorite target of my Trade Alerts over the years.

And here is the take: You don't want to touch the stock during the first quarter of 2018.

And here's why. Apple is all about the iPhone, which accounts for 75% of its total earnings. The TV, the watch, the car, iPods, the iMac, and Apple pay are all a waste of time, and consume far more coverage than they are collectively worth.

The good news is that iPhone sales are subject to a fairly reliable cycle. Apple launches a major new iPhone every other fall. The share price peaks shortly after that. The odd years see the introduction of the "S" models. But these are minor upgrades, not generational changes.

So during those in between years, the stock performance is disappointing.

The coming quarter could be especially scary.

Just like you see a big pull back in the tide before a tsunami hits, iPhone sales are flattening out.

Channel checks, however dubious these may be, are already confirming the slowdown of orders for iPhone related semiconductors from suppliers you would expect from such a downturn.

The weakness assures that the current selloff will continue. With any luck, you might be able to pick up shares at a cheap price.

Even with a dip in the current price, it will still be one of the cheapest stocks in the market on a valuation basis. The value players will have no choice to join in, if they're not already there.

But Apple is a much bigger company this time around, and well-established cycles tend to bring in diminishing returns. It's like watching the declining peaks of a bouncing rubber ball.

The bull case for Apple isn't dead, it is just resting.

The China business will continue to grow nicely. Their new lease program promises to deliver a faster upgrade cycle that will allow higher premium prices for their products. That will bring larger profits.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Given the mind blowing information I picked up over the weekend about LAM Research (LRCX), you absolutely have to figure out how to beg, borrow, or steal your way into NVIDIA (NVDA).

Fortunately for you, the recent pullback in the big tech sector is giving you the ideal opportunity to steal it.

The leaders of the sector have suddenly become instant pariahs, and their globalization-based models are forcing portfolio managers to throw babies out with their bathwater.

That includes Nvidia, which gave up 17.05% from its high during last week's tech wreck.

I first recommended Nvidia on November 2, 2016 (click here for the link at "The Great Artificial Intelligence Stock You've Never Heard Of.")

In the piece I argued that the shares could double over the next three years.

I lied.

They rocketed by a stunning 43.93% in the following three weeks!

And after what I heard last week, I now believe that my doubling call is ultra conservative.

If you have any doubts about such a bold call, simply take a look at the company's blockbuster Q3 earnings.

The company crushed all expectations, announcing revenues of $2.64 billion, up a mind numbing 123.84% YOY. Earnings per share rocketed to $1.33, giving it a price earnings multiple of 47.93.

The company has just announced its Titan V (it likes to name its products after famous rockets), the most powerful PC based GPU (graphics processing unit) ever created.

The super advanced chip has the ability to turn your home desktop into an artificial intelligence powerhouse.

In addition, (NVDA) wants to combine AI and supercomputing, unlocking the power of AI for large-scale problems like autonomous vehicles, modeling fusion reactors, and a plethora of breakthroughs where deep learning would be a good fit for the problem at hand.

I have been covering Silicon Valley since it was a verdant, sun kissed peach orchard in Northern California.

I have to say that in the half century that I have followed the technology industry, I have never seen the principals, gurus, and visionaries so excited about a major new trend.

That would be artificial intelligence, or AI.

Asking if AI is relevant now is like pondering the future of Thomas Edison's new electricity in 1890.

If you think that AI still belongs in the realm of science fiction, you obviously didn't get the memo. It is all around us all the time, 24/7. You just don't know it yet.

And here's the rub.

It is impossible to invest purely in AI.

All new AI startups comprise small teams of experts from labs and universities financed by big venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Andreessen Horowitz.

After developing software for a year or two, they are sold on to major technology firms at huge premiums. They never see the light of day in the form of a public listing.

Alphabet (GOOG) acquired Britain based, Deep Mind, in 2014. Later that year, Google's AlphaGo program defeated the world's top ranked Go player.

Last year, Microsoft (MSFT) purchased Equivio, a small firm that applies AI to advanced document searches on the Internet.

Amazon (AMZN) recently bought out Orbeus, a startup known for machine learning tools for image recognition.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos now says that his Amazon Fresh home food delivery service is using AI to grade strawberries.

Really!

We're not talking small potatoes here.

The global artificial intelligence market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 44.3% a year to $23.5 billion by 2025.

Nearly half of all applications now use some form of AI that by 2020 will earn businesses an extra $60 billion a year in profits.

And from what I have learned from speaking to the major players over the last few weeks, I am convinced that these are low numbers by an order of magnitude.

It gets better than that.

If you have in any way been involved in the stock market for the past five years, AI has invaded your life.

High frequency trading and hedge funds now account for 70% of the daily trading volume on the major stock exchanges, and almost all of this is AI driven.

Having spent my entire life trading stocks, I can confirm that in recent years the market's character has dramatically changed, and not for the better. Call it trading untouched by human hands.

Algorithms are trading against algorithms, and whoever wins the nuclear arms race brings home the big bucks.

You used to need degrees in Finance and Economics, or perhaps an MBA, to become a professional fund manger. Now it's a PhD in Computer Science.

Remember the May, 2010 flash crash, when the Dow Average plunged 1,100 points in minutes, wiping out $4.1 billion in equity value? AI's fingerprints were all over that.

And only weeks ago, the British pound lost 6% of its value in a mere two minutes, a move unprecedented in the history of foreign exchange markets. The culprit was AI.

Don't expect the path forward to AI to be an easy one.

Indeed, the machines already have the power of life and death over all of us.

Since we aren't venture capitalists, we can't buy into pure AI firms in their early stages. And I'm too old to get a PhD in computer science.

We therefore have to be sneaky and get in through the back door via an indirect play, which still has plenty of upside leverage.

What is the one medium sized, publicly listed company that most benefits from the AI explosion?

I have found exactly such a company (it was small at the beginning of the year) that represents the marrying of the four biggest trends in technology today: AI, self-driving cars, big data, and virtual reality.

That would be Nvidia (NVDA).

The Santa Clara, California based company manufactures graphics processing units (GPU's) for the gaming market as well as system on a chip units (SOC's).

It is heavily involved in super computing and mobile computing, producing processors for tablets, IPhones, and vehicle navigation systems.

Nvidia, named after the Roman god Nemesis, was founded in 1993. It was the original supplier of processors for the Microsoft Xbox and Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 3.

In 2011, it demonstrated the first quad-core processor for mobile devices.

Nvidia has been on an acquisition tear over the past decade, picking up more than a dozen companies to expand its reach in the most advanced AI and manufacturing technologies, as well as picking up some first class talent.

Nvidia has more engineers working on AI than any other company, or institution, in the world.

Its integrated stack of imaginative chip designs is unmatched.

Its principal competitors are Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel (INTC) and QUALCOMM (QCOM).

To learn more about Nvidia, please visit their website at Nvidia by clicking here.