The secret of growth investing is that you can’t let the shocks shake you out of stocks that might take several boom-and-bust cycles to achieve even a fraction of their ultimate potential. Last month demonstrates this principle beautifully.

We could’ve given up on everything in the GameChangers portfolio when the trade war got hot. After all, some people were thinking it was the end of the world . . . time to lock in profit because the market had peaked and was dropping like a rock.

And we were holding onto an average return just above 200% across the portfolio. That’s a lot of profit to leave at the market’s mercy if you’re terrified of a recession or a bubble or simply unwilling to believe your luck at holding onto a two-bag home run.

Some people in the market were quick to pull the plug, especially when the losses started accelerating. A week after the trade war was announced on April 2, that 200% return had practically been cut in half. We could have taken the remaining money and felt pretty good.

But that would’ve meant cashing out on great stocks at depressed levels and locking in losses on stocks that are rebounding fast. Somehow the world didn’t end. Doing the math makes me really happy. Our stocks rebounded 13% in April.

And we’re now a healthy 3.6% above where we were when the year started, well ahead of significant YTD losses for the NASDAQ, S&P 500 and other indices. Granted, our GameChangers still have a lot of ground left to recover from the declines of late February into March . . . but taking that slightly longer view, they’re already pointed back in the right direction.

We took a serious dive. But stocks like ours see both sides of volatility, so there are plenty of leaps to the upside in between the lurches down. We cheer the leaps. We brace for the lurches.

We do it because we know that over time a disruptive business model can take a company from obscurity to market domination. This is where the trillion-dollar giants of today came from. Once upon a time, they were cult stocks like ours.

Now it looks like some of those giants are hitting a hard growth wall. It isn’t that they’re too big or that there’s a natural limit to how big they can get . . . the problem is that they’ve already taken their great ideas about as far as they go.

Look at mighty AAPL with a market capitalization north of $3 trillion. Tariffs might take 3 points of growth away from the bottom line, which stings but I’m sure Tim Cook can engineer his way out of that scenario.

What hurts here is that even if the trade war ended today, this onetime “growth” stock is barely raising that bottom line 8% a year right now and the revenue curve is a lot flatter than that. We’re living in a world right now where the S&P 500 as a whole is fairly confidently looking for 9-10% earnings growth this year.

You read that right. AAPL is growing slower than the broad market, even in the utopian best-case scenario. And yet it still trades at 25X next year’s earnings . . . a premium multiple that historically only the most dynamic companies could claim.

Giants like AAPL are trading on their reputation and not the reality. That’s an ominous thing because it depends on sentiment, which is by definition not quite tethered in rational arguments and so can swing in the wind. Those swings can play a big factor in “shocks” like what we’ve seen and suffered.

But I have to say that stocks like ours get their power from causing as many shocks as they suffer. Disruption is part of life on Wall Street. Things change all the time, I get that part. You get surprised. The news cycle takes over and we can’t control it.

Disruptive companies take that cycle of innovation and upheaval and make money out of it. Look at our top recommendation, thriving in an increasingly unpredictable world. The whole company is built on our need to identify threats and mitigate the damage they do.

This “little” company makes money when government systems change and corporate executives recognize the need to protect their organizations. Even if we’d sold at $84 a month ago this would have been the biggest GameChanger in history.

Here at $124, it’s testing the highest levels in its own history. And we’ve hung on through just enough cycles that the gains compound across the cycle. This stock is up “only” 47% in the past month, but that’s $40 per share at this lofty level.

For those like us who bought shares under $10, that extra $40 per share is a lot more than 47%. It’s closer to 400% in additional profit. We’re letting it ride because as yet there’s no ceiling in sight.

Other stocks on the GameChangers Buy List have that power. They’re up triple digits and have the potential to do a lot more.

Who leaves that kind of party early, especially if nobody is forcing you to do it?

Anyway, that’s why our GameChangers are enjoying their best performance in history. If you’d like to know more about how we do it, the information page is right HERE.