As Wall Street descends into chaos, many investors are happy to sit on the sidelines holding cash. But there are still profits to be made for big-picture investors.

Chris Mayer says the next “megatrend” will be a $41 trillion global infrastructure boom. Urbanization on a massive scale in China and India requires huge construction projects. And this will create huge demand for building materials (like cement and steel) and basic commodities (iron ore, copper and nickel).

Chris says power-grid builder ABB (NYSE:ABB) and road-building equipment maker Astec Industries (NASDAQ:ASTE) are stocks to watch…

This from Whiskey and Gunpowder:

Investors are always on the lookout for the next big thing. You know the sort, a big-picture idea so powerful and long-lasting that you can confidently ride your investments through the ups and downs that market life presents. Frank Holmes, CEO of U.S. Global Investors, calls these “global megatrends” – “sustainable and substantial growth in capital expenditures in any country or sector.”

Holmes offered a couple of past examples. There was the massive growth of infrastructure in the ‘50s and ‘60s, which included the postwar rebuilding of Europe and the massive highway system build-out in the U.S. There was the 1990s megatrend, which led to massive growth in information technology and data communications. And there is the present megatrend: “Unprecedented change in global growth driven by globalization, urbanization and wealth creation, [which] leads to a global infrastructure boom on a massive, intractable scale.”

That’s quite a mouthful, but I believe Holmes is right. Holmes also cites numerous studies – one by Booz Allen Hamilton, as well as ones by World Energy Outlook, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the OECD and a host of other official-sounding places. But the total bill, give or take a few trillion, is about $41 trillion out to 2030 – for water, power, roads and bridges, as well as marine and seaports.

This is your next megatrend. Don’t miss it. We have some ideas at work here, but before we get too ahead of ourselves, let’s look again at some of the key points of the thesis.

First, some mega population shifts. By the end of 2008, half of the world’s people will live in urban areas. Leading the way are some 500 million Chinese and another 540 million Indians. The world’s cities are getting a lot bigger. Beijing alone grew from 12 million to 16 million in the past decade. Plus, there are a lot more souls on the orb than ever — 6 billion of us. Next year, the world’s total urban population alone will exceed the total world population in 1965.

This helps drive economic growth. Asia as a whole, for example, is building five times more homes than the U.S. Incredibly, China alone is constructing 80 percent of them. This, in turn, drives consumption of many commodities, including things you may not think of immediately – like cement. Asia, excluding Japan, uses about 14 times as much cement as the U.S. Asia ex-Japan has also overtaken the U.S. in steel production by a country mile. Asian steel production is more than six times the U.S.’ Electricity consumption is 32 percent more than the U.S.’

I could go on like this for pages…the stats are simply amazing. But I think you get the idea. The industrialization of Asia’s enormous populations has unleashed a torrent of demand for the basics.

There was a lot of discussion at the conference in Vancouver about just how much of Asia’s economic growth begins with U.S. consumers. The answer isn’t clear, as you might expect. But it is clear that trade routes in Asia are flourishing. I’ve talked about the New Silk Road before. It’s one of my favorite themes – the opening of old trade routes that stretch across the Middle East through India and into China. Holmes had a chart that showed that the Asian stretch of that old road is still healthy – despite an economic slowdown in the U.S.

Asian trade is ticking up, even as U.S. exports take a dip. It’s not the only data point, either. Asian retail sales are also trending higher as U.S. retail sales head lower. I think it’s a bit arrogant on the part of some analysts to say that China exists to satisfy our needs for rubber toys and cheap underwear. In their view, a U.S. slowdown dooms most of Asia’s export-driven economies. Plenty of evidence shows that’s not the case, at least not yet.

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In fact, Asian demand is on the rise for a whole host of goods. In 2008, vehicle sales in Asia ex-Japan are set to exceed those in the U.S. First time that’s ever happened. Sometime in 2008, also for the first time ever, there will be more Internet subscribers in China than in the U.S. I suspect that’s one top spot that the U.S. will never claim again. There are also four times the number of mobile subscribers in Asia than in the U.S.

All of these points come from Holmes presentation, which I think painted an amazing panorama of the truly historic shifts in the global economy.

As fast as the Asian economies are growing, their demand for power is growing faster. You can also expect to see increasing use of aluminum, copper, iron ore, coal and nickel – all basic infrastructure materials.

Holmes offered that to satisfy the global demand for copper, the world would need to mine as much in the next 25 years as it has up to this point in history. These predictions may prove wildly inaccurate. But even if they are only directionally correct, it points to a long bull market in the basics.

I have recommended stocks that are deeply involved in the megatrend of infrastructure. Companies like ABB Ltd. (ABB:NYSE), the world’s largest builder of power grids, and Astec Industries (ASTE:NASDAQ), a leading manufacture of road-building equipment. Plus, I have also recommended companies that own the basic commodities the world will need – copper, oil, natural gas and more.

As we come to learn early in our investing careers, the market seldom moves in a straight line. Years can separate cause and effect. One of the great megatrends in the market today is this idea of infrastructure and all that it entails. So don’t let the recent volatility in the stock market blind you to long-term investment opportunities.

These are the moments to enter the fray, not to run from it.

Source: Where to Invest After the Collapse