To find "picks" and "shovels" today, look for a growth industry and identify the underlying technologies, inputs, or tools needed to support that industry or have it succeed. Then find the stocks of companies in those supporting industries. For instance, in the early days of the internet, while dotcom stocks were hot, the companies building out the infrastructure (of the internet e.g., routers, switches, fiber optic cables, etc.) would have been the "picks".