My dad is in his early 70s. I remember when he was in his 50s and would joke that when he retired, he would be glad to take the spare bunk in my youngest son's room. Luckily, it hasn't come to that.

Like many American seniors, he and my mother, also in her early 70s, are in excellent health and extremely active. They both still work full time. They're not baby boomers. They're part of the smaller pre-boomer generation that was born at the tail end of the Great Depression and during World War II.

They have more in common with their parents than their younger boomer siblings or cousins. On the whole, they seem to be a little tougher, a little more independent and self-sufficient.

Baby boomers, on the other hand, not so much.

From the toy companies of the '50s to the Big Pharma companies of the 1990s hawking erectile dysfunction cures, corporations and their shareholders have consistently profited in a big way by catering to the perceived immediate needs of the biggest bubble of the U.S. population -- all 76 million of them, with another estimated 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day over the next 16 years. (My colleague Joseph Hogue wrote about this looming trend this summer in his "Graying of America" series.)

And as the boomers enter their golden years, the needs may change, but the opportunities for investors remain as lucrative as ever.

The Trend is Your Friend
One of the best investment ideas available to capture the upside of the aging Boomer trend is health care real estate investment trust (REIT) Senior Housing Properties Trust (NYSE: SNH). I've followed and recommended this stock for more than a decade.