A Roadmap For Troubling Times

At GaveKal, we have argued at length over recent years that one of the driving forces of the financial markets was the "financial revolution" which was quietly moving from the US and other Anglo-Saxon countries unto the rest of the world. Today, this financial revolution seems to be, at the very best, "put on hold". So what impact should that have on our investment decisions? Just as importantly, this very important change to the investment environment is not the only paradigm-shifting event that has occurred since we published Our Brave New World (now out of print but available for free for download from our website) and The End is Not Nigh. And in periods of drastic change, it is easy to focus on the negative and be overwhelmed by the general media's natural tendency to spread doom and gloom. And undeniably, there are serious reasons to be concerned: - The financial revolution has hit a serious road-bump and will likely detract more from growth than contribute to economic activity for the foreseeable future. - We continue to see, through rising oil prices, an ever greater amount of wealth transferred from market players to non-market players (i.e.: oil money to Venezuela, Iran or Saudi Arabia; growth in Russian reserves etc...). This is rarely conducive to faster growth. - Until Asian central banks decide to bite the bullet and stop manipulating their currencies, inflation in Asia may very well continue to accelerate, prompting counter-productive price-control measures, constraints on bank lending etc... Still, for every reason to be negative, we find some reasons to be positive. These reasons include the fact that more people are getting richer, and freer, than the world has ever seen, and all at the same time. In this new book, we review both our concerns and the factors of growth around the world which contribute to our overall optimism. And, in so doing, we present our "investment roadmap" for the coming years.