Investing in a changing world

The world is changing and how it looks in five years’ time will be very different to today. A long-term perspective is the key to success.

Markets struggle with complex change

Capital markets generally do a good job of extrapolating linear trends and discounting known information in the short term. However, complex change is much harder to process efficiently.

For example, oil is influenced by factors as diverse as shale technology and the driving habits of millennials. What does this mean for the future price of energy? How will the auto sector reinvent itself? And what will the next generation buy instead?

Leveraging our expertise

To answer complex long-term questions, we combine our specialist research capabilities across different asset classes. Breaking down such traditional silos allows us to access information sources and expertise that are not efficiently used by other market participants, providing us with invaluable and often unique insights.

For our long-term research, we focus on three areas: demographics, technological change and energy. But analysing the interconnectivity of these topics provides the most powerful insights and helps us to engage with companies to bring about positive change.

Focus on non-consensus views

To deliver genuine value, our research must lead to non-consensus investment conclusions. For example, even though credit markets had recovered their poise at the start of 2010, our structural analysis suggested that the subprime mortgage collapse was a symptom of a broader debt problem.

Of course, the euro crisis started a few weeks later and market valuations dramatically caught up with the underlying stresses.

What we will deliver

We will deliver regular investment insights combining our topics of demographics, technology and energy. Our approach will help you, as an investor, put these big structural shifts into perspective and take advantage of long-term trends.

To whet appetites, we can already make some important observations.