Now we have safely got our feet under the table of the new decade, it’s time to look back to see how we fared in the last decade. We are in the “twenties” now. We have a name for this decade. I think the last real named decade was the “nineties”, the “noughties” and the “tens” just didn’t cut it. Let’s hope we are entering the “Roaring Twenties” once again. Thankfully the “tens” weren’t terrible, in fact for investors I would go as far as saying they were the “Terrific Tens”. There that sounds better already.
our central investment philosophy remains intact
I have believed for 6 years now that the Global economy is within a secular growth trend. Secular simply means long-term in investment speak. The more usual trend is cyclical, the one all financial commentators comment about. Cycles are much shorter term, typically expressed over a “seven year business cycle”. Cyclical trends still exist, but they are never boom and bust during a secular growth trend. They remain compressed, up a bit – down a bit. Here’s what I wrote in my January 2014 Investment Review. It’s well worth a re-read for my older clients and a first read for anyone who became a client since 2014. In short I believe the markets are set to expand gradually over a 20 or 25 year period. I believe it began in 2013.