Investment Uncut: Turning turbulence into tailwinds

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In this episode, we bring you the highlights from our Investment conference: Turning turbulence into tailwinds. Covering topics such as geopolitical instability, transition resources, the US election, purposeful investing, private markets and even astropolitics! We chat to guests and speakers to bring you the highlights of the conference, their key takeaways and new investment ideas.

In this episode, we hear from:

• Yanmei Xie – Geopolitics Analyst, GaveKal
• Morten Nilsson – CEO of Brightwell
• Chris Ralph – Former CIO of St James’s Place Wealth Management
• Cliff Speed – Former CIO of TPT Retirement Solutions
• Bjarne Graven Larsen – Former CIO of ATP
• David Macfarlane – Former Director at HSBC Asset Management
• Tim Marshall – Journalist
• Hugh de Lusignan – Head of Financial Services at Department for Business and Trade
• Torbjörn Hamnmark – Former Head of Strategic Asset Allocation at AP3
• Jenny Harbord – Head of Real Assets at LCP

Key takeaways from our speakers and guests:

• We are accustomed to the Washington consensus and neo-liberal thinking, but we must be reminded that China is driven differently and trying to understand China through this lens won’t always make sense.
• Investors should be less afraid of the controversial decisions and focus more on real world outcomes. 
• When investing, we need to be looking forward, not in the rear-view mirror.
• Avoid putting too much reliance on assumptions, ask where the cashflows are generated from, think fundamentally about what you’re investing and how that fits into the changing world economy
• We really need to figure out how to accept the mining industry if we want to create a world that is built on renewable energy.
• Whilst there are these megatrends and themes, they take a long time to play it and it’s not a case of chasing the latest trend, it’s a case of positioning yourself for that constant evolution
• To understand international relations, you need to factor in geography!
• Asia Pacific is going to keep increasing in importance (you can see this through all the activity being taken by the Government) and, in particular, the corridor from Europe, through the Gulf, through India and into Asia Pacific.
• It’s important to be forward looking and to really force yourself to think in different terms to deal with the changes we’re living through. Most people are stuck in the past in that they haven’t evolved how they allocate capital, even though they agree there are big changes happening.
• There’s been significant pricing correction in real assets over the past few years, but some markets are now at a stage where they’re set to recover, especially where the fundamentals are sound.