The last several decades have seen dramatic and accelerating change in the investment and economic landscape.  Looking back twenty-five years or so, the commercialization of the internet in the 1990’s gave rise to the ability to disintermediate virtually everything- how we live, how we play, how we consume, how we communicate, how interact to name just a few broad areas.  Along the way, various forms of social media were born, the sharing economy developed, video streaming services emerged, cloud computing went main stream, new communication technologies developed, and basic infrastructure and all its associated technologies changed.  Fast forward to today, and as the world economies emerge from the recent pandemic, we see disruptive forces all around us.  Not only that, but these powerful forces are accelerating yet again.

If nothing else, the global pandemic taught a number of lessons- the need for inexpensive information access of any kind (text, data, video, etc.) from anywhere; the requirement for secure, stable, and reliable software infrastructure; the necessity for performance enhanced reliable internet access; easy-to-use communications applications; distributed supply chains and manufacturing facilities; and most directly, new techniques for drug development, not to mention that consumer tastes and preferences can change extremely rapidly.  These are just a few of the lessons learned.

Underlying these lessons are very powerful investable secular trends: the digitization of most everything, the continued emergence of cloud infrastructure in multiple forms, the adoption of AI (artificial intelligence) in applications and hardware, new communications technologies, the need for secure applications, new approaches to drug development, and changing consumer habits are but a few.  Similarly, though not necessarily associated with lessons from the pandemic, it is very clear that alternative energy technologies will accelerate in their development, that the auto industry will move away from fossil fuels, and that new technologies will permit more autonomous driving capabilities.

So, an investment roadmap begins to appear.  Its points of interest include new software requirements, new infrastructure in various forms, a renaissance biotechnology/healthcare, changing consumer habits, and the development of alternative energy and the transition away from fossil fuels.

(an excerpt from an article posted to Recent Thoughts please click

Bruce