There is an old line that the Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of Stones and just as the Dot Com crash was not caused by a collapse in the share prices of typewriter companies and fax machine manufacturers, but instead by the unwinding of the hype around the profitability of ‘the next big thing’ in Telecoms, Media and Technology (TMT), so we would suggest that there is less systematic risk from investing in ‘bad’ Fossil Fuel companies (the risk is in the price) than there is in being heavily committed to expensive ‘alternative energy’ technology that turns out not to be the next big thing after all.

The latest Market Thinker piece is up at CityWIre. Continuing our look at thematic investing, we consider the case for a broad portfolio based around digitaisation.

The story is that a developer took over a site that had not been completed by the previous developer and was forced to knock down the buildings and start again.

Like a lot of people over a certain age, I remember exactly where I was this day 20 years ago, on the trading floor of Commerzbank Securities in London, having interrupted preparations for a delayed marketing trip to New York when one of the traders called out that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre.

The back-to-school-trade in markets is not to look at the short term forecasting uncertainties around the Delta Variant of Covid, but rather to consider the medium and longer term implications of the latest twists in the New Cold War and the implications for capital flows.