Secular trends

Our world is defined by huge trends or secular trends that last for some time, usually 5-10 years. In the 60s and 70s we have autocars, 80s we have Japan Inc, and the beginning of the 20yr US bull market. 90s was IT and Tech, Media, Telecoms (Ouch!), and now China and commodities.

Note: more often than not, the trend goes into bubble mode and the Greater Fool Game begins. It it important to know the difference and decide for yourself if participating in the Greater Fool Game is what you want.

Betting on these trends will reap you rewards far bigger than day-trading or any other money-making scheme you can ever think of.


Anyways, identifying such trends require good grasp of global condition and some innovative thinking. This I would say 99.99% of the brokers and their analysts lack. For a good reason. If you identify a trend, you need not buy and sell all the time. Just ride with trend until the cows come home. And this is not good for the brokerage business.

So what are the trends going forward?

1) Silver market: The world is aging rapidly as the baby boomers retire, cash in their pension money or CPF, they will need to find ways to spend it. In most other countries, they spend in on travel, buying houses, cars, buying LCD TVs etc. Hence the global boom in real estate, LCD TVs and autos.

2) China consumer market: Let's face it, The 21st century belongs to China. We have probably only been through 1/3 of the big China story. So far they simply built 10,000 factories but the Chinese consumers haven't even started spending yet. When they do, it will be interesting.

If you think about it, in the past 5 yrs, every big secular trend was actually due to China. Why did commodities go up? Why did steel prices tripled? Why did oil price shoot through the roof? Why can Walmart conquer the world with its cheap stuff? China. China. China.


Although the whole world has been talking about China for the past 10 yrs, we are probably not finished yet. China is probably Singapore in the early 80s. We have more to go.

Of course, there will be other secular trends. They will be up to us to find out. It will probably be difficult. But when you do, pls update this blog.