Strategic Investment

Strategic Investment

Just below you’ll find instructions on how to access you latest editions of Strategic Investment. It’s part one of at a two part series. You’ll receive the second part early next week.

Next week, stay tuned for more details on improvements to your subscription. You’ll also receive the December issue of Strategic Investment. As you’ll see, we take on a very big idea. The idea is also an argument about what your investment strategy should be in the coming years not only to survive, but to prosper.

The argument is that the most important financial decision you’ll ever make has nothing to do with an asset class. It is far more fundamental. The most important financial decision you’ll ever make is much simpler: where will you live?

Since its discovery, the United States has enjoyed (and mostly earned) the reputation as a place of nearly limitless economic opportunity. Demographically and geographically, the continental United States has always been blessed. This has historically translated into investment and entreprenueiral opportunties. For most US citizens, life has always gotten better, and generally speaking, wealthier.

But that is not the case anymore. And in the next two reports, you’ll see why we think it is time for you to reconsider where, geographically, your best propsects for prosperity lie. Even if it is not realistic for you to physically move (or if you have no desire to do so), you may be interested in why we believe the best investment opportunities of the coming years lie elsewhere. And keep in mind that all of our investment strategies are easy enough to execute from anywhere to you happen to be.

Before you get to this month’s reports, take a look at the map below. It contains an interesting fact which, to our knowledge, is not widely known about America. Namely, the United States was not named, as is widely believed, for the Italian explorer Americao Vespucci.

The Waldseemüller map, Universalis Cosmographia, originally published in April 1507

Jules Marcou of the Academy of Sciences in Paris pointed out in 1875 is that “Amerigo” was not Vespucci’s name. He refers to the a map first published by Martin Walsemuller in 1507 in which America is the name given to a different coutntry entirely. We know that country today as Brazil.

Walseemuller would only have known Vespucci’s first name as “Albericus” or “Alberico.” Note that Vessucci published his 1504 pamphlet Mundus Novus under the Lartinized name, Albercius Vesputius. To get “America” out of that seemed like a stretch to Marcou. We agree.

In any event, the origins of America and what landmass it first applied to are not merely a historical curiousity. They get to a more important investment question: in which country do your best ecnomic and investment opportunities reside? That is the issue taken up in these two reports, with a great deal of focus on America and Brazil.

One more brief note regarding the next new reports. In both reports, you’ll read quite a bit about the relentless logic of demography. It has a nearly irressistable effect on a country’s economic propsects, and thus, your investment possibilities.

Take a look below at the population pyramids from the U.S. Census Bureau. Briefly, a population pyramid tells you the distribution of a nation’s population based on five year increments. It’s called a pyramid because generally, stable societies have more people under the age of 50 than over the age of 50. The math of reproduction suggests if a population is not having children at the replacement rate (at least 2.1 children for every couple) it will inevitably shrink, although immigration, in some notable cases, can prevent this.

We’ve reproduced six population pyramids for you below, courtesty of the US Census Bureau. The more like a pyramid they actually look—broad at the base and pointy at the type—the younger a population a nation as.

This does not automatically suggest a growing econmy and better investments. But at least in fiscal terms, it tells you quite a bit about a nation’s ability to meete welfare state obligations on its existing tax base.

The fatter the pyramid, the more difficult it will be for the country to meet any state-made promises to ageing citizens. Have a look at the charts and reach your own conclusions. In the next two reports below, we’ll tell you ours.

The Real America

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