Do it yourself

Not putting all eggs in one basket is perhaps one of the oldest risk management techniques. In the financial investment parlance, this is commonly called “diversification of portfolio”. Over the years this technique has worked well for investors in managing risk. In earlier times, diversification was a rather simple exercise. This usually involved allocating money to asset categories (equity, debt, commodity, real estate, etc.) that carried divergent risk profiles. During low inflation, easy money periods equities and real estate outperformed the debt; while in high inflation tighter money periods, bonds and commodities did better. However, as the markets became more globalized, financialized, and dematerialized, the performance of various asset classes started to become more correlated. With more and more assets offering a similar risk profile diversification of portfolios started becoming a complex and complicated exercise. In the past decade, we have seen sovereign bonds carry...

In yesterday’s post I mentioned that in my view the likely demographic change over the next couple of decades is a more interesting investment theme than the more popular climate change or ESG. ( see here ) Some readers have sent their comments and views on the topic. A few have expressed disagreement with my hypothesis; but a large majority seems to be in agreement. A couple of readers have pointed out that demographic change and climate change are intricately intertwined and share a circular causal relationship. I fully agree with this viewpoint. The investment themes that support both climate change and demographic change could actually be the best investment theme. Metaverse is one such theme, in my view. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) in a recently released knowledge paper – “Metaverse and Emerging Opportunities” – highlighted some interesting aspects of this massive opportunity that has the potential to transform, inter alia , the way we wo...