Not long ago (well, okay, thirty years ago), I was the young upstart in the company pushing the older generation to buy the latest technology and get our firm computerized.
I prevailed and we went to a completely computerized in the 1980s. Of course, with that victory came the never-ending process of continuing upgrades.
Flash forward a few decades and the latest crew of young bucks is promoting even more and better technology and this humbled writer is still using an old flip phone, although probably not for much longer. While technology has changed our company, it has changed the world even more and provided a stream of investment opportunities; some great and others not so great.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall was torn down ending the old communist Soviet Union which was replaced by a somewhat capitalist Russia. Recently 327 companies were listed on the Russian stock market, up from zero in 1989.
The world since the late 1980s has become dominated by the growth of private capital, with stock markets popping up in Eastern Europe, China, India and lots of other places. Passenger car ownership, internet usage and cell phone usage is growing rapidly across the planet, with China now the largest market for automobiles in the world.
More people in India and China have cell phones than the entire population of the United States. Worldwide, the middle class is growing rapidly, rising from just 1.4 billion in 1980 to over 3.3 billion in 2006 and projected to be 5.1 billion by 2025, led by growth in Asia.
U.S. companies are reaping many benefits by selling goods and services to these fast-growing markets. Avon sells 81% of its goods overseas, Qualcomm likewise gets 95% of its revenue from foreign sales and even Heinz gets 60% of its sales revenue from foreign sources.
The world’s busiest Burger King is located in the Netherlands! Investors should always be thinking about investing worldwide since the U.S. stock market is just 35% of the overall world stock markets, by listed value.
We are constantly fed a diet of what is wrong with the economies of the United States, Europe and Japan and how monetary easing is hoping to correct these fiscal ills. Yet the stock market here is at new all-time highs despite the problems in Washington, London, Rome, Cyprus, Syria, Iran and lots of other places.
In the midst of the war on terror and potential proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the world economy continues to grow and the peoples of the world are gradually becoming wealthier and healthier.
Around the world, technology continues to develop bringing low cost energy to the United States (remember when its cost was going to skyrocket and we were running out of it?), new lighting devices at reduced costs, and developments in manufacturing processes that are completely changing the notion of what it is to make things.
The promise of the human genome project ten years ago is starting to produce results for human healthcare as we turn the science of genomics into useful healthcare products and practices.
Many of these technological innovations offer potential investment opportunities and a better standard of living for everyone.
Unfortunately, some innovations carry both the promise of exponential good along with the potential for negative consequences.
Case in point: the astonishing advancements in 3-D printers. They can be used to make prosthetics and even human organs, a miraculously beneficial development. The converse result is that a radical in Texas recently built a firearm by printing it on a 3-D printing system, making anyone with a 3-D printer a potential gun manufacturer.
So after repeatedly hearing that the sky is falling and Washington is failing to respond effectively, I step back and look at the big picture.
Several hundred years ago technology began improving and sometimes complicating our lives. Life expectancy increased and people became wealthier. That drift is spreading worldwide despite the occasional trouble.
Let’s not get bogged down in the parade of periodic crises and keep our focus on the developing opportunities. I promise to adopt to a new smart phone — just not until the battery dies in my flip phone.
