2018

The 2018 set covers Asia-Pacific, Europe, Global, North America, Southeast Asia. Each report is a structural analysis with its reasoning shown, its sources named, and its limits stated.

• Global Investment Outlook 2018 — The Volatility Unwind — In February 2018 a modest rise in volatility triggered losses far out of proportion to the underlying market move. It was the cleanest demonstration in a generation that positioning, not news, determines the size of a shock.
• US Venture Capital Report 2018 — The Megafund Era — In 2018 the size of the largest venture funds crossed a line that changed how the whole market priced. When a single fund can write cheques larger than a competitor's entire vehicle, the competition stops being about judgement.
• Asia-Pacific Investment Report 2018 — Supply Chains Become Political — Trade measures in 2018 did less damage through tariffs than through uncertainty. A company cannot optimise a supply chain against rules that might change, and the cost of not deciding was larger than the cost of the tariffs themselves.
• Southeast Asia Venture Report 2018 — The Cost of Six Countries — Southeast Asia is described as a single market of 650 million people. It is not one market, and the difference between the description and the reality is the central fact about investing there.
• Real Assets & Infrastructure Report 2018 — Buying a Cash Flow, Not a Sector — Infrastructure attracted enormous institutional capital on the strength of a promise: stable, inflation-linked, long-dated cash flows. The promise is real for a narrow set of assets and was extended to a much wider set that did not have it.
• Europe Investment Report 2018 — Regulation as an Export — Europe did not set the pace of technology in 2018. It set the rules — and because compliance is cheaper to apply globally than to apply selectively, those rules reached companies that had never sold a thing in Europe.