I was lucky enough to get an hour of his time before he leaves for the Ivory Coast for a job he’s working on with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. And I wasn’t disappointed – he’d plenty to say.
Akhil is easily the most bullish of all our editors, and the most optimistic for the state of the world at large. In his view politics, geopolitics, the actions of central banks and short-term market trends are all a sideshow. If you want to make money in his view, you need to be looking at the value of land, which runs in an 18-year cycle.
Pay attention to that, he says, and you can predict the boom and busts of the property, commodity and stockmarkets. In our conversation, he even revealed where to buy property in London now for maximum speculative gains…
Akhil brings plenty of compelling evidence to the table, using centuries of data as evidence. While the 18-year property cycle is his “go-to” reference point as to where asset prices are going in the medium term, he also uses a much longer 60-year commodity cycle as a gauge to figure out how much fuel can be ploughed into the global economic engine this time around – and accordingly reveal how much gains investors stand to make.
Akhil reckons that we’re just on the cusp of a wealth-generation event never before seen, and that investors everywhere are going to be rolling in cash in the years to come. What gets him so bullish is that both of the cycles he pays most attention to – the 18-year property and 60-year commodity cycles – are poised to peak at just the same time in the years to come. This is very rare, and Akhil thinks it’s going to generate some absolutely eye-watering returns for investors with their money in the right places.
It’ll come to a halt, as all great booms do of course. And there will be asset bubbles and wild speculative manias of kinds and of a scale never before seen. But in his view, it’s only just getting wild now, and plenty of money has yet to be made as the cycles reach their crescendo.
Though political chaos in the news and geopolitical tensions dominates the news, the trends driven by these cycles will keep marching upward. With political noise at fever pitch, one can only imagine how strange such a combination of prosperity and political discontent will be.
We agreed that whatever the future does look like, it’ll be pretty nuts. You’ll be able to watch our conversation at The Southbank Investors’ Exhibition next week.
Those with nut allergies be advised…
All the best,
Boaz Shoshan
Editor, Capital & Conflict
Category: Market updates