THE ROARING TWENTIES
By Sébastien Cavernes, Chief Investment Officer, Head of Discretionary Portfolio Management, Monaco Private Banking.
There is likely something distinctive about the “twenties”: they repeatedly appear as inflection points where technologies move out of the laboratory and into the real economy, reshaping productivity, markets, and ways of life within just a few years.
In the 1820s, steam power and the railway began transforming largely local economies into integrated industrial systems. In the 1920s, electricity enabled the first modern industries (automotive, chemicals) and propelled societies into the era of mass consumption and large-scale industrial productivity. Today, the deployment of Artificial Intelligence across all layers of the economy is redefining the rules of the game.
In financial markets, these periods have typically been associated with strong equity performance. More specifically, the suppliers to the groups driving technological revolutions—the “picks and shovels” of modern gold rushes—have consistently emerged as the key winners of such transformations.
Population ageing, monetary liquidity, and of course Artificial Intelligence are the major economic forces of our time. They interact and naturally shape our investment decisions.