Signals
Jeff Desjardins

Summary

The best coffee table book you'll ever buy. Beautifully designed and illustrated plus opinions on the future of the world over the next decade using evidence

Notes

Falling fertility rates because of later marriages and less addition to workforce

The world is getting older

Tax revenues need to be higher to offset the impact of aging

Massive migration around the world to cities

Asia and Africa will see the largest growth in cities

Cities of the future will be smart, new and super-sized

Income has become more evenly distributed across the global population

• Massive increase in global middle class (China and India will see biggest increase in middle class)

Decentralization of media - loss of authority and quantity > quality of content

• Each person/brand is their own media company

Death of local news, disruption of traditional media world and less trust in media

• Big tech has become gatekeeper to exposure and monetization

Rising wealth inequality

• Since 1990, wealth of top 10% increased by trillions but bottom 50% is stagnant
• Rich people own assets in the stock market where the poor don’t participate
• Wealth gap shows little signs of shrinking
• Likely see increase taxes and shift to unionization in next several decades

Massive opportunities in the environment

US, China and India are largest producers of CO2

Africa, Latam and Middle East emissions will suffer most from climate change

Water scarcity:

• Global meat production is increasing thereby increasing water usage in agriculture
• Meat needs more water to produce than vegetables and increasing pesticide use leading to contamination
• Need to devise solution for proper global water policies

Electrification of everything: renewable energy, energy storage

• Massive increase in electrification of every industry
• Massive increase in demand for lithium and graphite anode in next decade

Information overload:

• Live-streaming and podcasts increasing. Books and television decreasing
• Info being composed into memes, explainer videos and rise of influencers
• Success in a data driven future means getting comfortable with complexity
• Connected devices and AR (augmented reality) will change everything

Data as a moat

• Enabled big tech to dominate the AI revolution
• China and US will see largest gains in AI adoption
• Long term, healthcare and auto will see largest AI adoption
• Cloud computing companies will continue to grow their moats over time - MSFT, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook

Cyber’s wild west:

• Cyber security will be increasingly important in future
• No one is immune from cyber attacks but US faces greatest financial losses
• Cyber attacks render businesses useless. Market expected to double in 5-10 years

Accelerating technology 

• Metal 3d Printing and commercial quantum computer are groundbreaking inventions
• China has largest # of supercomputers

5G Revolution:

• Automation, cloud, manufacturing and retail will be biggest adopters of 5G
• Impact of 5G not a matter of if but when

The new space race

• Space X and planet labs lead the new commercial companies
• New space race will be rush for connectivity and data

CRISPR: gene editing at scale

• Applications in medicine, biology, biofuel, food and materials
• Lots of applications but growing scrutiny

Money and markets:

• Highly leveraged companies, increased household debt, rising debt to GDP ratios, growing interest costs
• US and UK have highest increased debt over last few years
• Interest costs on US government debt will increase
• Businesses taking more and more debt over last few years
• Younger generations at risk if higher interest rates
• World developed an insatiable appetite for debt

Falling interest rates:

• Declining bond yields. Interest rates since 1990 fallen from double digital to almost negative
• Negative interest rates could soon become a global reality

Central bank impotence:

• Rising debt, quantitative easing, zombie firms, increased intervention in free markets
• Inflating equity markets because fed purchasing trillions in government bonds and corporate bonds to rotation into equities
• Central banks remain committed to stimulating their economy

Stock market concentration

• Top 5 companies dominate the S&P (Heavily weighted)
• Passive investing bubble contributed to stock market saturation
• Sectors perform poorly following regulatory attention

Dwindling corporate longevity

• Companies have shorter lifespans than they did in previous decades
• Concern on skills of workers in future
• Companies that fail to adapt to the changing times risk being left behind

Sustainable investing

• ESG will be an increasing share of investable assets in the next decade
• Millennials leading in sustainable investing and will have most spending power
• Sustainable investing firmly in the mainstream

Frictionless retail shopping is increasing

Rise of meatless meat

• Shift to cultured meat or vegan meat, high interest in high protein diets
• Research in favour of reducing meat consumption for health

Connected health

• Connected devices increasing in popularity
• Telehealth and remote patient monitoring for solutions for patients, not practitioners
• Major data privacy concerns

Bipolar world:

• China is challenging America as the leading global superpower
• Massive increase in use of RMB instead of USD
• More countries trading w/ China instead of US
• Belt and road initiative (silk road) increasingly used
• Massive mega projects being financed by China, especially in Africa, Latam and SE Asia
• Globally most transactions still done in USD/Euro

Peak globalization

• Protectionism of countries on the upswing
• Butting heads b/w US and China, regionalization of supply chains
• Globalization appears to have peaked

Split Internet

• Countries are increasingly limiting access to a free Internet
• China has entire control over it’s Internet infrastructure
• Likely Internet gets split into a Chinese dominated one and a US dominated ‘free’ one

‍