Thinking about the future
Gerhard le Roux
November 2020
In this months letter, I want to step away from market and investment behaviour and riff a little on the contrast sketched between art and our usual answer-driven realities and how the journey can often be more valuable than the answer. In this pursuit I’ve read the thought-provoking book by Margret Heffernan - Unchartered noted in the September newsletter. My favourite chapter explores artists and the creation of art. I hope you find it interesting
Rilke wrote, advising a young poet, “and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue… Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer… this is what you must work on however you can and not waste too much time and too much energy on clarifying your attitude to other people.” Extract from Margaret Heffernan - Unchartered
The modern world is incredibly complex with interconnected forces and trends that make understanding and forecasting difficult if not impossible. Even the best forecasters that apply years of training to reduce personal biases and forecast using the best contemporary methodologies are only able to reasonably predict less than a year and a half into the future. Effectively, anyone working in a business that plans more than one year into the future is just guessing or applying a form of vailed control.
If we can’t know the future, it’s tempting to use technological tools that offer an abbreviated version of the world into some algorithm. There is no shortage of “experts” happy to punt their version of a utopian existence, where people are absolved from their choice and liberty, and the human condition is distilled into big data models and machine learning algorithms. The models do not lead to better-informed decisions, as the algorithmic models do not capture our humanity and complexity as individuals so easily. The absurdity of all this abstraction is laid bare beautifully in Margaret’s book.
If the algorithms are unavailable, to cope with the complexity and make sense of the world we create and adopt abstractions through our lens or perspective, inevitably losing the richness in detail of our thinking. Furthermore, we assume the questions we seek to answer, that live in the complex world, are well understood. But our questions suffer equally from the distilled world we’ve created.
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Artists do not share our yearning for abstractions and live in a realm of ambiguity and uncertainty. The process of creating is exploring without a specific destination in mind. Propelled by a strong sense of urgency, knowing that their work will not exist if they don’t make it. The reason that artists so prize openness and are attracted to ambiguity is that not solving problems ahead of time keeps the work alive, capable of adaptation and variation – and it makes the work itself live.
Artists focus their gaze intensely on the world as it is, with no laid out plan for how or when the information will be useful, letting information simmer. Artists with staying power know that art isn’t about finding answers, defining solutions; it’s about better questions.
By contrast, in the business world, we avoid uncertainty and ambiguity at all costs; we pride ourselves on providing answers to questions, failing to recognise that our questions are formed from our incomplete picture of the complex world. Our abstractions of the world are not complete, the map is not the territory, and as we base our answers in this imperfect model, we miss opportunities to notice, simmer, state and fail.
“I think a lot of the loss of creativity in organisations is due to the phenomenon where everyone is up to their necks in the status-quo trap, believing that a well-measured if scary present is better than an ambiguous future.” Margret Heffernan
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How then do we navigate the complexity and ask better questions or at the very least allow for a better outcome given the lack of information?
Embrace the journey. We are expert at providing answers, but due to our biases created in our abstraction process, we are blind to alternatives and second-order consequence. If both the question and the answer is allowed to be fluid, the journey can evolve.
If your investment answer has not kept up with market complexity, maybe its time you give us a call to create a journey to match your vision of wealth and adventure.
News and Markets
The US election vote is in, and euphoria has gripped global equity markets. The combination of a Democrat President and House with a Republican Senate as the current tally suggests, will mean that a reversal of the corporate tax reform implemented under the Trump administration is unlikely. A pro-business tax structure with a more predicable social structure is seen as good for markets.
No news yet on additional COVID stimulus in the US as COVID cases have spiked to new highs. It might take some time for politicians to re-focus on the stimulus package post the election. Trump might also still have something to say to slow the process.
The geopolitical temperature has been rising with Russia and especially China becoming overtly hostile to their Nabors and actively imposing themselves globally. To have some normalcy return to the geopolitics seem like an essential endeavour that the bungling of which will result in a continued increase in global tensions. It’s difficult to tell how the President-elect will react to the threats until his cabinet is appointed, but I expect a tough stance to remain towards China under Biden.
The market is again priced for perfection, and in the face of more global lockdowns, you should tread cautiously.
Actions to take
Stay the course. Global market stimulus remains the main driver of market performance, with COVID cases surging additional printing looks imminent. The question is if Democrats will choose the same mechanism as the Trump administration for supporting the economy.
Locally, interest in SA Inc has continued, and there are some attractive valuations around.
The ZAR hit 15.50 and as before, use the opportunities of ZAR strength to get some international exposure.
Chat soon. Gerhard.