In the UK they have now had something they called “Freedom Day” with regard to Covid-19. We can all agree that Covid-19 has caused humanity to venture into very obscure places where the things we do resemble something more akin to experiments than confident action. Politicians are administrators, not the experts they generally think they are. And politics being what it is, politicians are usually caught between two or more wildly different points of view. At the beginning of 2020 when the pandemic hit, the WHO screamed complete lockdown and that is what the governments did. Now the UK has decided to go with the opposite and equally extreme approach of opening up everything in one go, instead of a measured approach.
These rapid movements, changes and stance adoptions are not the exclusive reserve of governments; the medical industry has also seen unprecedented changes. Take for example the rapid development of vaccines: a process that usually takes years was telescoped into less than a year. We can also look at the fiscal and monetary policy adopted by most countries, where interest rates are at record low levels even though the economic growth rates and asset inflation are very high. Nature is likewise all topsy-turvy and we are seeing unprecedented heatwaves, flooding, cold fronts and wildfires ravaging the earth.
But all is not doom and gloom; two private companies have already taken civilians up into near-earth orbit, namely Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin. This is the start of space tourism; so you may soon be booking your seat in a spaceship to the Lunar Spa. Another dramatic shift is in the way we work. After decades of having to wear formal dresses or jacket and tie, you can now sit at home in your bedroom slippers and do exactly what you did from an office before. Soon you will also not even have to steer your car because it will be an autonomous self-driving vehicle.
And lastly, to top it all off, you no longer have to complete a course of study in some more or less difficult subject to enable you to eventually earn a lot of money. Facebook has announced that it plans to pay content creators over $1 billion by the end of 2022. So if you regularly post your photos, travel stories, restaurant reviews, dance videos, etc., on Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat or YouTube, and you attract a lot of followers, you may be paid a lot of money for being a so-called “influencer”.
Taking all of this into consideration, perhaps the time has come for you to leave behind your adherence to the Warren Buffett adage of “invest only in what you understand” and “buy and hold forever” – to be replaced by blue-sky revolutionary companies.
