Category: Focus

General recommendation: Find shelters!  You will understand when reading this issue that the clouds are gathering during the end of this year and the beginning of the next. Take out your umbrellas, raincoats and wellingtons! This is not the first time that we have alerted you this way, but the GEAB is intended to signal […]

Largely criticised by some, glorified by others, cryptocurrencies keep raising questions and represent as many threats as opportunities depending where we stand; whether on the side of citizens, institutions, businesses or governments. After a spectacular rise in valuations, we are currently witnessing a collapse in the capitalisation of most crypto-assets. The euphoria is well behind […]

Infrastructure versus sovereign bonds We have repeatedly emphasised this before: Donald Trump’s campaign promises and the probable launch of “fiscal QEs” in Europe and in the US, offer a bright future for infrastructure investments. There is no doubt that construction companies have a fabulous opportunity here and will benefit from it. Any investment in this […]

Currencies: Watch out, Turbulence Ahead The currency market is particularly dangerous this year: with a dollar which has strengthened whilst Trump needs a weak currency and will do everything possible to achieve the goal; a yuan which risks at any moment to be devalued, authoritatively as we have seen, while its medium-term movement is on […]

Euro: keep believing in it! The LEAP team now believes that the more we are told about the difficulties of the euro, the more we must hear “course change needed” rather than “end of the euro coming”. Euro exit threats are mostly brandished as part of the haggling and bargaining kind of negotiations currently taking […]

General strategy: the eye of the storm Like we started warning in our last GEAB issue, the utmost caution is still required these days. The appearance of recovery, here and there, is either the effect of short-term communication, or sources of disruptions with unpredictable consequences (or both). Our general advice is to stay vigilant and […]

Euro-diversification As part of our forecasts mentioned above on the probable reform of the common currency, we recommend people to “diversify their euros” simply by placing part of any liquid savings in euros in banks from various countries of the monetary zone. With online banks, all this is transparent, extremely quick and free of charges […]

Oil – It’s working In spite of many interests that obviously want to minimise the impact of the agreement on oil production between OPEC and its allies, and doubts related to the sustainability of the deal, it seems that Russians and Saudis are planning to extend the Vienna Agreement[1] until – at least – the […]

Oil: counter-direction The day the coalition around Saudi Arabia announced a cut of diplomatic relations with Qatar, risking the “koweitisation” of the latter, the oil prices… collapsed. This is not the first time we have noticed that outbreaks of conflict are no longer causing price surges. This fact validates the axes we have been following […]

The anticipation work must watch closely the “weak signals”, as futurists used to call them. They are accessible items of information, but hardly reflected within the media, information which provides relevant insight into major changes in society. Paying attention to those signals, interpreting them and cross-referencing them is part of the work of any decision-maker […]

Peer-to-peer economy 0 – Traditional Economy 1 In this GEAB bulletin the article dealing with the Airbnb and similar businesses shows that the “traditional” economy has not yet said its last word, although the peer-to-peer economy as a whole has a very bright future. A few years ago or even recently it was particularly wise […]

Three times a year, as part of its decision-making toolbox, the GEAB team prepares for you a factual map of the next four to six months. . July 2017 – June 2018: Visegrad Group – Rotating Presidency Figure 1 – Visegrad Group. Source: Wikipedia   Hungary is holding the rotating presidency of the Visegrad Group […]

Strategic recommendation: remain covered Even though this GEAB bulletin is optimistic and sees the end of the transition tunnel focused on peace in the Middle East, we shall keep our warning of the last two months: remain covered until the end of the year! We are in the middle of a global geopolitical reconfiguration era, […]

Bitcoin: in and out Whilst maintaining our recommendation to be extremely cautious on Bitcoin, we suggest to those who wish to test it one simple method: buy an amount of Bitcoins which you are ready to lose and resell it as soon as it reaches the value you have previously targeted; take another amount you […]

– European Automobile Industry – The long and winding road
– GM – LOL
– General Electric – Will it fail or not?
– Oil: Seesawing to its death
– Financial market: Ashes to ashes, junk to junk
– Investments – Where does the money go? 
Convinced that the emissions scandal is now behind it, the German automobile industry is ready to restart. VW (Volkswagen), for instance, lined up 440,000 vehicles in October (compared to the 310,000 last August). But two markets are about to escape VW – and not the least important …

Our readers know what the dollar is becoming – a currency like any other. Also, they will not be surprised to learn that  oil is following the same path and becoming a source of energy like any other. First, have a look at the following graphs of global energy and oil consumption; one from the […]

The Food Blockchain Waste, traceability requirements, increased food risks, decentralised production, the costs of this global food-industry, consumer prices: Consumers and industry players are becoming increasingly demanding about transparency within the agri-food sector, the origin and composition of products and the processes involved in their transformation. Manufacturers, producers, suppliers, distributors and consumers: We are living […]

We are free to be cynic whilst looking ahead to our future and anticipating. When new situations occur, we must not hesitate to analyse them thoroughly and try to extract unexpected advantages from them, no matter how politically incorrect it might be. If we use this approach when analysing the future of oceans, we can […]