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Why I’m Excited About the Future

“In the development of technology, we overestimate what can be accomplished in the short term and underestimate what can be accomplished in the long term.” - Roy Amara, engineer and futurist

January 20, 2022

“In the development of technology, we overestimate what can be accomplished in the short term and underestimate what can be accomplished in the long term.”

– Roy Amara, engineer and futurist

I’ve always held a positive view for the future, you could say that optimism is my superpower.

I also have a deep passion for technology and innovation, and a fascination with the ever-increasing pace of change in the world around us. The technological developments coming in the near future will be life-changing, enabled by exponential advances in machine learning and AI. Even the seemingly mundane, such as innovations in food, transportation, and money, are going to make a huge difference in how human society functions.

New technologies in almost every aspect of life are set to completely reshape our landscape – both literally and figuratively. Science fiction used to be just that – fiction. It has now become reality, and every morning I wake up excited for what is to come!

The day I truly understood that I could directly support the companies creating positive change in the world was a key turning point in my life. Using my investing dollars to ‘vote’ for the organisations that I most believed in, I suddenly realised that being an investor made me an active participant in shaping the future, rather than simply a passenger on the journey of life.

My personal investing philosophy has been strongly shaped by this realisation. I spend a lot of time thinking about how technology will impact business and society, and I’m proud of (almost!) every company that I hold a position in.

What also fascinates me are some of the ‘big questions’ facing today’s society, and these are strong drivers of my investment strategy. I often find myself pondering topics such as:

  • What is the future of business in a ‘work-from-anywhere’ economy?
  • What capabilities will be unlocked by the availability of limitless sustainable energy?
  • Are we still going to be consuming animals and animal products in 2050?
  • How will preventative and predictive medicine change healthcare, and how will we make these capabilities available to the entire world?
  • What opportunities will be created by bringing 7 billion people online?
  • How will people spend their time when we have a Universal Basic Income?
  • How will an increasingly ageing population impact society?
  • What new capabilities and opportunities will a privacy-centric internet create?
  • And of course, whether humanity has a future beyond Earth…

I try to use these big questions to inform my investment decisions. If a company’s mission supports the advancement of society’s goals (either directly or indirectly), they’re more likely to get my vote and thus benefit from my investing dollars.

As a 7investing paid subscriber of nearly a year, I’m really excited to join the lead advisor team. I followed Simon’s stock recommendations for many years prior to the founding of 7investing in 2020, and the group of expert investors he’s brought together is world-class. I’m extremely honoured to have the opportunity to become a member of the team, and am very much looking forward to collaborating with my co-advisors, and improving my own investing process and due diligence as a result.

I’m very conscious that I’m joining 7investing at a very interesting time. Small-cap growth stocks are in the midst of significant drawdowns as valuation multiples compress, and I fully appreciate and share the emotions that this can tend to instill.

As an investor of nearly two decades, I’m personally reassured by the experience of having seen this story play out on many occasions in the past. Markets are cyclical, and just like the quote from “Amara’s Law” that opened this article, a patient investor should not underestimate what can be accomplished in their portfolio in the long term.

So I’m really excited for my own future as a new member of the 7investing lead advisor team, but I’m also excited for the future that the fantastic companies we’re all invested in are creating. I can think of no time in history that I would rather have lived than today. The pace of innovation is accelerating at an exponential rate, and I’m delighted that along with the whole 7investing community, and indeed all investors worldwide, I have the opportunity, at least in a small way, to shape the world that I want to live in.

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