Opinion

Ik kijk al een paar weken met enige verwondering naar de financiële markten. Een Amerikaanse president die dreigt met de uitroeiing van een gehele samenleving, terwijl de aandelenmarkten vrijwel onveranderd blijven. Vervolgens zorgt een verse TACO voor een herstelrally van procenten, terwijl er niet meer is dan een staakt-het-vuren van twee weken en aanhoudende onzekerheid. Voor wie een beetje vooruit kijkt, verschijnt er een duidelijke hobbel waar we met z’n allen over moeten.

The world was already electrifying at a rapid pace. But two developments are now pushing this process into an acceleration that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago.

The war against Iran has now lasted a month, and the consequences are becoming visible at a rapid pace. The conflict began as an American-Israeli operation targeting Iran’s nuclear program and the regime in Tehran. But while the United States and Israel are dropping bombs, Europe is absorbing the heaviest economic blows. The result of decades of failed European energy policy, strategic dependency, and a lack of geopolitical power.

If there is one thing that characterizes the investment world, it is that it is full of clichés, parrots, and an enormous reluctance to change. It is sometimes laughable how market experts produce the same one-liners for twenty years or bury you under their “market wisdom.”

Faithful readers of this column know that I am deeply concerned about the politicization of the European Central Bank (ECB). Lessons from monetary history and piles of academic research support that concern: we simply know that a central bank that listens to what politicians want is bad news for inflation in the medium term.

As geopolitical tensions rise, capital is quietly repositioning. Luxembourg is emerging as a European anchor for globally minded family offices, with Singapore reinforcing the shift from the Asian side.

Necessity breaks laws, but it also breaks existing patterns, paradigms, and drives innovation. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention. Not abundance or curiosity, but circumstances in which delay is not an option.

Imagine this: you predict stock returns for January 2026 using company data from all of 2026. Data that only becomes available during that year (or even afterward). Sounds absurd? Yet this is exactly the methodological foundation of one of the most cited findings in climate finance: the carbon premium.

The signals that citizens and businesses are willing to leave their country if the tax burden becomes high enough are increasing rapidly. As a result, an economic theory that is already fifty years old—and long dismissed as meaningless fantasy—is suddenly taking center stage.

An unprecedented wealth transfer is underway. Over the next two decades, an estimated 124,000 billion dollar in assets will shift globally from the baby boomer generation to younger generations.