Megatrends: building a sustainable investment portfolio​

Although many investors – through necessity – tend to focus on short-term factors when managing their investment portfolio, as Chris Pritchard and Hugo Gravell explain, big opportunities are there for the taking for those ready to engage with long-term 'megatrends'.

What are megatrends?

Megatrends are long-term trends that we expect to drive the trajectory of the global economy over the next few decades. Though the exact extent of their impact isn't certain, megatrends have the potential to radically change entire markets, and disrupt the three pillars of the economy:

• Demographics – The people that make up the economy.​
• Technology – An increasingly important determinant of productivity.​
• Planetary boundaries – Environmental and biological limits that we must remain within, or return to, for the global economy to remain sustainable. 

In our latest Investment Insight briefing, we explore four of these trends – natural capital, the green transition, labour dynamics and artificial intelligence – and showcase the opportunities they represent to investors.