Well, that never happened before. Practice saying it. Change is a constant. So is chaos. But this time truly is different. If you liked the way things were, your best bet might be to hope that the universe is cyclical, wait a few trillion years, and jump back in as the next version of our current age comes back around again. Normal is behind us. What’s coming next is unpredictable, and the folks who will be most surprised may be the ones who think we can go back ‘there’ again. Even the chaos that looks familiar is completely new. Well, that never happened before.

History (I can hear the groans) is fascinating. I think we’re having a Magna Carta moment, not in terms of specific change, but in the level of revolution/evolution within society. Tribes and warlords are in isolated niches. We’ve phased out monarchies, phased in democracies and republics, and added on varieties of social structures. What’s next? 

Petulant politicians talk and act as if old pageantries are popular. Nope. We now see the trade-offs with the cost of a parade or a vacation versus the value of health care and housing. Trade wars seem simple, as long as you don’t understand economics or globalization. We’re entertwined enough that it’s like shooting an Elmer Fudd corkscrewed shotgun. Whoever pulls the trigger is likely to get shot in the foot or face. Is it a surprise that Bruce Springsteen may have said it better than most?

Glory days
Yeah, they’ll pass you by, glory days
In the wink of a young girl’s eye, glory days
Glory days
Glory Days, by Bruce Springsteen

One of my favorite YouTube channels is What’s Going on With Shipping? . Maybe I should leave that question mark alone because that is not an obvious choice; but, the guy is entertaining, knowledgeable, articulate, and a fan of Merchant Marine fleets and their mariners. My Dad was one (Donald L. Trimbath, Sr.) in World War Two, so I got a headstart on the industry. Shipping is an interesting way to watch the world because it almost always involves more than one country as cargoes go from one country to another, and have to pass through others’ waters along the way. 

Pay attention to shipping and see how many commentators are ignoring realities and practicalities. Shippers must anticipate change because goods don’t instantly find ships that are instantly at docks in harbors, and crossing major distances on our planet takes time. Throw in storms for extra drama. Shippers lead and lag the news, and eventually we see things on shelves, or not. Shipping demonstrates delays due to politics and nature.

We’re now a global civilization. Borders are making less sense, just as described in Alvin Toffler’s Powershift. As information and industry becomes dominant, they will acquire power, and old-style governments will fight the change, possibly unconsciously, while masked in irrational responses. Russia is sanctioned? Yes, but no. They can ship oil, just not the same old way.

There’s a change I forgot, oil. Regardless of national policies, using renewable energy sources is making better economic sense. Extracting bits of the planet to burn them is bizarre, except as a habit. We aren’t going back to whatever we thought that was.

The change that is happening even quicker than chaotic politicians is artificial intelligence. As predicted, its growth accelerates its growth. While corporations and politicians debate how to control and manage its growth, AI has already demonstrated the ability to coerce people to change and act in new ways (about 84% of the time in certain situations), and to escape its confines. Officials treat AI as if it was a nuclear bomb, but nuclear weapons can be tracked. Electrons scampering across a global network can outrun any pursuer. They will create change that we can’t imagine; and that change may come from a grad student experimenting with a novel idea, not a corporation planning some grand strategy.

Why go into this? Personal finance is based on implicit and explicit assumptions. Many of those assumptions, like the assumptions implicitly within politics, are based in the 1940s up to 1960. Globalization means countries are no longer independent. Crowds in the street and armies on the battlefields are no longer as effective as electronic measures and countermeasures. And with renewable energy, I think we’re starting to see a retreat from being interconnected, partly because there is a risk to being interdependent. Global networks can create global failures.

Companies, and hence their stocks, are founded to survive within those assumptions. And even the conventional corporate model is undergoing a shift as private equity begins operating companies for other incentives than public shareholders. Founders are less likely to see an IPO, there are fewer public companies for individuals to invest in, and we’re less likely to see how and why a company is being run.

Amidst the chaos, new industries are being introduced. That trend is something seemingly old, yet is relatively new in societal terms. 

Well, that never happened before. That ‘that’ is being demonstrated by politicians exploiting failings in our society. AI is generating new things at a pace that is fast enough that some commentators are quitting trying to keep up. Climate change is proving to be non-linear, faster than expected, and with surprising interdependencies. I’d say, “All we need now is for the aliens to show up.” but I’m not even sure that’s as dramatic as something unimaginable that we’ll say was obvious in retrospect.

As I wrote in a personal note to myself,
“I think we’ve slipped too far down the slippery slope, you know, the slippery slope so many warned about. Is it too late to reclimb that slope, or do we tumble and try to right things from the chaos?”

And yet, historically, the best bet is that tomorrow will be like today, but that ten years from now things will be completely different.

I’ve already started writing my semi-annual portfolio review (due June 30, 2025). As I review my stocks and those companies, I’m measuring them against these changes. Most of my investments are in companies that at least claim to be innovative. They seem to be poised to survive better than extractive industries, retail, and basic finance. One has already seen phenomenal interest (QBTS up 1,279% ttm, quantum computing), ‘moderate’ interest (LUNR up 159% commercial lunar industry), while the rest shuffle about teasing success and bankruptcy simultaneously. The month’s not over. 

What’s going to happen? Maybe more of the same, but I suspect we’ll have reason to say, “Well, we haven’t seen that before. That’s something completely different.”