S3T Sunday Jan 22: Davos, Friendshoring, Perplexity Scores, Capital crunch and talent, Deep dish, Magic hedge...

🗺Macro: Global Growth Outlook

This week Cryptos continued to move into higher territory (BTC hit 23K), along with equities - apparently pushed higher by retail investors, though its unclear how many investors will remain convinced that inflation and interest rates are just last year's bad dream. Meanwhile recession worries linger for some and home sales fell to a 12 year low.  

Davos Takeaways

The World Economic Forum's 53rd Meeting in Davos, Switzerland finished this week with economic leaders projecting a "not great" 2.7% global economic growth in the words of Kristalina Georgieva the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "Stay in the middle of realism" she urged (not too optimistic and not too pessimistic).

For more charts like this one, see the Chief Economists 2023 Outlook page here where you can download the entire report.

Key Themes from the event:

• The need for cooperation as the world navigates new economic territory.
• Climate and trade discussions surfaced tensions over US industrial policy and its targeted incentives for companies as well as disappointment in the lack of urgency on climate progress.
• The concern that deglobalization will result in "friendshoring" - nations developing supply chains with friendly nations only and leaving out less advantaged nations. The term appears to have been coined by WTO's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in remarks about the diverging industrial policies of US, EU and China.
• Emerging Tech discussions - notably an at times tense discussion about crypto regulations, and another discussion about the evolution of the metaverse, with a "you heard it here first" quote (see Tweet below) about hospitals being displaced.

Hospitals do face massive challenges and learning curves in the years ahead. Headsets and avatar worlds might somehow become part of the solution, but I'm not clear on how they would make hospitals unnecessary.

💡Strategies: Capitalizing on the Capital Crunch

The new capital environment

It’s not just harder to get money. Getting marketshare is harder.

Why?