In the long term stocks and software are smoke and tissues.
Actual long term investors today are looking at an additional two billion people by 2050, increased demand for food and water, and regional destability due to climate change.
Long term investors today are buying land and resource access about the globe, or moving to secure such things via private contractor | mercanary armies.
China has purchased one in four US pigs (the farms, the feed, the processing), the Saudis have locked in access to large quantities of US aquifers, and Eric Prince wants the US to retake Africa: https://theintercept.com/2024/02/10/erik-prince-off-leash-im...
These are all examples of securing access to water and food resources to ensure supply into the long term.
The investment payoff of is having those resources when others don't, being secure in what you need and being able to profit from what you don't in times of extreme demand.
The vast majority of my bet would be on climate change. People aren't acting on it fast enough to turn it. It's been modeled very well, so you know what will happen in 2050 if things don't change. It will cause an insane amount of damage, especially in archipelagos like where I live. You can't just add more drainage and try to drain the sea. New York and Singapore are raising their shorelines, but most places just don't have this kind of terraforming capacity.
Property is the easy one, but it's useful to look at things like farms along affected areas.
> so you know what will happen in 2050 if things don't change.
Sure, Siberia will be open praire cattle country; cossacks and reindeer herders will be cowboys mustering steers.
Russia knows this also, hence the hiring of US cowboys to train russians and the recent prevalance of Russian Rodeos in both the US and in Russia.
This all goes to the question of long term investment, projected affected areas are being abandoned by deep investors who have turned to probable new prospects.
Farming real estate questions here in Western Australia have already turned to what land will be prime in 20 years and what used to wet boggy questionable land is already fetching a climbing price in anticipation of when it becomes "sweet".
Indeed, the software I worked on here in my home state back when I was interested in long term investment is still about today, 14+ years back it was broken into parts and sold on, here's one section, now run more or less "as was" by S&P
Our clients way back when were mostly all billionaires, some personal, some corporate; between client discussions, GIS data linking, trends, etc we were able to get a line on a bunch of penny stocks that were selling then ( ~2003 ) for 2c (AU) and now trade at $20+ each.
None of that came from looking at day trading, it came from deeply looking at global energy and resource demands against known and suspected sources as yet unexploited.
Actual long term investors today are looking at an additional two billion people by 2050, increased demand for food and water, and regional destability due to climate change.
Long term investors today are buying land and resource access about the globe, or moving to secure such things via private contractor | mercanary armies.
China has purchased one in four US pigs (the farms, the feed, the processing), the Saudis have locked in access to large quantities of US aquifers, and Eric Prince wants the US to retake Africa: https://theintercept.com/2024/02/10/erik-prince-off-leash-im...
These are all examples of securing access to water and food resources to ensure supply into the long term.
The investment payoff of is having those resources when others don't, being secure in what you need and being able to profit from what you don't in times of extreme demand.