The global response to COVID-19 has been nothing short of a technological revolution in the healthcare sector. My colleague Ty Lee wrote recently about developments in diagnostics, therapy and vaccination technologies[1]. Perhaps most remarkable has been the speed with which innovations in these technologies have come about, pointing to the scale of human ingenuity. Read more …
On 10 January 2020, the first novel coronavirus genome sequence was made public. This accomplishment effectively fired the starting gun in the race to find a treatment for COVID-19. Three decades ago, it took 13 years to sequence the human genome.[1] The latest machines will do it in just over an hour[2]. Advances in genome sequencing and in other healthcare technologies have played a critical role in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. The most critical healthcare technologies fall into three broad categories: diagnostics, therapy and vaccination. Read more …
Very few will mourn the passing of 2020. But those hoping for a calmer new year were swiftly disappointed.
2021 was only six days old when the US Capitol was stormed by a motley crew of extremists and fantasists. This perplexing event met its financial markets equivalent in the very same month. Gamestop shares soared 1,745% in the first 17 trading days of the year. Read more …
Hindsight is 2020
2020 was a monumental year on just about every level. It was a year that challenged us to reconsider almost all our prior assumptions. Even more remarkable therefore, that climate change remained a persistent issue on investors’ agendas through the year. Read more …
As a naturally skeptical group, investors might be forgiven for expressing some suspicion at the growth in ‘net zero carbon’ pledges over recent months. One wag on Twitter quipped that he would like to commit to ‘net zero alcohol by 2050’. A preferred New Year’s resolution to the ‘dryanuary’ that would actually compel him to stop drinking alcohol! Read more …
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. It is only four-and-a-half years since the UK decided to leave the European Union, which it finally did at the end of last month. But so much has changed since 2016 that it can feel like peering back into a different age. Read more …
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by his alias ‘Lenin’, was reputed to have remarked that ‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen’. This certainly feels like a good description of the past few weeks. Read more …
For anyone who has yet to watch Derek Sivers’ TED talk on ‘how to start a movement’, I highly recommend it[i]. A lone dancer at a music festival dances on a hill, seemingly oblivious to the sardonic glances of fellow festival goers. Before long though, the lone dancer has become a leader at the heart of a whirling mass of ecstatic dancers. As Mr. Sivers points out in his presentation, ‘a leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed.’ Read more …
Do individuals make history? Or are larger forces at work, sometimes crystalising through personalities, but sometimes not? Read more …
The ESG ‘stampede’
The WHEB team has a fifteen-year track record in sustainable investing. Looking back over this period, we can say that this is undoubtedly the most exciting period in this history. We say this with the scars still-fresh from fighting what was, until very recently, a lonely battle. Many of our clients have also been on this journey and are now enjoying what we’ve been calling the ‘ESG stampede’. Read more …