Investment Dilemmas

Are there non-traditional investment products that are worth considering and invest in than the current traditional ones widely studied and reported on in the academic literature? The answer is yes.

One of the terminology that is of interest to me in strategy is agility. The global business environment is no more stable as it used to be some 3 decades ago. Therefore, management practices must change. The global business environment is dealing with high volatility. The volatility is partly due to variant customer experience spin by exposure, disruptive technology and business models, geopolitical factors, regulatory challenges etc.

The same fear is being nurtured within the investment arenas. Many investment houses in order to meet the needs and interest of the different stakeholders (I.e. investors, shareholders, corporate interest, regulatory interest etc.) adopted very complicated and complex financial models to develop financial products that are in themselves hollow and yet facade to make them accepted by regulatory bodies and investors. Global stocks performance is going negative due partly to poor performances of businesses owning these stocks. And there is a global fear that the next global crisis soon to materialise is the “Global Stock Exchange “. And with the global expectation that cryptocurrency will be out performing fiat money soon; many of the top financial institutions are looking forward to develop their own capabilities and competence to compete in that space.

The tradegy is the strong competition put up by the country called Facebook to introduce the Calibra that work on the technology of blockchain to move Libra which is a cryptocurrency to be launched and operated by Facebook. The Libra is a middle ground between known cryptocurrency products and current fiat operated monetary system. Facebook is the biggest country in terms of population size.

Premised on the above, investors are looking for ways out from the current traditional investment vehicles to non-traditional investment vehicles which are not liquid but yet have good returns with lower risks.