Nearly a decade after one of the great debt binges of all time, Chinese economic growth and credit creation have slowed. Today, stimulus is being undertaken. This is not a crisis, this is reform.

As recessionary pressures continue to build, rotating portfolios toward high grade, defensive assets will prove to be a prescient asset allocation decision for investors.

The vast majority of emerging market economies are fundamentally healthy and are being driven by broad thematics, not just evolving consumption patterns.

While infrastructure is known as a defensive asset class, it is set for enormous growth over coming decades, making it an attractive investment proposition for years to come.

Recent central bank decisions have strengthened the conviction that the New Neutral is a global reality which will have long-term implications on investment decisions.

Global high yield corporate bonds represent an attractive asset class for investors searching for a diversified source of income.

Easy money in credit markets is gone, and corporate bonds face more risk for less return. Structural liquidity deterioration raises a black swan risk of a disorderly sell-off spilling into other markets.

The best chance for survival among what were regarded as the most defensive of stocks is to be the biggest, most revered brand – or at least hold second spot. Others will struggle and many will disappear.

The new normal is a world of higher systemic risk, which implies portfolio managers will need to dig more deeply into their tool kit of risk-understanding and mitigation techniques.

Returns in emerging market equities have been disappointing in recent years. But the stark rise of populism in the western world may actually present an opportunity for many emerging economies.

Slowing growth with extreme recession risk, coupled with a combative populist government, may well see Italy trigger a crisis in European debt and the currency, causing a substantial global volatility event.

Rates are normalising, populism is on the rise, technology is driving disruption. But not every perceived winner will win and not every perceived loser will be destroyed forever.

On some measures, global equity valuations are the most attractive in several years. Risks, however, have certainly increased and in many cases are more difficult to frame.

For most of the last 10 years, the world's major central banks have been creating significant amounts of cheap money, inflating several bubbles. Those bubbles are beginning to burst.

Drawing on his unique background as part of the elite leadership team of the CIA's Clandestine Service, David shares his views and analysis of the current geopolitical landscape.

Much macroeconomic analysis is very narrow in scope. ESG factors are ignored all together. A new indicator of national progress measures economic dynamism and progress on meeting ESG goals.

Two of the defining characteristics of the global investment landscape over the last 30 years are being reversed - globalisation (by economic nationalism) and finalisation (as we've reached peak debt).

We see three scenarios for 2019 - is it a benign outlook like 2016? A bubble bursting like 2000? Or will inflation accelerate?

This view has dominated finance theory for the last 50 years or so. But prices change because people trade, and those trades leave behind a trace of all the behavioural biases people bring.

Buffett called Bitcoin rat poison squared, Schiller called it a financial bubble. We disagree. Bitcoin is perhaps the most important financial innovation ever. And it is one step closer to "ideal money".