Understand the markets’ pattern, rather than fixate on a ‘magic number’

[SINGAPORE] We often navigate our portfolios by looking through the rear-view mirror of the last five or 10 years, assuming the future will be reasonably similar to the recent past.

However, a report from the CFA Institute Research Foundation, Five Financial Eras, suggests we gaze at too small a slice of time.

By analysing nearly a millennium of data, the report’s author, economist Bryan Taylor, argues that while the markets are not a repeating loop, they do follow predictable “zeitgeists” that define entire generations.