Ian Hamilton

This column is authored by Ian Hamilton, who is the founder of IDS Group. IDS provides fund administration services in Africa and Europe through Malta. He is also the founder of Scotstone Investments, a company that has fund structures and services for global emerging new managers.

There is an elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about, markets are ignoring and the fund managers are not prepared for.

A couple of years ago I attended a conference where a famous hedge fund manager known for his rather florid comments and predictions, forecasted that by the same time the following year World War III would have broken out.

He spoke the following year at the same venue and made no mention of his previous prediction. Afterwards he joined me for dinner and I gently chided him for his prediction and that nothing had happened since he made it twelve months earlier.

He was embarrassed and I helped him out by pointing out that in fact his prediction was correct but that the world had not recognised it because world wars can be in totally different forms and only afterwards do historians recognise it and give it a label of being a global conflict.

"Isms "are something that we need to think of controlling or banning. "Ism" seems to be added on to a word when something becomes radical. Think of Imperialism, Colonialism, Communism, Nazism, Fascism, Marxism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islamism and Zionism. There are many other examples that all end in "ism"

Actually each of those mentioned did, or does have good points, not all is or was evil. But what goes wrong is when it is ta......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.