Heinrich Kramer.
Who on Earth is that?
I found myself asking the same thing when listening to The Coming Storm podcast. A figure befitting the week of Halloween, Heinrich was a 15th-century German priest who wrote Malleus Maleficarum – better known as the handbook for witch-hunting.
A wild, terrifying book that most of the clerical establishment at the time paid zero attention to and, deservedly, should’ve been the last we heard of him.
So how is it that six centuries later it’s being raised as the introduction to a topical article? That’s thanks to the printing press. A book initially disregarded as one man’s horrid fantasies ended up being one of the best-selling books, for the better part of 200 years and laid the groundwork for the infamous witch trials you and I are familiar with today.
The invention of the printing press in the 15th century allowed ideas to spread widely and quickly for the first time. While this enabled and democratised the spread of knowledge, it also led to the dissemination of sensationalist and inflammatory material.
Sound familiar?
The printing press is analogous to the changes we see before us today. We live in an age of conspiracy theories, social media and artificial intelligence, where everyone at the click of a button can generate their truth – not the truth, their truth.
We are seeing this hyperbolised to the max in the run-up to the US elections on November 5th. Where according to news flows any of the following could be true:
Trump is a dictator / Harris is a Marxist
Biden’s radical left is trying to kill Trump / The assassination attempt was staged
Trump is a Russian agent / The deep state is rigged against him
Harris will destroy the US economy / Tariffs will make Americans poorer
The list could go on and on, without above even reaching opposing views on immigration, border controls and even the fate of democracy itself.
It’s a lot, right? And it’s tiring. Why oh why can’t we go back to a simpler time when one could have faith in the six o’clock news and the truth be laid before us on a platter? The news flash here though is that that’s never been the case, at least not completely. Fewer sources meant greater control over the narrative, and perhaps whilst not intended to be used with any malfeasance, it’s inevitable that bias creeps in and brings misinformation, intended or not, along with it - interwoven from the witch-hunting above to Watergate, from the Vietnam War to conflicts we see tragically unfolding today.
While this might not be the most light-hearted topic for the Monday Blues (Disclaimer: Monday is not in fact blue and has no political affiliation), it is important and is something that is particularly relevant to us as investment managers.
With the advent of the internet, social media and now AI, we are further seeing social orders and institutions breaking down and, on one side of the coin, furthering divides and stoking confusion.
I however propose the other side of said coin – further democratisation of (mis)information is a good thing.
Radical, but as more sources become available, one has more opportunities to scrutinise and compare the information they consume, increasing their likelihood of reaching a sound conclusion.
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Nothing worth having comes easy”, and this applies to the base of knowledge that one is responsible for building. As part of the Global Blue Chip team, we do this daily; sifting through copious amounts of noise to find information, sources and people, contrarian or not, that we deem to be credible in order to make well-researched investment decisions on your behalf.
This approach applies across our fund range. As thematic investors we seek to understand and utilise long-term trends for the benefit of our client’s capital, and a key means of doing this is to question narratives as much as possible as we try to paint a full picture of both upsides and downsides that may not be obvious at first glance. Put simply, a long-term view over short-term noise.
In an age of ever-increasing hyperbole where one man’s truth is another’s fake news, we strive to be sceptical but inquisitive, well-researched but open-minded. By doing such, along with sticking to our process, we endeavour to find opportunities where others don’t.