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The first race of the 2022 Formula One season didn’t disappoint, as Sir Lewis Hamilton sought a strong start to his record-breaking 8th World Championship in Bahrain. Many were quick to write off the Mercedes man, due to a lack of pace in free practice and qualifying compared to rivals Ferrari and Red Bull. Despite the negative outlook, Hamilton still managed to achieve a podium. As value investors we often view negative sentiment around a company as a potential opportunity to capitalise on irrational valuations.

The largest ever land acquisition took place towards the end of last year; it’s value:US$2,400,000. You may be thinking I’m missing a few zeros here, but what I haven’t yet mentioned is that this transaction does not relate to the real world but instead refers to Tokens.com’s purchase within the metaverse.

In November last year, Tokens.com’s subsidiary, Metaverse Group, paid more than US$2.4m for a plot of virtual land in the fashion district of Decentraland, one of several growing platforms within the metaverse. Although this amount may seem obscene to many readers (including myself), the more eye-catching fact here is that it accounted for less than 50bps of real estate sales within the metaverse for 2021.

The latest elevated CPI print of 7.5% has spooked investors this year, triggering volatility in both bond and equity markets. In trying times, it sometimes helps to take the long view. In a recent paper the Bank of England has taken this advice to the extreme, looking back 800 years to the 14th century to calculate the average global GDP-weighted inflation rate of just 1.51%1. Unfortunately, 800 years is not a particularly sensible investment horizon for most people, but there are plenty of other more relevant periods for us to examine when considering the importance of current economic events.

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” – Lenin

The quote is attributed to Lenin shortly before the Russian revolution. The week which started on February 24th, when Russia invaded Ukraine, is one of those weeks. Russia’s aggression and the unfolding humanitarian disaster have shaken the West to its core. The self-indulgent complacency spanning three decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet Union has hit the brick wall of an existential threat to the liberal order of the democratic free World.

The last two years have seen a huge increase in demand for sustainable funds, or those explicitly integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into their processes and portfolios. Naturally, fund companies cottoned on and there has been a proliferation of strategies available for investors to buy. Greenwashing, when marketing material and disclosures overstate the true level of ESG integration within a strategy, was an inevitable consequence of this trend.