In recent years, we’ve seen a number of developments that suggest investors should rethink what they thought they knew.

Countless reports have focused on how new technologies, such as self-driving cars, will disrupt global industries. Yet, some disruptions outside the domain of technology get much less attention.

We highlight three disruptions for investors to think about when it comes to markets, economics and politics.

Disruption #1: Shifting Global Consumption

Asia is disrupting and breaking the dominance of the United States in terms of the global consumption pattern. In recent years, many Asian countries, especially densely populated ones, such as China, India and Indonesia, have seen a surge in domestic consumption. As the chart below shows, consumption is growing faster in these countries than in the United States, and this is creating more balance in global consumption than we have seen in the past.

Disruption #2: Inflation Of Financial Assets

Since the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), global central banks around the world have pumped vast amounts of monetary stimulus into the global economy. Those of us who have studied economics thought that would lead to massive inflation across the globe.

That hasn’t happened yet, though we are starting to see signs of rising inflation in a number of markets. One of the reasons could be the massive expansion in global population, which is keeping labor costs down.

That said, we’ve seen a different sort of inflation—not reflected in the typical consumer price indexes—stem from the global stimulus program. We’re referring to asset price inflation, as much of the stimulatory money from central banks went into the stock markets, real-estate markets and other assets.

That essentially created the wealth effect. People who held on to their assets after the GFC have done phenomenally well. For example, in the United States, average household net worth nearly doubled from $105,000 in 2008 to $199,000 in 2017, as the chart below shows.

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