Why I'm So Bullish On Southeast Asia

Economics is a very complex subject.

But as is the case with many things in life, you can learn a lot about the big subject of economics by understanding a few baseline principles.

One of those baseline principles is demographics, which is the study of age and population. The fact is that people behave differently as the move through different age classes.

You need young people to buy things. You need older people to capitalize the markets, because in almost every society, older people are the wealthiest and liquidate the markets with cash.

That is, until they get much older, then they are almost removed from the economy as they keep their cash to ride out the remainder of their lives.

Industrialism makes societies older. Why? Because when societies industrialize, it means people move into the city. When you move into the city, you have fewer kids. If you play that out over the course of a few decades, you get a lopsided age demographic that has more older people than younger people.

This has never really happened before.

Well, Southeast Asia (and Mexico) are one of the last remaining demographics that has a positive birthrate

The economies of The Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia will have growing economies over the next decades. This will be especially true if they are able to steal the manufacturing base away from China.

Growth in these countries, is a statistical certainty.