SWAG: the industry's latest acronym

SWAG: THE INDUSTRY'S LATEST ACRONYM

Following BRICs and CIVETs, Joe Roseman identifies the next acronym to hit the investment world as silver, wine, art and gold (SWAG) punch well above their weight.

A few years ago, Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs almost revolutionised the way many people thought about emerging markets. He coined the term ‘BRICs’. It is successful because it works on so many levels. Investing in the BRICs has become an asset class of its own. This got me thinking about asset classes generally and just what it is that differentiates one asset class from another.  And, once I got started thinking about that, I started to think about how specific asset classes had performed. Some assets, in particular, stood out to me as ones that had performed especially well over the...