Back to the Future II - by George Cotsikis
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Back to the Future II<br>The Scorecard, The War Nobody Priced, and Six Things You Can't Afford to Ignore
George Cotsikis<br>Jun 28, 2026
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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedLife happens<br>Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Also<br>Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Better late than never<br>Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published— a haiku from yours truly
Wishing everyone a very belated healthy and meaningful 2026!
Welcome back to the most irregularly published blog on the interwebs. Still no paid subscription. Still no passive income courses. Still no fin-fluencer status. My dreams of selling a masterclass on “How to Build Generational Wealth While Posting Market Commentary Once Every Year” remain firmly unrealised.<br>But here we are. And since I had the audacity to look back at my 2020 Supertanker Trends in last year’s Back to the Future post — and made some pretty clear calls about where each trend was heading — the only honest thing to do is score myself. Publicly.<br>Janus demands a mark to market.
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”<br>— Niels Bohr (a physicist, not a fund manager — but the point stands)
So let's do this. How did 2025 actually play out against the supertanker trends? And more importantly — as we sit here in the middle of 2026 with a Middle East war, oil still above $70, gold that briefly hit $5,600, Bitcoin in the $60s, and a Fed that's talking about hiking rates — where do we go from here?
Trend #1 — Climate Change: Score 8/10
I said the trend would remain intact. I said greenwashing would continue at scale. I said regions would keep operating as factions, not as a species.<br>The data confirmed it — brutally. 2025 came in as the third-warmest year on record , with global surface temperatures 1.47°C above pre-industrial levels according to Copernicus. The last eleven years have now been the eleven warmest ever recorded. The three-year average from 2023-2025 has exceeded 1.5°C for the first time — the very threshold the Paris Agreement aimed to avoid.<br>Meanwhile, Antarctica recorded its warmest annual temperature ever. Arctic sea ice hit its lowest December extent in the satellite record. Europe logged its highest annual wildfire emissions on record. Weather-related disasters in the US alone caused $115 billion in damage across 23 events exceeding $1 billion each.
Although it is tempting to blame global warming for the latest massive heat wave in Europe this summer I still stand on the side of impartiality. It may be part of the global warming or it may be a statistical outlier. Or a new normal. Whatever it may be, it would extremely poor policy judgement to ignore this as part of a massive clear trend, man made or not.
The supertanker didn’t slow down. It accelerated. If anything, I underestimated how quickly the gap between rhetoric and reality would widen. The investment opportunities here — in adaptation infrastructure, catastrophe insurance, water technology, energy transition — are not hypothetical anymore.
Trend #2 — Ageing Population: Score 9/10
I flagged that the world might reach peak population earlier than expected. In 2025, the data became impossible to ignore.<br>South Korea’s fertility rate has collapsed to 0.7 births per woman — the lowest of any OECD nation and less than a third of the replacement level. China’s fertility sits at 1.0. Japan fell below 700,000 births for the first time in its history. Even the US slipped to 1.6. The global fertility rate now stands at approximately 2.1 — right at replacement level — with two-thirds of all countries already below that line.<br>The UN projects that 38 nations of more than one million people each will experience population decline over the next 25 years, up from 21 in the last 25 years. China alone is expected to lose 155 million people by 2050.
The longevity/fertility scissors are wide open and accelerating. This is not a trend you can reverse with a “baby bonus.” The implications for healthcare, robotics, pension systems, immigration policy, agriculture and consumer markets are massive. Every portfolio needs exposure to this theme — directly or indirectly. If you’re not thinking about this, you’re not thinking long term enough.
Trend #3 — Global Leadership War: Score 11/10
Yes, I’m breaking my own scale. Sue me.<br>If I had written a fictional screenplay of the 2025-2026 geopolitical landscape, my editor would have told me to tone it down for believability. And then the universe said, “Hold my beer.”<br>Act I: The Trade War. The US-China confrontation escalated to levels not seen in modern history. Tariffs on Chinese imports reached 145% at their peak before being walked back to around 30% after months of tit-for-tat escalation. China retaliated with its own tariffs, but more critically, deployed...