Genius Group’s Global Impact Investor Summit: Top 10 Investment Trends 2022

At the recent Global Impact Investor Summit 2022 hosted on the Edtech platform GeniusU, and attended by over 2,000 investors from 100 countries, keynote speakers including: World-renowned investor Jim Rogers; Roger James Hamilton, Founder & CEO of Genius Group; Marcus de Maria; Founder and Chairman of Investment Mastery; Simon Zutshi, Founder & CEO of property investors network; and Mark Robinson, Founder of International Academy of Wealth, shared their top 10 investment trends for 2022.

1.   Dollar Destruction – 35% of all U.S. Dollars in existence have been printed in the last 10 months. This endless printing of money is not helping economies or the wealth gap between the rich and the poor and resulting in the record inflation rates we are seeing today. Banks around the world are predicting a recession towards the end of 2023 and early 2024, worse than we have previously seen and leading to what Jim Rogers predicts will be “the worst bear market in our lifetimes.”

2.   The Age of Exponentials – As we see the fall of Society 4.0 and the disconnection and distrust from Society 4.0 and the information age, we are also seeing the birth of Society 5.0 and the imagination age, with the growth of new exponential technologies in Edtech, Medtech, Greentech, Spacetech and Fintech. Society 5.0 will see big data collected by IOT and converted into a new type of intelligence by AI, impacting every corner of society and decentralizing the remaining centralized systems such as education, medical, energy, space and finance. This future will see investments being focused on investing in the future, with investor Cathie Wood saying, “the future of investing is investing in the future.”

3.   The Meme Generation – We are moving from the “Me” generation to the “Meme” generation. In the Society 4.0 “Me” generation, influencers, youtubers and celebrities profited from their ability to leverage global platforms to create viral growth. In the Society 5.0 “Meme” generation, their followers and communities are now co-investing and co-profiting from the same viral growth. The combination of retail investing, NFTs and cryptocurrencies linked to viral themes is democratizing capital and enabling global communities to create both impact and income on the products and missions that have viral appeal.

4.   The DeFi economy – In the Information Age, media and communication went through Peter Diamandis’ six Ds of exponentials: Becoming digitized, demonitized, dematerialized and democratized, with the curve of change beginning as deceptive and ending as disruptive. We are now at the beginning of the same curve with the banking and global investment system, where a heavily centralized system of government and private banks are being bypassed by new decentralized forms of trust, from cryptocurrencies to smart contracts and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). The result of this over the next decade is a shift in the system away from the middleman to new decentralized finance models that are faster, cheaper and self-regulated.

5.   Stocks & Crypto Trading – Traditional currency is being taken away from the individual at source via taxes, bank charges, the rising costs of goods and currency debasement. While trading in stocks and cryptocurrencies is highly volatile right now, they potentially provide a hedge against the fall in fiat currencies as well as a hedge against the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics. In the future, individuals will not need to earn through jobs under threat of technological employment when they can instead earn by investing in the companies that are creating the AI and robots, and have the robots work for them.

6.   The Digital Decade – The revenue from the virtual world is projected to approach $400 billion by 2025. We are moving into a new blockchain-enabled metaverse with a digital layer across all real-world assets from property to companies to currencies, enabling investors and entrepreneurs to share in the present and future value of their assets in real time and across borders.

7.   The Rise of Robots – Automation will empower humans and increase productivity and wage growth. It has the potential to shift unpaid labour to paid labour and Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, believes that automation will add 5% or $1.2 trillion to US GDP over the next 5 years. This will transform the world of work and lead to a shift in the dynamics of enterprise itself. Within ten years, the most competitive companies are likely to have an A.I. driven robot on their board or even as their CEO.

8.   Genius Generation – By 2025, entrepreneurship is likely to be taught in schools and as a preferred option to employment. To keep up with the pace of change, students are going to need to learn how to create a job instead of get a job that may not exist when they are trained and ready. Edtech will continue to improve people’s skills, wealth and life chances with more education available to a wider demographic. The UN sustainable development goals will be met by people and companies who have invested in themselves and in the future.

9.   Wholesale Investing – By teaming up with other likeminded groups or collaborators, investors can access a vast new area of wholesale investing. As with purchasing anything in wholesale the off-market price is always less than the listed retail price. This has traditionally been the domain of institutional investors, investment banks and high net worth individuals. These same opportunities are now available to retail investors who group together to combine buying power or industry knowledge – from property to stocks to other asset classes. We are seeing a global shift from ‘retail investors’ to ‘wholesale investors.’

10.   Time for Impact – The question “how are my investments making a positive impact in the world?” is an increasingly common question for investors, as purpose-driven profits becomes a criteria within many investment portfolios. This goes hand-in-hand with the growth of Society 5.0 as the coming Age of Impact, where we get to vote on what gets focused on or fixed with our money. The division between enterprise and philanthropy has blurred, with Elon Musk seeing the work of Tesla and SpaceX to preserve and grow humanity as being more purpose-driven than that of many charities. The result is Impact Investment Portfolios that can maximise both profit and purpose.

The Impact Investor Summit ran from March 28^th to April 1^st, 2022, via the GeniusU Edtech platform, and was part of the Impact Investor Festival, which was attended by over 20,000 investors. Hosted by Roger James Hamilton, Founder and CEO of Genius Group, the 2-day exclusive online summit attracted over 2,000 retail and seasoned investors to participate in sessions by world-class speakers and mentors including world-renowned investor Jim Rogers, Marcus de Maria of Investment Mastery, Simon Zutshi of property investors network and Mark Robinson of The International Academy of Wealth. The Impact Investor Summit is an annual event.