From the Last Great Frontier to the Next…

This week is ‘Frontier Investing Week’.

We’re doing this alongside the Megatrend Master Series. That’s an online multimedia event designed to help investors better understand something we call the ‘Frontier Century’.

The series is up to day three now. But it’s not too late to join up for free and catch up with the story so far. If you haven’t already, you can join up here.

That’s not the only change. When you think of the ‘frontier’, you should think of the American frontier and the push west.

So when it comes to frontier investing, what better place to start than the unofficial birthplace of America’s passenger and freight railroad — the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad — than Baltimore, Maryland, on the east coast of the United States…

For most of this week we’ll write to you from Baltimore, giving you our take on what it means to be a frontier investor.

You’ll see in detail the major parallel between the expansion of the American economy in the 19th and 20th centuries with the expansion of China’s economy in the 21st century.

Then next week you’ll read some of the outcomes from this coming weekend’s World Future Society conference, which we’re attending down in Orlando, Florida. Just what will the world look like years from now?

We’ve got a view. We’ll see what others have to say. Until then, back to Baltimore.

Tycoons

Earlier today we strolled down to the Baltimore Inner Harbor area. Before finding something to eat we popped into the big Barnes & Noble bookstore.

We grabbed three books and paid for them…eventually.

All we can say is, it’s not surprising Barnes & Noble [NYSE:BKS] and other bookstores are losing so much money. One person serving slowly at the counter, with a queue of nine people.

Haven’t they figured out that, more than ever, people want things five minutes ago? They don’t want to wait in a queue.

It helps explain why Barnes & Noble’s revenue is on a downward slope. And the company’s most recent annual report revealed a US$47 million loss…after the previous year’s US$157 million loss.

But that’s by-the-by. One of the books we grabbed was The Tycoons by Charles R Morris.

The book tells the story of four of America’s biggest tycoon multi-millionaires (billionaires in today’s money) — Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and JP Morgan.

Barely a couple of pages in, the book reveals some of the existing and yet-to-come parallels between China’s growth and America’s growth:

‘There are no official league tables for “most powerful country,” but by about 1895 America had clearly outdistanced the pack. Few people recognised it at the time. British officials were merely annoyed in 1899 when they realized that they would have to finance their Boer War in America. Just a dozen or so years later, however, the British were in a near panic at the possibility that America might put its financial weight behind Germany.’

Just as few recognised the impact of America’s growth at the time, it seems that few recognise the impact of China’s growth (and other emerging markets) today.

Read the rest of this article at Money Morning