Editorial
The Great Divergence — After the Break, Only Strategy Remains
INVESTMENT THE ORIGINAL – Issue Nr. 027 | December 2025 – only via
For nearly a decade, investing functioned on autopilot.
US technology led. Capital followed. Risk was hidden inside concentration, and diversification was treated as a legacy concept rather than a necessity.
That world no longer exists.
Issue Nr. 027 begins where the rupture has already occurred. The narrative has not merely weakened—it has failed. What remains is not confusion, but a market that finally prices reality instead of repetition.
This is the first issue written after the break.
Markets No Longer Move Together — And That Is the Point
The defining characteristic of the current cycle is not volatility, but dispersion.
Assets no longer rise because others do. Regions no longer follow benchmarks by default. Capital now discriminates—between balance sheets, geographies, cash flows, and credibility.
The monoculture is gone.
In its place stands a fragmented but healthier market structure, where outcomes depend on construction, not conviction. Investors who still rely on a single engine of return are discovering that concentration is not strategy—it is dependency.
Capital Has Memory Again
2025 reintroduced something markets had forgotten: consequence.
Higher financing costs exposed weak structures. Narrative-driven valuations lost sponsorship. The market stopped funding ambition in isolation and began demanding execution.
Cash flow reasserted itself as the ultimate arbiter.
This is not a retreat from growth. It is a redefinition of it. Growth without discipline no longer compounds—it decays.
Global Rebalancing Is Not a Trade — It Is a Cycle
One of the most persistent errors investors continue to make is treating global diversification as a tactical idea.
The resurgence of developed markets outside the US was not a one-year anomaly. It was the mechanical result of valuation gaps, capital neglect, and earnings normalization converging.
Capital does not remain loyal.
It remains efficient.
The rebalancing now underway is structural, not sentimental.
Investing Without a Single Narrative
This issue is not designed to explain the past. That work is finished.
Issue Nr. 027 is about operating in a world where no single story dominates—and none should. The framework emphasizes robustness over precision, optionality over forecasts, and diversification as defense rather than decoration.
We are not searching for the next theme.
We are constructing portfolios that survive multiple regimes.
The New Baseline
The age of effortless alignment between markets is over. What replaces it is more demanding—but also more honest.
Success now belongs to investors who understand cycles, respect dispersion, and build portfolios that do not rely on being right about one future.
This issue marks that baseline.
Not a conclusion.
A continuation—after the illusion has cleared.
Bernd Pulch 