Thursday, August 17, 2023

Will Climate Change Suppress The Price of Tech Stocks Due to Crop Failures Keeping Food Costs and Inflation High?

In the financial markets, it seems stunning how nonchalant the vast majority of investors and commentators are to the risks to stocks and bonds from climate impacts. However the world's largest  investor, Norway's sovereign wealth fund, is cutting their tech exposure due to global warning.

For reference, Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest stock market investor with $1.4 trillion in assets under management,made a stunning profit of $143 billion for the first half of 2023, due to the growth of U.S tech companies (the AI craze).

But they are cutting back on tech exposure. Their CEO stated that global warming is lowering food harvests, and thus increasing food prices. The fund expects it will be difficult to reduce inflation worldwide due to high food prices. And high inflation leads to high interest rates. High interest rates produce a poor risk reward for owners of pricey tech stocks versus earning substantial interest fees from bonds. This makes tech investments signifiantly less attractive and far less likely to increase in price.

While food shortages may be the first climate impact to hit the financial markets, the markets seem oblivious to the multitude of long term impacts that are likely to wreck economies worldwide (along with potentially causing mass starvation and making large swathes of the globe unlivable).