BRICS and BATS

GS (an acronym for Goldman Sachs) famously invented the term BRICS in 2001 to identify five emerging markets that investors were advised to follow closely as they developed (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The original intention was more associated with economies that were going to open up rather than double down.

Then we had the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google), that was extended by GS to FAAMGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google) both of which gloss over the renaming of Facebook to Meta and Google to Alphabet. In fact these acronyms should really be MANA and MAAMG, but that’s getting too close to MAGA (Make America Great Again), which is the stock ticker for an ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) that invests in US companies supportive of Republican party candidates. And now we have GRANOLAS, as in GSK, Roche, ASML, Nestlé, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, L’Oréal, LVMH, AstraZeneca, SAP and Sanofi (in fact GRANNNLLASS), the European competitors to the Magnificent Seven (now reduced to MAG 7 and never involved in defence like the eponymous heroes), who are the FAAMG plus Nvidia and Tesla, the latter has not been very magnificent so far this year.

So what’s going on? Rather than doing the hard work of working out which companies’ prospects are best, random clusters of companies are aggregated together because of a passing moment of similarly high market returns, some on the way up, others on the way down. The actual name doesn’t really matter, and if you miss something out, you can just add it in to a new acronym. It’s utter nonsense. The clue is in the word ‘acronym’ which in fact stands for A Casual Record Of Names You Manufacture.

But Mammon can only follow where the church has trodden before. Churches everywhere are adorned with the acronym IHS, a Greek abbreviation for Jesus, like INRI placed by the Romans on Jesus’ cross. Old habits die hard.

At Yoke we specialize in GHA (Good Honest Advice), usually served with a GSH (Good Sense of Humour).

We wish you a Happy Easter, and have a good break.


Guy and James