ALO37: Investing in the New World Order ft. Charles-Henry Monchau

**Charles-Henry Monchau** (0:01)
These reports were, I think, high openings, and they should be taken with a lot of importance by the European leaders, that there needs to be a wake-up call for kids, for the next generation. Something needs to happen because we are in a dangerous situation at this stage.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:20)
Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged. In markets, success doesn't come from predicting what happens next. It comes from being prepared for what you can't predict.
In each episode, we go deep with some of the world's most thoughtful minds in investing, economics and beyond, to understand how they think, how they prepare and how they decide, and the experiences that shaped how they see the world. No noise, no shortcuts, just real conversations to help you think better and invest with confidence.

**Alan Dunne** (0:53)
Welcome back to Top Traders Unplugged. My name is Alan Dunne and today I'm delighted to be joined by Charles-Henry Monchau. Charles is CIO of CIS Private Bank in Geneva.
Charles has had a long career in the markets before being at CIS Private Bank. He was at Rothschild, EFG, Deutsche Bank, Lombard ODA, and BNP Paribas. An extensive career, Charles. Great to see you. Great to have you on. How are you doing?

**Charles-Henry Monchau** (1:18)
Great. Thank you so much for the invite, Alan. Looking forward for the discussion.

**Alan Dunne** (1:22)
Absolutely. We have a lot to get into, but we do always like to start by getting a sense of how people got interested and started in markets. I mentioned you've been around quite a while and worked in a lot of them, established in big houses. How did you get interested in markets and investing in the first place?

**Charles-Henry Monchau** (1:38)
I think it was pure coincidence. Internship at BNP Paribas, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. My only passion at the time was horse riding, something which is very popular in the islands.
So I was just doing internship for the sake of it. Then I came across the investment department and I told myself, well, this is what I want to do. It's great to have a job where you need to be interested in what is going on in the world, what would be on the geopolitical side, macro side, and also try to make money out of it. And I like, I think, the fact that you can multitask. You need not only to be, let's say, a proficient in terms of financial research, understanding the markets and macro, but you also need to articulate that into something which is digestible by clients. You also need to manage people and be an asset for the firm you work with. So I think that's quite a mix.
And as I always say to my kids, first and foremost, you need to do something you love in life because you spend a lot of hours at your job. And to me, I think investing is a kind of hobby. So I'm lucky enough to have my job basically being my hobby. That's the way I put it usually.

**Alan Dunne** (3:12)
Good stuff. Yeah, that's a great characterization of working in the markets, I guess. I know you've just published your H2 outlook and within that you talk about various structural themes. So I think that's a good jumping off point.
And I mean, it is certainly one thing that we've been talking about a lot on the podcast is that we're in a new macroeconomic regime. And I know you touch on this yourself, the kind of changed geopolitical and economic order. I mean, in your words, how would you describe that change in the order that we're currently living in versus maybe where we were five or 10 years ago?

**Charles-Henry Monchau** (3:49)
Yeah. So I think the question is not to say if we live in, let's say, a world which is better or worse is when it comes to investing, you need to adapt to the new geopolitical landscape and definitely we call it, let's say, the East-West Divide. We think that there are two superpowers which are US and China. They are in a kind of economic war and they want to dominate on three very, let's say, key points. The first one is obviously AI. They know that AI is not only important in terms of technological and economic advantage, but also for defense, which is the other, let's say, obsession we'll have is that in this world, which is much more uncertain, we need to also lead on defense. And then when you want to lead on AI and you want to lead on defense, you also need to lead on electric power.