It’s always a labour of love putting together our annual 100 best charts. This
year is a bit different though. We, Fortnightly Thoughts, are hitting two
milestones; five years and 100 issues. Our passion for charts is undimmed
and we’re excited about the swathe we have in here, including heat maps,
flow charts and our ‘Now and Then’ table showing just how much has
changed in the last five years: iron ore down 77%, global smartphone
penetration up to 75% from 19%, 89% more robots sold pa, cost of
sequencing a genome down 97% and total global market capitalisation up
21%.
And that is what this curation is about - change - and the interconnecting
threads that help explain it. We go from the end of the beginning of the EM
era, the rise of EM competition, reversing globalisation, muted global capex
growth, the broad impacts of technology on competition, flows of people
around the world, the economics of having children, how young people are
changing consumption habits and abundance across more and more things.
All of these are connected, and often in multiple ways.
Along with the 100 charts, we also include some thoughtful insights from our
interviewees from this past year. On the following page is the fifth edition of
our annual crossword. The answers are buried in the charts that follow and
will be provided in the first issue next year. Finally, you can also find a list of
our previous issues. Just let us know if you would like them sent to you. Until
then, we hope this chartbook inspires and entertains you.