Social, political and environmental (“SPE”) trends have long-term impacts on businesses and countries. These trends may follow normal cycles spanning 3-7 years or super cycles spanning decades. Houghton Street identifies these trends early and uses the analysis as one of the deal generators for investments. While these trends may take years or decades to materialize, we can avoid inevitable surprises by applying futuristic thinking and using scenario-planning methods. The impact of these forces form the backdrop of our macroeconomic analysis and provides a basis for identify future regulatory changes that have non-uniform impact across industries.

 

From these trends, we identify sectors and companies that will benefit from these seismic shifts, back-testing them to ascertain robustness and accuracy of our findings. By applying these techniques in the context of current and future events, Houghton Street Partners can use these macroeconomic inputs as part of deal origination and selection.