My Electrician Drives a Porsche?: Investing in the Rise of the New Spending Class -Gianni Kovacevic

(Reviewed by JD Jung)

“If a youthful electrician on a mountain top can have an epiphany that permanently changes the course of his life, then could a middle-aged doctor like me clue into the ramifications of the largest migration of human beings in the history of the world, and attempt to profit gloriously from it?”

When fifty-eight year old Doc Anderson  sees patient, Johnny Rossi, he can’t help but think of him as an irresponsible Gen-Xer. Johnny, a young electrician, twisted his ankle during a hiking trip in the Swiss Alps, and it doesn’t seem to want to heal. Doc learns that Johnny travels a lot. How could a young electrician manage to have traveled more than a mature family doctor?

When Johnny agrees to help Doc with an electrical renovation in his home, Anderson learns so much more. Johnny travels the world to learn more about it, to learn about trends. The longest trend in history is consumption. Through several meetings  he learns Johnny’s business plan: investing in green energy.  And what does green energy depend on? Copper.

Author Gianni Kovacevic, an investor in natural resources, refers to himself as a “realistic environmentalist “. He believes that “the umbilical cord of human progress…is energy”.

Am I convinced of the inevitable upward swing of certain commodities, namely copper? I can’t really say that, but he does give some useful advice. One is that to learn about coming trends in the world it is best to study page 16 of the newspaper instead of the front page. Yes, that makes sense. But how do you decide which stock or fund to invest in? I guess you’ll have to subscribe to his newsletter, which I’m not willing to do.

However I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the fictional story itself. I would recommend My Electrician Drives a Porsche?: Investing in the Rise of the New Spending Class for that point alone  and some ideas on investing that I had never thought of before.