Louis-Vincent Gave
Founding Partner & Chief Executive Officer
After receiving his bachelor's degree from Duke University and studying Mandarin at Nanjing University, Louis joined the French Army where he served as a second lieutenant in a mountain infantry battalion. After a couple of years, Louis left the army and joined Paribas where he worked as a financial analyst—first in Paris, then in Hong Kong.
Louis left Paribas in 2000 to launch Gavekal with his father Charles and Anatole Kaletsky. The idea at the time was that Asia was set to become an ever more important factor in global growth, and that consequently Gavekal needed to offer its clients more information, and more ideas, relating to Asia.
Louis has written six books, the latest being Clash of Empires: Currencies and Power in a Multipolar World which discusses the consequences of a world which seems to be breaking up into three distinct monetary zones, each with its own reserve currency, its own fiscal policy, its own imperial ambitions and perhaps even its own supply chains.
Louis is the non-executive chairman of Roboglobal LLC (the manager of the ROBO.US ETF, one of the largest robotics-dedicated ETFs). He is also a non-executive director at Evergreen-Gavekal, a Bellevue, Washington-based private wealth manager. Louis also sits on the visiting board of Trinity College of Duke University.
In his spare time, Louis likes to spend time on the rugby pitch, whether in Hong Kong (where he plays for Valley RFC), or in France where he is Chairman of the Biarritz Olympique Pays Basque, one of the historically more successful clubs in French rugby.
Louis speaks English and French. He spent many hours studying Mandarin and Spanish, which he once spoke decently. He is married with two sons and two daughters.
For Louis's article archive please click here.
The Daily
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Gavekal Research
May 28, 2021
The Odds Of Oil Breaking Out On The Upside
Since January, most commodity prices have ripped higher, with materials and energy among this year’s best performing sectors. So where do we go from here? Obviously, the price of energy marks the spot where current supply meets current demand.
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Gavekal Research
May 19, 2021
Is It Gold’s Turn To Shine?
Over the last year, the bubbles have just rolled on from one exciting asset to the next, with investors wondering which will follow. In this note, Louis explains why he thinks gold may be the next one.
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Gavekal Research
May 12, 2021
Where Will The Next Deflationary Shock Come From?
The 1986 oil price crash, to an extent, fired the starting gun on 30 years of global deflation. As commodity prices collapsed, so did the Soviet Union, giving the West a deflationary peace dividend. By the early 1990s, Japan’s real estate and equity market busts threatened its banks.
Ideas
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Gavekal Research
June 15, 2021
The Energy Question
Over the last 20 years, China has been the biggest buyer of most commodities. For investors, this meant that when China was tightening, easing up on commodity exposure made sense. That has not been the case in 2021, and in this piece, Louis seeks to explain why.
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Gavekal Research
June 8, 2021
Why Am I Hearing This Now?
Two big storylines have recently emerged in Western media and Louis is not convinced this is down to editors stumbling on new information. In the case of the Wuhan “lab leak” theory and China’s suddenly challenged demography, he thinks that both the US and Chinese governments have an interest in spinning new narratives.
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Gavekal Research
May 28, 2021
The Slow-Motion Reverse Asian Crisis
With hindsight, the key event impacting the global investment environment in 2020-21 may not have been the Covid pandemic but the renminbi’s strengthening. This is the first global crisis of the modern era when China has reacted by allowing its currency to appreciate.
Multimedia
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Gavekal Research
June 4, 2021
Webinar: Global Investment Roundtable, June 2021
The big question is still about how durable the current burst of inflation will prove to be. Anatole and Louis joined Arthur to debate this—and everything else going on in the world economy—at our monthly global investment roundtable.
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Gavekal Research
May 28, 2021
Webinar: The Commodity Spiral
Global commodity prices have been on a tear in recent weeks due to strong global growth prospects and constricted supply. The macro picture, however, is murky, with China simultaneously being the driver of soaring iron ore prices while moving to tighten controls over property and infrastructure spending.
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Gavekal Research
May 7, 2021
Webinar: Global Investment Roundtable, May 2021
Joe Biden's enormous fiscal initiatives mark a potential sea change in the US government’s role in the economy. They may yet get watered down as the US president negotiates with more conservative members of his party, but tax and spend is clearly the new mantra in Washington DC.