As developing economies embark on one of the biggest building booms in history and China boosts its domestic consumption, global savings growth is constrained. To support the changes in the market, global investments must exceed savings to push real interest rates up.
And so, the five reasons why the cost of capital can only go up are:
1. Decline in investment rate of mature economies.
2. New wave of capital investment driven by emerging markets.
3. Global investment demand projected to peak astronomically in 2020.
4. Pressure on real interest rates (unless global savings increase) from coming investment boom.
5. Gap between demand for capital to invest and supply of savings to widen, increasing interest rates.