Every industry has trend lines, and one of the lines in the world of trading is the trend is your friend until it is not.

In an article by Mike Dolan of Reuters, trillions of dollars of AI investment spending earmarked over the next 5 years hinge on a belief that a grand technological transformation of the entire US – and likely global – economy is under way.

Strategists at the world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock unveiled their annual outlook, which showed just how difficult it would be for even this sort of tech metamorphosis to knock off the US off the steady course it has mapped over a century and a half.

The report from BlackRock Investment Institute noted the US sits at the global economic frontier. All major innovations of the last 150 years – including steam, electricity and the digital revolution – were not enough for it to break out of its 2% growth trend. Doing so is a tall order.

By that they mean AI could begin to generate, test and improve new concepts of its own- accelerating and driving scientific breakthrough in materials, medicines and tech.

Blackrock’s charts maps US GDP per capita growth stretching back to 1870. Aside from the big swings around the Second WW II, the two notable periods of above-trend were in the late 19th century and the 1990s. But it never strays far from the 2% line.

Maybe this time it’s different.

While we wait for AI’s long promise to unfold, the immediate economic horizon is likely still constrained by that 2% trend line – to the extent that bottlenecks in the labor market or existing supply chains or construction capacity still exist.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, if you are a trade then the trend is your friend until it is not. If you are long term holder, it is important to know what the trends are and have been to decide whether to reinvest or ensure your portfolio is well diversified.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.