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

I have had the pleasure... and a great pleasure it was... to have read Giannis book, and I strongly recommend it to everyone in the investment/trading business. Eyes will be opened to what is actually going on in the broader world, but most especially to what is going on in China as that nation leaps from lifestyles of the eighteenth and nineteenth century directly into the twenty-second century, and, most importantly, they are not going back.

Gianni understands that, and through the metaphor of his Porsche-owning electrician, we are able to see more clearly what the future shall be in the world of commerce and commodities, and if Giannis electrician plays his hand properly his next car wont be a Porsche, it will be a Bentley.

Dennis Gartman
editor/publisher, The Gartman Letter

Its an engaging journey through the worlds of investing and emerging markets. Readable and thought-provoking, this book should be interesting and valuable to both rookie and veteran investors.

Ross Beaty
founder, Pan American Silver Corp.

An eye opener! What will it take to build the green economy of the future? Gianni provides valuable insights.

Stuart McNish
founder, Conversations That Matter

Finally, a readable, common-sense review of the implications of emerging markets. Long overdue!

Don Lindsay
CEO, Teck Resources

Published in the United States of America by Greenleaf Book Group Press

Austin, Texas

www.gbgpress.com

Published in Canada by Granville Island Publishing Ltd.

212 1656 Duranleau St.

Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H 3S4

www.granvilleislandpublishing.com

Published concurrently in Germany as Mein Elektriker Fhrt Einen Porsche? by FinanzBuch Verlag

Copyright 2016 Gianni Kovacevic

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Distributed by Greenleaf Book Group

For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Greenleaf Book Group at PO Box 91869, Austin, TX 78709, 512.891.6100.

Distributed in Canada by Granville Island Publishing

For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases in Canada, please contact Granville Island Publishing at 604.688.0320, 1.877.688.0320 or

Text design and composition by Omar Gallegos and Granville Island Publishing

Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group and Sheila Parr

Edited by Kyle Hawke and Greenleaf Book Group

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

USA and International Print ISBN: 978-1-62634-251-4

Canada Print ISBN: 978-1-92699-167-2

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62634-271-2

Part of the Tree Neutral program, which offsets the number of trees consumed in the production and printing of this book by taking proactive steps, such as planting trees in direct proportion to the number of trees used: www.treeneutral.com

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

15 16 17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

This book is dedicated to my heroes:

NJ for believing,

CG for always being there,

RB for taking that chance,

FH for wisdom,

and FCD for letting me in.

You can never comprehend how much of a difference you have made.

Excerpt from the speech

Citizenship in a Republic

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Delivered by Teddy Roosevelt
at the Sorbonne in Paris, France
April 23, 1910

I once was told that learning is as natural to a human being as blooming is to perennial flowersit just happens. Much in the same way, adolescent curiosities shape our lifelong desires, and hopefully, bestow some level of wisdom. Socrates, once thought to be the wisest man in the universe, admitted, I know one thing: that I know nothing. I then ask myself, how could I, a person surely eclipsed by countless scholars, possibly present a book about the ramifications of population growth?

In Steve Jobs 2005 commencement address to Stanfords graduating class, he noted that life is a bunch of dots that eventually start connectinga special thanks to Frank Giustra for pointing that out to me. The title of this book refers to an electrician who drives a Porsche, however, as one will read, the underlying thesis has nothing to do with fast cars. Moreover, the idea is for readers to gain a greater understanding of the demographic shift taking place around the world due to urbanization, and the role commodities play as the keystone underpinning any economy.

Serendipitously enough, my dots did connect, just as Messieurs Jobs and Giustra suggested they would. An electrician who is obsessed with technology in the 1990s and consumer growth in the 2000s unexpectedly becomes an expert in the core building block that makes them both possible: copper. So the story you are about to enjoy, told as a tale between two buddies, celebrates a role reversal as the life experiences of the younger electrician enable him to share his unique perspectives with his Baby Boomer doctor friend.

It should also be noted that I spent my entire childhood reading encyclopedias and National Geographic magazines. This foundation would spawn a passion, leading me to follow some of the great thinkers and economic historians of our time such as: Fareed Zakaria, Niall Ferguson, Frank Holmes, Don Coxe, and the green-metal maven himself, Robert Friedland. Their influence throughout this book is obvious.

Life will always kick sand in your eyes, so it becomes a never-ending task to surround oneself with heroes that act as protective goggles. I have been very fortunate to have incredible people around me to champion so many of my crazy ideas; thus I acknowledge and honor anyone who gave me a chance, anywhere along the way. This beautiful sentiment, from my fellow Pacific Northwesterner, sums up precisely how I will try, surely in vain, to somehow pay each one of them back.

Gianni Kovacevic

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

Melinda Gates

Few people appreciate that their lives depend on copper and other natural resources. From the moment you wake up in your climate-controlled home to when you go to bed at night and set your alarm on your mobile phone, you are consuming natural resources that make life as you know it possible on Earth. The roof over your head, your car, your computer, your plumbing, your heating and cooling systems, your telecommunicationschances are they all contain copper. And as our global population surges past seven billion and millions of people in China and India continue the inevitable human pursuit of progress and migrate from farms to cities, demand for copper and other resources will only grow.