Sleepy French, Macho Italians Are Sure Stock Bets: Matthew Lynn

Saw this on Bloomberg today.

Commentary by Matthew Lynn
May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Smart investors know that if you can pick the start of a bull market, you can make a lot of money. The problem is that these points aren't easy to identify, so it may be best to choose investments that follow a general pattern based on national habits.

Last week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developmentoffered some indirect help by publishing its findings on social trends in the 30-nation grouping. So what are the big bets for the future that we should be making now? Here are eight to consider:

French coffee producers: The French sleep more than people in any other country, catching 9 hours of shut-eye a night on average (with the U.S. ranked second). In a competitive global economy, France will have to wake up as its working day gets longer and falls into line with the rest of the world. Its people will need some coffee to get them going.

Italian pay-per-view sports broadcasters: If you are going to be a guy, Italy remains the country of choice. Italian men, three decades after the arrival of mainstream feminism, grab 80 minutes more leisure time than Italian women. The reason: Men do less housework. If you include the few minutes it takes to stack
the refrigerator with beer, you get the duration of a soccer game. So there are no prizes for guessing why Italian guys never get out the vacuum. Broadcasting AC Milan matches looks like it will be a great business for a long time to come.

Finnish technology companies: Maybe you think it is just a quirk of fate that mobile-phone maker Nokia Oyj, Europe’s most successful technology company, happens to come from one of the region’s smallest countries: Finland. Think again. The Finns are just about the smartest people in the world. Finnish students get the highest scores for math and science, just ahead of Koreans. Smart people equal smart companies. There will be plenty more Nokias in the decades to come.

British burglar alarms: With the U.K. economy going down the tube, and with unemployment rising, there isn’t much prospect of a drop in crime, which is already a big concern. In the U.K., 10 percent of male teenagers aren’t in school, employment or training, a rate second only to Italy within the OECD. One in three girls aged 13 to 15 said they got drunk regularly, the highest in the world, while the boys were only just behind the Danes when it came to consuming alcohol. With figures like that, crime can only rise. Any company making alarms, locks or closed-circuit television cameras will have a strong tide of demand to tap into.

U.S. fast-food companies: President Barack Obama may be trying to revamp the image of Americans in the rest of the world, but there are some things that will never change. Typical Americans remain determined to get as many calories down their throats in the shortest amount of time. They spend 75 minutes a day eating -- only Canadians and Mexicans dedicate less -- while maintaining the highest obesity rates. There is only one way to keep up that kind of performance: more burgers, fries, pizza and cookie-dough ice-cream. Ignore the anti-obesity campaigns. The fast-food industry promises a healthy future -- for its shareholders, not its customers.

Portuguese drink companies: Most of us might think of Portugal as a fairly cheerful place with plenty of sunshine, beaches and some great soccer players. Not so. The Portuguese are getting more miserable every year. So are the Hungarians, the Canadians and the Americans. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has been growing more satisfied with life, with the Turks leading the way. Everyone knows that miserable people drink more alcohol. Some beer producers should be a good bet.

Austrian cigarette suppliers: In the Anglo-Saxon world, we think smoking is on the way out, or at least restricted to developing nations. Wrong again. The Austrians report the highest rates of teenage smokers in the OECD: 24 percent of 15-year-old Austrian boys smoke and 30 percent of 15-year-old girls. Since smoking is addictive, and no one takes it up in their 30s, Austrian cigarette suppliers should do well for decades. And so will the pension funds: Not too many Austrians will be drawing payments into their 90s if they are all puffing away in the playground.

Turkish pre-schools: As countries become richer, more women work and the kids get bundled off into childcare. If that holds true, the Turks have a long way to go. Less than 20 percent of Turkish toddlers aged 3 to 5 are in childcare, compared with an average of 73 percent for the OECD as a whole. Korea and Poland also have very low rates. If Turkish, Polish and Korean mothers start going out to work the same way women do in the rest of the developed world, there will have to be a huge expansion in the childcare industry.
These social trends should help put your portfolio in decent shape, as markets fluctuate over the next 20 years.