The investment maxim of “buy low, sell high” applies to all investors and all asset classes. It sounds too simple to be true and sometimes it is. Modern Portfolio Theory has made the investment process more efficient and more complicated, and investors and investment managers alike put considerable time, money and effort into eking out the last basis point of returns. The aim is to make money, to meet liabilities and to retain or gain a competitive advantage. Real estate often likes to make out that it is different to other asset classes, but the name of the game is the same — to make money, both for the investors and for the managers. One way of making money is to get ahead of the pack in identifying the next investment trend. Towers Watson, which advises many of the world’s leading institutional investors on strategic asset allocation and investment manager selection, decided 11 years ago to establish the Thinking Ahead Group as part of its investment consulting busine