The Carney Doctrine: A Post-Davos Blueprint for Investment in a Fractured World
A strategic shift toward “friendly” middle powers—and the sectors that will define the new geopolitical order.
Bill Cara
January 22, 2026
The conversations that shape the world often happen on the main stage at Davos at annual meetings of the World Economic Forum. This year, the most resonant framework for understanding our new reality came from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. His diagnosis of a fundamental “rupture” in the US-led, rules-based system—and his practical vision for coalitions of capable middle powers—was met with broad agreement by non-US leaders and business elites.
What follows in this paper isn’t just a debatable opinion, but an independent and objective analysis by a fiduciary tasked with risk management responsibilities. The recent Greenland episode, where Trump’s military and tariff threats (i.e., the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine’) were pragmatically walked back under NATO and multi-national diplomatic pressure, is a concrete signal. It shows that while headline risk remains, there are binding constraints on unilateralism. This has accelerated quiet planning among “friendlier” nations to deepen trade and investment ties outside traditional US channels.
For long-horizon investors, this demands a directional change. The following notes outline a strategic, 5- to 10-year tilt for a global fiduciary portfolio, moving from diagnosis to actionable asset allocation.
The Strategic Direction: Overweight “Friendlies”
For a global 60/40-type portfolio, the bias is now toward resilience and geopolitical alignment over growth-at-any-price.
Equities: Modest overweight versus bonds. Focus shifts to Canada, the Nordics, EU core, Australia, Japan, and Mexico. The US is not abandoned—exposure to its innovation platforms remains core—but size is capped, and cyclicals reliant on weaponizable US financial/trade infrastructure are now underweight or at least reduced from overweight.
Fixed Income: Neutral to slight overweight in high-grade Canada and core Europe. Underweight long US Treasuries as a structural hedge against policy volatility, while using them tactically for liquidity. Seek opportunistic allocations to green bonds tied to national transition plans.
Real Assets: Overweight infrastructure, energy transition, data centers, and defense assets within Canada and NATO-aligned middle powers.
Five Core Sectors for the New Order (With Canadian Examples)
These sectors are where policy, geopolitics, and capital are aligned. Think of these names as a screening universe rather than direct recommendations.
1. Energy, Midstream & Grids
Rationale: National building plans explicitly target power systems, LNG, nuclear, and storage, making infrastructure a capex hotspot.
Focus: Integrated oil & gas with market access, pipelines with big capex plans, and regulated utilities/power producers.
Representative Universe (TSX): CNQ, SU, CVE; ENB, TRP, PPL; H, EMA, BEPC.
2. Critical Minerals & Mining
Rationale: Supply chain de-risking by Europe and Asia supports long-cycle demand for Canadian copper, nickel, uranium, and battery metals.
Focus: Copper miners, the uranium fuel chain, and policy-supported battery metal developers.
Representative Universe: TECK, FM, LUN; CCO; LAC.
3. Defense, Aerospace & Dual-Use Tech
Rationale: Canada is doubling defense spending and joining EU procurement, while the Greenland crisis refocused NATO on Arctic security.
Focus: Defense electronics, aerospace, shipbuilding, and dual-use AI/cyber/space.
Representative Universe: CAE, MDA, HRX; (Europe) Thales, Airbus, BAE, Saab.
4. AI, Data Infrastructure & Sovereign Cloud
Rationale: Nation-building plans highlight AI-enabled digital infrastructure and sovereign data control as economic security.
Focus: Data center REITs, digital infrastructure (fiber, towers), and AI platforms with strong home-market anchors.
Representative Universe: Domestic telcos with data-center arms (BCE, TELUS); European/Japanese DC-REITs with local-data commitments.
5. Financials & Housing-Linked Real Assets
Rationale: A capex-heavy agenda and allied capital inflows support core banks and insurers as capital allocators, alongside housing/infrastructure developers.
Focus: High-quality banks/insurers and developers aligned with housing-supply initiatives.
Representative Universe (TSX): RY, TD, BMO, BNS, SLF, MFC; large, diversified REITs/developers (e.g., Brookfield, Dream).
Strategic Sector Weights for a Global Equity Book
Relative to a global benchmark, consider these strategic tilts:
Energy: Overweight (+3-5 pts), with a Canada/friendlies bias.
Materials (Critical Minerals): Overweight (+2-4 pts), focused on transition-relevant, secure assets.
Industrials: Overweight (+2-3 pts), concentrating on defense, engineering, and nation-building logistics.
Info Tech / Comm Services: Neutral but rotate away from US mega-cap concentration toward a barbell of resilient US platforms + sovereign-cloud/digital infra in Canada/EU/Japan.
Financials: Mild Overweight (+1-2 pts), focused on Canadian and select European/Japanese enablers of the capex wave.
Consumer: Mild Underweight, especially for US-centric discretionary names reliant on fading frictionless globalization.
Implementation & Risk Management
Structure: Use a core-satellite approach. The core holds tilted global exposures. Satellites hold concentrated sleeves in Canadian energy, minerals, defense, and digital infra via active managers or specialist ETFs.
Jurisdictional Guards: Hard-code minimum allocations to Canada and friendly middle powers in Investment Policy Statements as a “sovereignty and resilience” criterion. Cap exposure to assets overly dependent on US-centric financial plumbing or business models that exploit coercion.
The Bottom Line
The post-Davos conclusion is clear: the old Dollarization-based US World Order is not coming back. The prudent strategic response is not a wholesale retreat from the US, but a deliberate, funded rotation toward the assets and jurisdictions that will form the backbone of a more resilient, multipolar system—with Canada and its aligned “friendly” powers at the center.
This is a directional blueprint for investing in the world as it is being rebuilt.
This paper is based on post-World Economic Forum meeting analysis and is intended to convey a strategic, long-term investment framework. It is directional and not a full model portfolio. All named securities are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute investment advice.
Norway has an immense sovereign wealth fund, largely in US-centric investments. Drumpf literally spit in the face of the Norwegian prime minister. There are consequences to what we are witnessing. Does anybody truly believe that Denmark intends to be threatened and still hold US Treasuries?
Sharp reframing of portfolio risk through geopolitical lens. The overweight tilt toward Canadian energy and critical minerals makes sense when supply chain security becomes policy priority, not just efficiency metric. Interesting how defense spending shifts from discretionary to structural capex category. Been watching similar moves in Nordic infrastructure plays where sovereignity concerns drive capital allocation in ways traditional ROI math woudlnt justify alone.