2026 Sohn Montreal: Bridgewater’s Karen Karniol-Tambour and Gavekal’s Louis-Vincent Gave on a World Order That Just Broke

The macro panel closed out the 2026 Sohn Montreal Investment Conference. Two years ago inflation looked beaten, rates were falling, and software was the safe trade, and halfway through this year almost none of that holds. “The macro environment is changing very suddenly,” is how the room was teed up before Stephen Harvey, Chief Investment Officer of Sagard Wealth, walked two closely followed macro thinkers through what it means for money.

His guests were Karen Karniol-Tambour, Co-Chief Investment Officer of Bridgewater Associates, and Louis-Vincent Gave, the founding partner and chief executive of Gavekal, who is based in China. They agreed on more than a panel host would like. Both think the world has flipped into a more inflationary, more fractured regime, one that arrives perhaps once in several decades. Karniol-Tambour framed it as two paradigm shifts colliding, a geopolitical move toward what she calls modern mercantilism and the technological shock of AI. Gave added a third, demographics, and argued the three together have shattered the financial architecture investors grew up trusting. What followed was less a stock pitch than a map of where the two investors would put money when the old diversification stops working. The names that came up most were China and some specific commodities.

The panel was moderated by Stephen Harvey, chief investment officer of Sagard Wealth. Karen Karniol-Tambour is co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, reportedly the world’s largest hedge fund manager with assets in the range of $110 billion to $130 billion. Louis-Vincent Gave is the founding partner and chief executive of Gavekal, a prominent research and advisory firm he co-founded, and which is based in China.