Until recently, change occurred at a leisurely pace. It took us two-and-a-half million years to go from crude chopping tools to automatic bread slicers, a million years to go from the taming of fire to the butane lighters, 500,000 years to get from the first hut-like structure to the first strip mall and seven thousand years to get from the invention of the wheel and axle to steel-belted radials.

As homo sapiens we’ve spent 99 percent of our time on this planet as nomads, hunting and foraging. During nearly all of human history, the world you handed off to your children was the same one your parents left to you.

But sometime not long ago we stopped strolling and began sprinting.

Today the landscape is being transformed before our eyes. We can see the tectonic plates shifting. Our world 50 years from now will bear little resemblance to the one in which we currently reside.

Given projected growth rates, in the next decade China’s economy will overtake the United State’s to become the world’s largest, leading the way for Asia’s dominance in the 21st century. China is also on track to consume more energy than the U.S. by 2013. The undeveloped world will become developed—from India to Latin America, from Eastern Europe to Asia, the have-nots will join the haves. The New Economy will change the rules of business on a daily basis as technology, globalism and communication continue to shrink the planet and drive innovation like never before. While the peak year for global oil production is likely to occur sometime in the next twenty-five years and constraints on oil production are already a reality, the daily demand for black gold will continue to increase at an alarming rate. Meanwhile, our planet is heating up and it is quite likely that human activity is the cause. Enter wind, solar, hydro, biofuels and fuel cells—urgent necessity will drive the shift to alternative power.

Each of these issues affects the others; they are interwoven subplots in a story that will unfold over the next 50 years and beyond.

And we wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Central to our purpose at Guinness Atkinson Funds is to put people smack in the middle of all this excitement. This much is certain: Global transformation will have a profound affect on your life, your children’s lives, your grandchildren’s lives. Our goal is to empower you to engage with and benefit from a world in flux. Unlike other mutual fund companies, we give undivided attention on these transformational issues. It’s not an occasional diversion for us; it’s central to our endeavors.

But for all that is changing, some things remain steadfast: Our investment process is based on upholding the highest standards of quality, rigor and care. We harness the future by applying traditional values such as hard work and discipline, subjecting stocks to a gauntlet of due diligence that’s based on using key drivers to uncover those that we believe will out-perform. The result is a focused range of products that enables you to profit from our rapidly transforming world.

The world is changing. Shouldn’t your portfolio change with it?