Stephen Foley: How retail investors can take the slow boat away from China, by thinking locally

Outlook After the Slow Food movement, which says no to fast food chains such as McDonald's and advocates buying and cooking local ingredients, here comes the Slow Finance movement. OK, it's a bit early to call it a movement. The book Slow Finance, written by the veteran City of London fund manager Gervais Williams of MAM Funds has only just landed, but his is an appealing pitch to retail investors in these dizzying markets and a head-on challenge to some of the tenets of the globalised finance industry.

You don't have to swallow all Mr Williams's views about the ill-effects of globalisation on food production, or his claims that China and other emerging markets have attracted so much capital that they are "bubble markets", to buy his central argument, which is that we could be better served looking for local, organic growth than chasing quick, speculative fortunes halfway around the world.

At core, Mr Williams is arguing for a return to time-honoured value investing. You know, the kind where you do a lot of research, demand proper dividends, engage with the companies you own and take a patient approach.

Just in case this all makes Mr Williams sound like a gloomy old Luddite, Slow Finance comes with an accompanying smartphone app, which apparently hooks your GPS up with a stock-market database and finds listed companies headquartered near you.

Slow Finance is the antivenom to years of poisonous developments in the industry, where private investors have been encouraged to lever up and to churn their speculative portfolios on an obsessive basis – all the kinds of activities that line the pockets of the lenders and brokers and do nothing to allocate capital in the real economy.

I hope the Slow Finance movement catches on, and fast.