The question of what are the methods applied to managing assets with an objective of long-term, steady gains, with controlled risk has a broad array of answers.  Is asset management economics, finance, or political power with centralized planning.  There are both free and controlled markets in the U.S. and globally. 
 
There is a Metanarrative of the World Economic Forum where economics is a social science.  Many, likely the majority of American universities subscribe to the social science theme as the operator of economic change, growth or decline. Banking, the investment institutions along with the U.S. Government as well as the Western World countries measure growth via currency as the demonstration of the change in wealth.  That is more money means more wealth in the view of finance. 
 
The Physics to Economics Model (PEM) rejects the Metanarrative of central banking and control of economies via government central planning and the use of printing money to cause a change. 
 
The PEM view is a change in anything in the universe can only occur if energy is applied as a force push.  Also, and importantly anytime there is a force push applied there must also be a counterforce.  In economics the applied energy is from combustion, the consumption of oil, coal, natural gas, wood and alcohol.  It is the kilowatt hours of oil burned which allows all machinery to operate, including electric.  The broader question answered by the PEM is what is wealth?  The question of the make-up of wealth must be known and understood if it is going to be successfully manipulated. 
 
Social science, finance and the pervasive media interpretation of events through the dark lense of the Metanarrative, does not answer the question of what is wealth.   Those theories (social science, finance) do not know what wealth is.  To change wealth it must be defined in a useful way. 
 
Energy is defined by what it can do.  It can cause a change, a change in the position of mass, or a change in state, etc.  Energy is understood by what it can do.  A barrel of oil has seventeen hundred kilowatt hours.  A worker has 0.01 kilowatt hours.  It takes 170,000 workers to equal one barrel of oil.
 
This means a policy change in the use and the cost of oil can cause a significant change in the output in wealth. It is the force push (energy) applied minus the counterforces that equal the net force available to allow a change to occur. A printed dollar, or a social science concept, are not applied energy.  Money, currency applied cannot cause a change other than a change in the value of the currency itself, but not a change in economic wealth. 
 
Wealth is the output of energy.  The relative rate of return is positive if the change in the net energy input is a positive change.  Either more energy is applied, or counterforces are reduced or both, there is more energy and simultaneously less counterforce which would increase the net energy for the relative rate of a positive economic change to occur.
 
Counterforces are important for using the Physics to Economics Model.  The counterforces are activities which consume energy denying its use for industry.  Counterforces in economics are any and all expenses.  Taxation, debt, unemployment expenses, deficit spending, money printing, trade losses, the cost of regulation and any expense caused a reduction in output.
 
Then if a policy increases energy production and simultaneously lessens taxes then the projection is to increase growth equity exposure in a portfolio and vice versa. 
 
Money printing of course will temporarily increase security prices (finance), but inflation will overtake the gain turning it into a net loss in time.  Wealth cannot be increased from simply the change in currency because wealth is the output of energy not money.
 
The objective to increase wealth is an energy, mass (the object to be moved), time, distance and efficiency (counterforce) problem.  Wealth is not a social science or money printing problem.  Then, to manage assets, particular attention is given to the relative energy generation and efficiency of the system in question.  A nation’s state policy is paramount in this view. A policy to increase the production and generation of energy foreshadows growth.  As an example, when the Egyptian Aswan Electrical Dam became operation in the 1970’s Egypt increases it’s electrical output by 50%.  As a result there was a corresponding rapid increase in their GDP by an average of 12% over 30 years. China and India are other positive examples where an increase in energy has corresponded to an increase in GDP.  The opposite example has occurred in Germany where their reduction in the use of coal has resulted in a decline in their energy with negative effects on their industry. In these few examples the laws of physics can clearly direct asset allocation weightings.