> The eurozone is about to go through the most significant change in decades with some sort of departure of the UK from the EU (Brexit). It remains unclear exactly how this will happen, which in and of itself is creating a lot of uncertainty on the Continent. I don’t expect most businesses in Europe to do anything but play defense in 2019.
Of all the things said in the post this stands out to me as the only overly pessimistic point.
First of all: The UK always had a very special relationship to and within EU. Now this relationship is going to be different - but not earth-shakingly different.
Yes, there is a lot of uncertainty right now, and I agree with Fred Wilson here that we can expect a messy Brexit, but I don't expect this state of affairs to drag on through the whole of 2019. At some point we will have clarity and this will hopefully be beneficial for the economy.
The most important point though is that a messy Brexit is expected on both sides of the Channel preparations for it are already proceeding.
We haven't even begun to negotiate a new trading agreement. The transition agreement is for two years, and I can't see the negotiations taking any less than that amount of time.
> I don't expect this state of affairs to drag on through the whole of 2019
Seriously?? The exit is so incredibly complex I can foresee the ramifications dragging into decades. The border problems alone are going to be a political quagmire, to view this sort of thing is a 12 month trifle is short-sighted to say the least.
The exit will split the country in half, how on earth can you have 'clarity' when there is basically zero bi-partisan agreement politically and socially?
Fred Wilson was speaking about the Continent and my point of view is from the Continent too. I seriously believe that when we will have clarity about the general new relationship countries like France, Germany, Spain, Italy and even the stable smaller ones will execute their pre-planned scenarios and just move on. I don't feel qualified to give an opinion how all of this will pan out for the UK but I hope it will not be as dark as you described.
I think he overestimates the impact this will have on the Eurozone. I mean, Brexit is a B.F.D. for Britain, but the continent? I'd like someone to explain that to me in detail.
Britain might start to kick out Europeans, but European countries are probably going to try and keep British retirees and professionals. A chunk of the financial industry is going to migrate out of London.
European products would get far more expensive, sure, but are British people going to actually dump them? I mean, if you're used to good Italian olive oil, French cheese and German cars, it might take a few years to switch to canola oil, American cheese and Geely-ies.
> The eurozone is about to go through the most significant change in decades with some sort of departure of the UK from the EU (Brexit).
The UK may be leaving the EU, but that's not a change to the Eurozone, which is a monetary union among a subset of EU members, of which the UK has never been a part.
It will have impact on trade, but that's still more an issue for the EU as a whole rather than the Eurozone specifically.
I consider it a typo; the author clearly meant the EU, but wrote Eurozone for some reason. I can't entirely blame them; the many European treaties are a complicated mess.
Off the top of my head Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Moldova, Turkey, Georgia, Northern Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Belarus, Romania and Bulgaria are all there anyway.
I think I've still missed a handful but I'm pretty happy with my European flag knowledge apparently from that.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank the Eurovision Song Competition apparently for my education
That is the section yes along with CEFTA which i assume is whatever happened after Yugosalavia broke up. I can only pull Greece, Russia and turkey from that.
There will certainly be an impact on trade, but it's very odd to identify that as specifically a Eurozone issue. Eurozone, EU, and Europe are related, obviously, but the trade impacts of Brexit (deal or no deal) are much more about the latter two than the first.
A large percentage of Eurozone finance is based in London and while (whilst?) I’m not sure where this will land (FRA most likely), it seems likely to involve some dislocation in the short term. Of course it remains to be seen how much market access will exist and possibly more importantly what the hiring rules will be. Still, all of this will impact the Eurozone and has already made for a turbulent year.
Impeachment will never happen. If you study recent history, an impeachment attempt on Trump will go down just like it did on Clinton - - strictly along party lines. The Clinton vote was razor accurate along party lines when it happened. No majority means no impeachment.
The case against Clinton was flimsy and grasping at straws, whereas the case against Trump looks to be incredibly damning. I think that'll make a difference this time, though party lines have become even more ingrained...
That's assuming the republicans remain cohesive, which assumes a unified voter base. It played that way in the Clinton impeachment for sure. That hasn't always happened historically. Nixon looked solidly in power until all of a sudden he didn't (though of course he resigned before any votes were cast on impeachment).
I agree I wouldn't put money on Trump being removed, but neither would I be shocked if it happened. Things are more complicated than a whip count.
..by the Republican majority House of Representatives. It can be roughly equated to being charged with a crime. The Senate held a trial and voted for acquittal and therefore no action was taken. Two thirds of the Senate must vote to remove a President from office.
Correct. But the OP was stating that impeachment would never happen and pointing to what happened with Clinton. But impeachment is exactly what happened with Clinton. And the prediction does not state that he will be removed from office by the Senate, but that he will resign after impeachment to avoid prosecution. This is an entirely reasonable prediction based upon current and historical events.
>> I believe that we will have a different President of the United States by the end of 2019. The catalyst for this change will be a devastating report issued by Robert Mueller that outlines a history of illegal activities by our President going back decades, including in his campaign for President.
I will only give weight-age to Mr.Wilson's prediction on this if he discloses whom he cast his Vote in 2016 and its not Hillary Clinton.
Also, if you have an annual tradition of forecasting the upcoming year, please also make it a tradition of evaluating your previous year's prediction.
Edit: Here are his predictions for 2018. Some he got right, but on lot of stuff he played it both ways and honestly expressed his lack of clarity.
Democrats will control 54% of the next House. So his prediction is much more likely in 2019 than in any previous years. There's no reason to think this is based on politically-motivated wishful thinking.
The majority in the house gains the chairman seats in all of the committees. We will see subpoena power used by democrats to investigate and ultimately inform the public on many things which the house republicans buried or ignored. Elections have consequences.
My personal, political hope is that the democrats try to be productive with the republicans in Congress and the White House - but of course maximizing the results of their leverage on the process. Unfortunately, there’s not much room for optimism from how the republicans denied cooperation with the democrats during the last administration.
The house, by itself, can do nothing but gridlock. They can subpoena all day long and it won't make any difference in anything. Neither party has a monopoly on burying things, and anyone who decides to not play by the rules is going to get destroyed by both sides -- your hope of some kind of transparency by the democrats is badly misplaced.
I personally don't mind gridlock that badly -- none of them have the best interests of the people in mind, so the less they're able to accomplish the better.
> Also, if you have an annual tradition of forecasting the upcoming year, please also make it a tradition of evaluating your previous year's prediction.
Good point, I was curious too, and I found exactly that for 2016:
I would point out that his predictions for 2018 included the opinion that Trump would remain President throughout. On hopeful thinking, many liberals would've suggested that Trump's Presidency would not survive 2018. So clearly he feels the changes throughout 2018 have reached a tipping point of some kind.
I would have voted for Clinton (if I were able to, and Bernie wasn't available).
But the Mueller investigation, so far, has uncovered: Trump's lawyer evading some taxes. With all that effort and such minor results it's not looking like they're going to find much.
I don't want to get involved in long political discussions, so let's just quickly check up on some verifiable facts.
From wikipedia: The investigation has resulted in dozens of indictments for federal crimes, and at least eight guilty pleas or convictions
These include Trump's campaign manager, campaign adviser and personal lawyer. Plus, he has publicly appealed to Russia for help during the campaign, sided with Putin over the entire American intelligence community and admitted that he fired the Director of the FBI because of the investigation.
So no, your point doesn't stand.
edit: I'm deliberately not citing media outlets that can be biased or expressing any opinions in this post. If these facts (that you can check for yourself) aren't significant enough for you, I can only wish you a good day.
Almost all the indictments have been for process crimes, not for anything substantive. Essentially anyone who speaks to federal LE can be indicted for lying to federal LE, regardless of their intent. What little substantive they've come up with looks petty and ridiculous in comparison to normal operating procedure in DC -- you realize they're all criminals on both sides of the aisle, right?
Obviously, don't cite Wikipedia as Wikipedia themselves say, but ignoring that:
Trumps personal lawyer is the same one I mentioned in the comment you're replying to. That's the biggest revelation yet. Do you have anything bigger or not?
> he has publicly appealed to Russia for help during the campaign, sided with Putin over the entire American intelligence community and admitted that he fired the Director of the FBI because of the investigation.
The crimes that he's publicly admitted to are conspiring with a foreign government against the US, election fraud and obstruction of justice. The source for these statements is Trump himself. If those aren't big enough for you, I can't help you.
No, it really doesn't. The indictments that come out before the full report are the cast-offs. The things they happened to find that were tangential to the main investigation, or were separated (and deemed safe to separate) for a plea bargain, etc. Their number tells us far more about the security and discretion around the main investigation than about the severity of what it has found.
>China’s GDP has been slowing in recent years as it achieved relative parity with the US and the Eurozone:
This is misleading; the relevant metric for measuring development is GDP per capita, which is only around $8,500 in China, compared to $59,000 for the US and and $33,000 for the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...). The average person in China is much poorer than the average person in America or Europe; a significant portion are still subsistence farmers, the only reason absolute GDP is comparable with the US and Europe is that China's population is way bigger. One would only expect growth to slow when China's per-person GDP approaches that of a developed country, not it's total GDP.
It depends on how much growth has been driven by international demand and how much by domestic demand. China has been heavily export-oriented in the past few decades.
China's growth in the past 30 years largely depended on foreign direct investment and export. With current dispute on trade escalating to an all out trade war, the prospect in 2019 would be even more dimmer. If China invades Taiwan and further disrupts global supply chain, a such slower global growth could be expected.
"THE relevant statistic" (emphasis mine) is also misleading. Lots of different things measure development.
It's not surprising that China is seeing some slowdown in growth, as they climb that curve. Jumping from $50 to $100 is easier than jumping from $5000 to $10,000. Or another way, a 10% growth rate at $1000 requires increasing revenue by $100. At $10,000, it means increasing by $1000.
On top of that, China is an export-driven economy, and it's tangling with slowdowns among its customers (who aren't growing nearly as fast anyway), and a trade war with the US.
edit: Rather than just measuring China vs "developed world", measure China vs China. The per capita GDP of China has increased a hundredfold in the past 50 years. To sustain that rate for another 50 years, per capita GDP would have to reach over $800,000 (in constant dollars). That seems... unlikely.
* China's new infrastructures are good and modern. (+)
* Education system is reasonable - produce large number of engineers, college educated young people. (+)
* Entrepreneurial spirits/activities are very high in a lot of cities. (+)
* The new roads system are mostly build/own with private money and adding non-trivial cost to the normal business when they need to transport goods. As compare to the highway system in the US. (-)
* The society is NOT govern by the rule of law. It is govern by the will of the Party and who ever is in power. As shown recently by the some famous actors, actress go fine massive amount because of tax issues. The new rules show up one day can cause the majority movie industry disappear in a few weeks. (-)
* The housing bubble is a big issue similar to what happen to Japan 20+ years ago. (-)
* The debt in private industries and local government are BIG issue. (-)
* The central government has recently created new much stricter rules about people (local/business ) taking the money out of China. It looks good on the surface for majority of population when present as rich people's issue. But imagine a bank allow for deposit but only allow for redraw of $100 per day. With that kind of policy, no business would trust a country enough to do new or continue investments.
* The old reformer (DengXiaoPeng)'s believe: It doesn't matter if it is a black cat or a white cat, if it can catch a mouse, it is a good cat.
* The new believe: Those black/write cats who turn into fat cats have served their purposes. It is harvest time.....
* Overall, it don't look good for China in near/long term.
This dramatically over-estimates the impact that a Trump impeachment would have - just like analysts in 2016 predicted that the economy would crash if Trump won. [1]
In reality, the markets would likely respond to a Pence presidency with positivity. His reputation is far more "boring and dependable" than Trump's ever has been.
predictit has trump getting impeached by end of 2019 at 36 cents for yes. If mueller finds any "collusion" it is guaranteed impeachment. Old crimes possibly not.
So predictit at least disagrees that mueller finds collusion.
And as always if you are absolutely certain that mueller will find collusion, you can make some money. Put your money where your mouth is.
VCs are going to talk up things that they’ve invested in, but his emphasis on crypto as meaningful in any way beyond a temporary buzzword and a sink for suckers’ money is pretty indicative of the amount of trust one should put in his predictions. Skimming his recent articles, including the look back at 2018, it’s clear he sees crypto as a hedge against political and economic instability, but the irony is that crypto’s primary use case is in _facilitating_ the destabilization of existing economic infrastructure. That’s its explicit goal! So it’s weird that someone so heavily invested in it thinks it’ll be a savior of society. But then again the author operates in a different economy than the rest of us... he’ll probably be just fine.
One of my Econ classes posed a question “why would basing a currency on gold be bad” (some hint like that). Essentially, any currency with a finite supply and that can never increase will restrain economic growth.
There are many kooky economic experiments in crypto right now that are not only 1) Not failing miserably, but 2) Are growing steadily. Decentralized financial products like MakerDAO and Compound Finance are very interesting. Augur is a prediction marketplace that was pilloried for having some 30 users per day when it launched, but now has around $2 million in open interest.
It is very early days, and it is quite complicated to build new products and businesses given that the tooling is poor, the crypto networks are slow, and many mainstream technologists take endless pleasure in shitting on crypto and cheering when prices fall, but progress continues.
I think cryptocurrencies and smart contracts have earned a seat at the table for disruptive technologies of the 21st century, along with cloud computing, AI / ML / big data, and smart phones.
Outside of VC's there's an entire group of software engineers in the financial markets, in particular decent quants that double as ML/NLP specialists, who also understand the value of globally accessible trading vehicles. Time to put the crypto pitchforks away.
While I agree there is a lot of BS in the crypto world I think we are dealing with a classic case of overestimating in the short run and underestimating in the long run.
Instead of starting with decentralization in your thinking and then trying to find value through that, start instead with de-institutionalization. The potential of crypto is not the individual currency but the network of currencies.
Our parents/grandparents invented the internet but didn't find ways to turn it into what it is today. Our generation invented the blockchain but it will be our kids who will end up turning it into valuable infrastructure. They will not be limited to understanding and applying it like we do but be able to think about it from a "born blockchain" perspective.
We keep trying to think how we can use it for things we already have solutions for which is of course not really going to do much. Instead we have to think about things that we don't have solutions for and which can't be done easily.
CryptoKitties is one of the best examples of how this can be used and if you think that is silly then you are right so are many other ideas that end up turning into amazing businesses.
So I say, let a million cryptocurrencies bloom it's the network itself that's the utility not the individual currency.
>Our parents/grandparents invented the internet but didn't find ways to turn it into what it is today.
Repeating this over and over again doesn't make it true. Google, Amazon, and Ebay we're established in the first year of the eternal September, and immediately started changing people's lives. We're 10 years after Bitcoin, and still with nothing to show for it but money laundering and pump and dump schemes.
The TCP/IP protocol was decades old before it became useful to build companies on top of exactly because it required A LOT of networked connectivity, people to make various investments and critical mass from users.
In the early days of TCPIP, you needed a university membership to get access, and network-capable computers were even more rare. So you're saying that there aren't enough networked computers for blockchain to be viable?
We're currently sitting at around 8 networked devices for every human being, how many more do we need? 15? 20? What is holding blockchain back, since it is definitely not university membership?
I am saying that there aren't enough cryptocurrencies and thus the network is not pervasive enough to become infrastructure plus it's still mostly academic and you need to understand it conceptually to start making sense of it.
Most people don't even most of those who are involved in it.
The thing is I’ve never seen a compelling and novel use for blockchain. Everyone and their dog has some shiny presentation for how they’ll use the tech, but no one and I literally mean - no one - who I’ve talked to about it has an answer for the question “how is blockchain solving a problem that is currently unsolvable with other tech?”
Don’t get me wrong, the idea of decentralized anything is cool to me. I’d love for it to be an avenue for reclaiming sovereignty or privacy or whatever else. I just have yet to see it actually solve a new problem. And switching from the way things are to using blockchain “just cuz” isn’t really a step forward imho. It’s a step sideways, where now we have a different backend but in the end nothing has improved.
I’d be happy to hear novel solutions blockchain provides :)
People said this exact same thing about trump in 2017 except with the impeachment date being 2018 instead of 2019. I would be willing to take the opposite side of that bet. The odds of impeachment are slim based on the rarity of past occurrences, and House democrats have expressed reservations about impeachment. Even if impeached, that does not mean he will leave office. China;s GDP has been slowing for over a decade. This is expected given how fast it was growing in the early and mid 2000's.
I came here to say exactly the same thing. I'd be happy to stick money down on Trump still being in power by the end of 2019. And probably by the end of 2024 as well.
I think it's an example of a Silicon Valley filter bubble.
What's the overhead of trading on predictit because the impeachment[1] "yes" of 37% is way too close to the currently 30% "no" of him being in office; I think the odds of him ending the year as president if impeached is at least 50%, so there should be some way to arbitrage this.
[edit] I suppose there is the chance of him pulling a Nixon and resigning before impeachment, as well as the chance of him dying. I consider both of those to be less likely; he is to confrontational to back down from just the threat of impeachment of a house with an opposition majority; if anything being impeached by a partisan vote would be fodder for his conservative base.
Wow, I haven't heard about that site before. Was ready to bash it for being yet another get-rich-quick Cryptocoin scam but it is actual real money (I believe?) and an academic project:
> PredictIt is a research project of Victoria University of Wellington. In order to take full advantage of the research opportunities presented by prediction markets like PredictIt, we make our data available to members of the academic community at no cost. PredictIt’s market data offers researchers a wealth of information that can be used to further our understanding of a wide array of subjects in fields of study as diverse as microeconomics, political behavior, computer science and game theory. PredictIt is excited to support the work of our researcher partners as they push the boundaries of human knowledge.
I agree with your Trump assessment with one addition: on his way out the door, his last words will be, "That's it, I'm outta here, you don't appreciate what a great job I did, it was beautiful, you don't deserve me."
I think the odds he gets impeached are decent. What's much less likely is that the Senate votes to convict. That's what happened in Bill Clinton's case.
They have the votes to impeach him in the House come Thursday; at that point it becomes more of a political calculation of when the timing is right. They don't want to be seen as jumping the gun, so it probably depends on the Mueller report or the various other investigations into his taxes, past business crookedness, illegal campaign payments, his 'non-profit' foundation, the inauguration funds, or the various and sundry other high crimes and misdemeanors.
I would rather suffer Trump to the end of his term than suffer the market distortions and worse because of any attempt to impeach. Maybe this time the both sides will put up worthwhile candidates.
Worse is the declarations of some in the Democratic Party of going not only after him but Pence and even Kavanaugh. Go after both President and Vice would be played out as a coup and hand Trump his greatest leverage ever. It would push a lot of independents back into his camp. We do not need the precedent, let alone set by trying to impeach for activities before he was President.
If we start prosecuting politicians for what they did before they entered office then it just comes down to a banana republic. where whomever is in power decides who they don't like and just take them down.
Yeah predicting we won’t have trump as president at the end of the year has lost its meaning. It’s been a recurring message since before he even took office and it’s failed every step of the way to be the reality.
To me it seems pretty unlikely that there’s a bulletproof case to actually remove trump from office. In two years we basically have the same sentiments that trump was involved in illegal activity that we did back in 2016. I’d hope our government wasn’t so broken that it would take 3/4 of a term to get someone out. I remember a lot of the right saying the same with Obama getting impeached, while he enjoyed a full two terms.
At the end of the day the impeachment cries seem much more like wishful thinking on behalf of the party not in power than a realistic outcome.
My prediction is a lot of people's predictions for 2019 will be wrong. Look how many people were wrong about crypto currency in 2018. Or about the stock market.
Guessing the direction of interest rates and speculation about supposed crimes the president did (for which at this point there has been no evidence of) is a pretty poor foundation to build predictions upon since there's a good chance rates stay flat in 2019 and Mueller comes up empty. In that scenario, the stock market still has downward pressure because of the insane valuations, but the storm clouds outlined here fade away for the most part.
One 2019 prediction I have is a resurgence of interest in VR with the release of Oculus Quest. A lot of people have been quietly building for 5 years waiting for this.
On politics I'll go out on a limb here and say that the FBI/DOJ will conclude a number of (under reported, multi-year) investigations and bring indictments for a large number of well-known politicians of both parties.
Actually, there's a lot of evidence for "supposed crimes of the president". Some of his closest advisors (Cohen, Flynn, Manafort) have been convicted of felonies. All of them have cooperated to some degree with Mueller. The fact that Mueller asked for no prison for Flynn says a great deal about how valuable Flynn's testimony has been. Who else would Flynn be testifying against that's so important to Mueller that he'd pay for it with a no-prison plea bargain? Don't let political bias blind to you the evidence.
That said, I'm not at all convinced this will lead to impeachment, although it may lead to resignation. The House isn't going to impeach without a reasonable chance of success in the Senate, and I don't see twenty of McConnell's Republicans voting to destroy Trump, no matter what he did or what he's charged with doing.
It's not unthinkable that a decent number of Republicans would flip, but a precondition of that would probably need to be a plummeting approval rating for Trump, which hasn't borne out so far - despite all the controversy, he still seems to have a 35-40% floor.
One interesting thing about Trump is that he has some of the most stable (albeit somewhat low) approval ratings of any president that there's reliable data for. But he's gone from "historically unpopular" to "about as popular as Reagan, Ford or Clinton" at this point in his presidency.
I was referring to specific evidence that implies crimes were committed by Trump. So far, no such evidence has been revealed. Pointing to felony guilty pleas for unrelated crimes (except, perhaps, the Cohen campaign finance violation which gave him 6 months of his several year sentence and which arguably may have not been upheld in court) is just guilt-by-association and does not constitute evidence of an unseen crime. I'm perfectly happy to be proven wrong once the report comes out, and I hope that the results are plain as day in either direction, but if you think there has been any objective evidence uncovered by the press or leaked of a real crime being committed then you should also check your political bias. It may exist but it hasn't been made public.
Written just vague enough on almost all the points to seem credible without actually saying anything. Guy above gets it right, this 2019 post is SV Tech Bubble at its finest.
Yes, I agree that there is likely to be not much action. I'm interested in the political predictions as well, although I really don't find the arguments about what is going to come out of the Mueller investigation to be very compelling; I just don't think either R's or D's have enough political will to stop going along to get along. It's not that I don't think President 45 has committed many, many white-collar crimes; I just don't think anyone is going to hold him accountable, and I don't believe Mueller will actually indict the president.
You have to wonder how much someone who doesn’t understand the difference between the EU and the Eurozone can confidently make predictions about either.
So many people and content sites put out menaingless predictions that there is no consequence of being wrong on. Unless the author has sufficient skin in the game, for example they take a short position on the S&P to back up the predicted drop we as readers should not put much credence in “prediction listicles.”
As a European I hope Trump will be impeached or he will renounce. It's the only way the US will regain any trust from other countries. For the average citizen Trump is the only image of the US they get on the news which is not very flattering.
I hope it's proved that Trump didn't do anything substantially wrong. Then - instead of the world having to have overcome some terrible problem - I would only have to overcome the shame of having made a mistake. And I've been mistaken many times.
To the author: thank you for having the courage to write your predictions, and ignore the haters that are more often than not incapable of doing the same, since it's a lot easier to critique than to create.
There is very little evidence that markets care much at all about what happens in Washington. If Trump resigns or doesn't it is very unlikely to have a lasting effect on equity prices. There's lots of evidence to back this up. When JFK was assassinated for example, equity prices rose in the weeks after. This does not suggest that the equity markets didn't like JFK necessarily, but rather that equity markets were primed to move higher and even extreme uncertainty around the presidency wasn't enough to alter their course. Prices are going to go where they are going to go. It makes some people happy to imagine markets disliking Trump, but the truth is they don't really care who is president, they only care about whether earnings are going to go up or down in the future, and the president just doesn't have much control over that save for tax rates which have already been accounted for in this administration.
The Fed is far more likely to impact equity markets, but I think far too many (Wilson included) are too focused on the trend in rates without any consideration at all for the relative level of rates historically. It is true that a rising trend in rates is usually bearish for stocks, BUT it's very important to understand the trend in a broader context. Rates are still extremely low in a historical context and if the Fed pauses in 2019 and employment and consumer spending remain strong, stocks aren't likely to drop much more simply because 3% is not a satisfactory return for most people unless you are nearing retirement. So where else are you going to park your money? Probably stocks. Also, a company like Apple isn't going to be drastically effected by marginally higher rates when they were already close to zero. Sure, their cost of capital might go up by a quarter a percent. Is that really going to move the needle on their earnings significantly? Other companies that aren't profitable and heavily reliant on debt probably will be hurt, though.
Here's what I believe is happening: the Fed did a very poor job of communicating its position and intent in late 2018 (probably because they themselves didn't know what they were going to do) and spooked the markets by saying they were going to hike several times in 2019. They then walked this back but the markets are still a bit uneasy. Sentiment always follows price, and now that prices have fallen and volatility has spiked, what are the pundits doing? Predicting price declines and higher volatility! Well, that's already happened so if you are selling stocks now and paying up for VIX calls, you're probably late to the party. In early 2018, most pundits were saying to buy stocks.
111 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadOf all the things said in the post this stands out to me as the only overly pessimistic point. First of all: The UK always had a very special relationship to and within EU. Now this relationship is going to be different - but not earth-shakingly different.
Yes, there is a lot of uncertainty right now, and I agree with Fred Wilson here that we can expect a messy Brexit, but I don't expect this state of affairs to drag on through the whole of 2019. At some point we will have clarity and this will hopefully be beneficial for the economy.
The most important point though is that a messy Brexit is expected on both sides of the Channel preparations for it are already proceeding.
Seriously?? The exit is so incredibly complex I can foresee the ramifications dragging into decades. The border problems alone are going to be a political quagmire, to view this sort of thing is a 12 month trifle is short-sighted to say the least.
The exit will split the country in half, how on earth can you have 'clarity' when there is basically zero bi-partisan agreement politically and socially?
Britain might start to kick out Europeans, but European countries are probably going to try and keep British retirees and professionals. A chunk of the financial industry is going to migrate out of London.
European products would get far more expensive, sure, but are British people going to actually dump them? I mean, if you're used to good Italian olive oil, French cheese and German cars, it might take a few years to switch to canola oil, American cheese and Geely-ies.
The UK may be leaving the EU, but that's not a change to the Eurozone, which is a monetary union among a subset of EU members, of which the UK has never been a part.
I consider it a typo; the author clearly meant the EU, but wrote Eurozone for some reason. I can't entirely blame them; the many European treaties are a complicated mess.
Unfortunately as a citizen of one of the founding members of the EU, I don't even recognise half the flags in the diagram.
Give me the names and i'm sure i would know them, ask me to point them out on a blank map and we're straying back in to embarrassing territory again.
Off the top of my head Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Moldova, Turkey, Georgia, Northern Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Belarus, Romania and Bulgaria are all there anyway.
I think I've still missed a handful but I'm pretty happy with my European flag knowledge apparently from that.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank the Eurovision Song Competition apparently for my education
I agree I wouldn't put money on Trump being removed, but neither would I be shocked if it happened. Things are more complicated than a whip count.
I will only give weight-age to Mr.Wilson's prediction on this if he discloses whom he cast his Vote in 2016 and its not Hillary Clinton.
Also, if you have an annual tradition of forecasting the upcoming year, please also make it a tradition of evaluating your previous year's prediction.
Edit: Here are his predictions for 2018. Some he got right, but on lot of stuff he played it both ways and honestly expressed his lack of clarity.
https://avc.com/2018/01/what-is-going-to-happen-in-2018/
My personal, political hope is that the democrats try to be productive with the republicans in Congress and the White House - but of course maximizing the results of their leverage on the process. Unfortunately, there’s not much room for optimism from how the republicans denied cooperation with the democrats during the last administration.
I personally don't mind gridlock that badly -- none of them have the best interests of the people in mind, so the less they're able to accomplish the better.
That basically amounts to saying that you don't believe a Clinton voter can be objective. That's evidence of bias on your part, not his.
I am biased and flawed, and I agree with your assessment.
Good point, I was curious too, and I found exactly that for 2016:
https://avc.com/2016/12/what-did-and-did-not-happen-in-2016/
Edit: Same for other years: https://avc.com/2018/12/what-happened-in-2018/ https://avc.com/2017/12/what-happened-in-2017/ https://avc.com/2015/12/what-didnt-happen/ http://avc.com/2014/12/what-just-happened/
The administration is a slow motion car crash.
But the Mueller investigation, so far, has uncovered: Trump's lawyer evading some taxes. With all that effort and such minor results it's not looking like they're going to find much.
No, it hasn't. There has been no report.
From wikipedia: The investigation has resulted in dozens of indictments for federal crimes, and at least eight guilty pleas or convictions
These include Trump's campaign manager, campaign adviser and personal lawyer. Plus, he has publicly appealed to Russia for help during the campaign, sided with Putin over the entire American intelligence community and admitted that he fired the Director of the FBI because of the investigation.
So no, your point doesn't stand.
edit: I'm deliberately not citing media outlets that can be biased or expressing any opinions in this post. If these facts (that you can check for yourself) aren't significant enough for you, I can only wish you a good day.
Trumps personal lawyer is the same one I mentioned in the comment you're replying to. That's the biggest revelation yet. Do you have anything bigger or not?
> he has publicly appealed to Russia for help during the campaign, sided with Putin over the entire American intelligence community and admitted that he fired the Director of the FBI because of the investigation.
The crimes that he's publicly admitted to are conspiring with a foreign government against the US, election fraud and obstruction of justice. The source for these statements is Trump himself. If those aren't big enough for you, I can't help you.
No, I ignored them because nobody has been charged with those things.
> The crimes that he's publicly admitted to are conspiring with a foreign government against the US, election fraud and obstruction of justice.
Reference? Not wikipedia. I'll wait.
This is misleading; the relevant metric for measuring development is GDP per capita, which is only around $8,500 in China, compared to $59,000 for the US and and $33,000 for the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...). The average person in China is much poorer than the average person in America or Europe; a significant portion are still subsistence farmers, the only reason absolute GDP is comparable with the US and Europe is that China's population is way bigger. One would only expect growth to slow when China's per-person GDP approaches that of a developed country, not it's total GDP.
It's not surprising that China is seeing some slowdown in growth, as they climb that curve. Jumping from $50 to $100 is easier than jumping from $5000 to $10,000. Or another way, a 10% growth rate at $1000 requires increasing revenue by $100. At $10,000, it means increasing by $1000.
On top of that, China is an export-driven economy, and it's tangling with slowdowns among its customers (who aren't growing nearly as fast anyway), and a trade war with the US.
edit: Rather than just measuring China vs "developed world", measure China vs China. The per capita GDP of China has increased a hundredfold in the past 50 years. To sustain that rate for another 50 years, per capita GDP would have to reach over $800,000 (in constant dollars). That seems... unlikely.
Adding few other points:
* China's new infrastructures are good and modern. (+)
* Education system is reasonable - produce large number of engineers, college educated young people. (+)
* Entrepreneurial spirits/activities are very high in a lot of cities. (+)
* The new roads system are mostly build/own with private money and adding non-trivial cost to the normal business when they need to transport goods. As compare to the highway system in the US. (-)
* The society is NOT govern by the rule of law. It is govern by the will of the Party and who ever is in power. As shown recently by the some famous actors, actress go fine massive amount because of tax issues. The new rules show up one day can cause the majority movie industry disappear in a few weeks. (-)
* The housing bubble is a big issue similar to what happen to Japan 20+ years ago. (-)
* The debt in private industries and local government are BIG issue. (-)
* The central government has recently created new much stricter rules about people (local/business ) taking the money out of China. It looks good on the surface for majority of population when present as rich people's issue. But imagine a bank allow for deposit but only allow for redraw of $100 per day. With that kind of policy, no business would trust a country enough to do new or continue investments.
To be fair, she only got a fine and detention for a few months. US actor Wesley Snipes was jailed for 3 years for tax evasion.
Do you realize that if China ppp rises that the very factors that makes China such a growing force such as cheaper manufacturing will erode away?
In reality, the markets would likely respond to a Pence presidency with positivity. His reputation is far more "boring and dependable" than Trump's ever has been.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/business/dealbook/what-ha...
So predictit at least disagrees that mueller finds collusion.
And as always if you are absolutely certain that mueller will find collusion, you can make some money. Put your money where your mouth is.
There's probably an argument that one of the main drivers of European colonization was pursuit of a de facto increase in currency supply.
It is very early days, and it is quite complicated to build new products and businesses given that the tooling is poor, the crypto networks are slow, and many mainstream technologists take endless pleasure in shitting on crypto and cheering when prices fall, but progress continues.
I think cryptocurrencies and smart contracts have earned a seat at the table for disruptive technologies of the 21st century, along with cloud computing, AI / ML / big data, and smart phones.
Instead of starting with decentralization in your thinking and then trying to find value through that, start instead with de-institutionalization. The potential of crypto is not the individual currency but the network of currencies.
Our parents/grandparents invented the internet but didn't find ways to turn it into what it is today. Our generation invented the blockchain but it will be our kids who will end up turning it into valuable infrastructure. They will not be limited to understanding and applying it like we do but be able to think about it from a "born blockchain" perspective.
We keep trying to think how we can use it for things we already have solutions for which is of course not really going to do much. Instead we have to think about things that we don't have solutions for and which can't be done easily.
CryptoKitties is one of the best examples of how this can be used and if you think that is silly then you are right so are many other ideas that end up turning into amazing businesses.
So I say, let a million cryptocurrencies bloom it's the network itself that's the utility not the individual currency.
Repeating this over and over again doesn't make it true. Google, Amazon, and Ebay we're established in the first year of the eternal September, and immediately started changing people's lives. We're 10 years after Bitcoin, and still with nothing to show for it but money laundering and pump and dump schemes.
The blockchain is a protocol, not a company.
The TCP/IP protocol was decades old before it became useful to build companies on top of exactly because it required A LOT of networked connectivity, people to make various investments and critical mass from users.
Give it time.
We're currently sitting at around 8 networked devices for every human being, how many more do we need? 15? 20? What is holding blockchain back, since it is definitely not university membership?
I am saying that there aren't enough cryptocurrencies and thus the network is not pervasive enough to become infrastructure plus it's still mostly academic and you need to understand it conceptually to start making sense of it.
Most people don't even most of those who are involved in it.
Don’t get me wrong, the idea of decentralized anything is cool to me. I’d love for it to be an avenue for reclaiming sovereignty or privacy or whatever else. I just have yet to see it actually solve a new problem. And switching from the way things are to using blockchain “just cuz” isn’t really a step forward imho. It’s a step sideways, where now we have a different backend but in the end nothing has improved.
I’d be happy to hear novel solutions blockchain provides :)
I always think about the blockchain as TCP/IP with history. Plenty of value in that.
my other takeaway - Be greedy when others are fearful, fearful when others are greedy"
I think it's an example of a Silicon Valley filter bubble.
https://www.predictit.org
Currently about 73% yes
[edit] I suppose there is the chance of him pulling a Nixon and resigning before impeachment, as well as the chance of him dying. I consider both of those to be less likely; he is to confrontational to back down from just the threat of impeachment of a house with an opposition majority; if anything being impeached by a partisan vote would be fodder for his conservative base.
1: https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/4319/Will-Donald-Tr...
The volume may be too low to do much arbitrage.
> PredictIt is a research project of Victoria University of Wellington. In order to take full advantage of the research opportunities presented by prediction markets like PredictIt, we make our data available to members of the academic community at no cost. PredictIt’s market data offers researchers a wealth of information that can be used to further our understanding of a wide array of subjects in fields of study as diverse as microeconomics, political behavior, computer science and game theory. PredictIt is excited to support the work of our researcher partners as they push the boundaries of human knowledge.
They have the votes to impeach him in the House come Thursday; at that point it becomes more of a political calculation of when the timing is right. They don't want to be seen as jumping the gun, so it probably depends on the Mueller report or the various other investigations into his taxes, past business crookedness, illegal campaign payments, his 'non-profit' foundation, the inauguration funds, or the various and sundry other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Worse is the declarations of some in the Democratic Party of going not only after him but Pence and even Kavanaugh. Go after both President and Vice would be played out as a coup and hand Trump his greatest leverage ever. It would push a lot of independents back into his camp. We do not need the precedent, let alone set by trying to impeach for activities before he was President.
If we start prosecuting politicians for what they did before they entered office then it just comes down to a banana republic. where whomever is in power decides who they don't like and just take them down.
No matter what, I would bet my money on continued discord and breakdown.
To me it seems pretty unlikely that there’s a bulletproof case to actually remove trump from office. In two years we basically have the same sentiments that trump was involved in illegal activity that we did back in 2016. I’d hope our government wasn’t so broken that it would take 3/4 of a term to get someone out. I remember a lot of the right saying the same with Obama getting impeached, while he enjoyed a full two terms.
At the end of the day the impeachment cries seem much more like wishful thinking on behalf of the party not in power than a realistic outcome.
2019 and 2020 will see the country better learning to work around a President who acts on whims instead of information.
One 2019 prediction I have is a resurgence of interest in VR with the release of Oculus Quest. A lot of people have been quietly building for 5 years waiting for this.
On politics I'll go out on a limb here and say that the FBI/DOJ will conclude a number of (under reported, multi-year) investigations and bring indictments for a large number of well-known politicians of both parties.
That said, I'm not at all convinced this will lead to impeachment, although it may lead to resignation. The House isn't going to impeach without a reasonable chance of success in the Senate, and I don't see twenty of McConnell's Republicans voting to destroy Trump, no matter what he did or what he's charged with doing.
One interesting thing about Trump is that he has some of the most stable (albeit somewhat low) approval ratings of any president that there's reliable data for. But he's gone from "historically unpopular" to "about as popular as Reagan, Ford or Clinton" at this point in his presidency.
Nothing of interest. Ctrl-W.
Also, this is a list of predictions. It is therefore predicting that there will be not much action on the climate in 2019. That seems... plausible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WnYi3T78Ag
Trump has been having business with the Russian mafia for decades.
The Fed is far more likely to impact equity markets, but I think far too many (Wilson included) are too focused on the trend in rates without any consideration at all for the relative level of rates historically. It is true that a rising trend in rates is usually bearish for stocks, BUT it's very important to understand the trend in a broader context. Rates are still extremely low in a historical context and if the Fed pauses in 2019 and employment and consumer spending remain strong, stocks aren't likely to drop much more simply because 3% is not a satisfactory return for most people unless you are nearing retirement. So where else are you going to park your money? Probably stocks. Also, a company like Apple isn't going to be drastically effected by marginally higher rates when they were already close to zero. Sure, their cost of capital might go up by a quarter a percent. Is that really going to move the needle on their earnings significantly? Other companies that aren't profitable and heavily reliant on debt probably will be hurt, though.
Here's what I believe is happening: the Fed did a very poor job of communicating its position and intent in late 2018 (probably because they themselves didn't know what they were going to do) and spooked the markets by saying they were going to hike several times in 2019. They then walked this back but the markets are still a bit uneasy. Sentiment always follows price, and now that prices have fallen and volatility has spiked, what are the pundits doing? Predicting price declines and higher volatility! Well, that's already happened so if you are selling stocks now and paying up for VIX calls, you're probably late to the party. In early 2018, most pundits were saying to buy stocks.