First of all, I would like to apologise for the lack of posting during this first week of January. While I am not taking a complete break from the blog during this holiday season, I have only posted limited amount of material recently. I am still working behind the scenes and I do have much to write about, but the break enables me to spend some time away from the markets too. Things will return back to normal in the coming week or two.
In the meantime, I take it everyone has been reading the onslaught of Wall Street predictions for 2012. It seems the whole industry loves this ritual of predicting what the year will be like. They usually do their top 5 or top 10 predictions, which makes me think how many do you actually have? Honestly?
I guess it cannot be as bad as the Mayan prediction of the world ending in 2012, so I'll take anything better than that as a positive or "bullish" outlook. Yes, even the Eurozone break up / meltdown would be more bullish than that. Now, I will also not get into the ritual myself as I always prefer to leave predictions to astrologists, fortune tellers, weather forecasters, dream interpreters and finally "Wall Streeters" - you know aka the expert economists and stock analysts. In all honesty, what could I tell you, that you already have not read or heard about? And on a more important note, since this type of predictions are everywhere, nor matter which site or blog you visit (apart from maybe this one), I thought it would be interesting to see what you boys and girls think about 2012. Where are we headed in terms of absolute or even relative performance? Which asset classes will do well, which won't? Where should one park their money? Tell us what you think and leave a few comments with it...
p.s. I'll be the first to vote and I'll tell you that my pick for the best performing asset class of 2012 is Agriculture futures as in Grains, Softs and Livestock.
p.s. I'll be the first to vote and I'll tell you that my pick for the best performing asset class of 2012 is Agriculture futures as in Grains, Softs and Livestock.
It looks to me that precious metals, energy and agriculture are most likely to do well in 2012 - probably spectacularly well..! We are likely to see a move towards quality and value in all types of goods and services, not just speculative assets. I suspect that stock indices will move sideways but be very volatile.
ReplyDeleteBut it all depends on the US Bond market (and US Dollar) - the US Bond bubble could drag on much longer...
When investors eventually lose confidence in the US government to repay its debts, then Blackhawk Ben's life-long ambitions will be realised and he can flood the world with new money - perhaps this month; perhaps 2015?!
Mark
Yeah, very interesting point Mark. Bubbles do last much longer than anyone can expect. And if that is true for Governments Bonds, it will also be true for Commodities.
ReplyDeleteI do think Government Bond bull market since 1981 is slowly coming to an end. You will notice that more and more Government Bonds are entering secular bear markets now. First it was irrelevant small countries, but now some of the G7 countries like Italy or France are in a secular bear market. Eventually, Treasuries, Bunds, Gilts and JGBs will crack too, even if they are the last ones to go...