E Fearless Fosdick Forecasts

Today’s blog features forecasts by our special correspondent, Fearless Fosdick, who, aided by his abilities in reading Tarot cards, stars, crystal balls, palms, and entrails, will forecast the best stocks for the coming year based on his hunches.

Featured Fearless Fosdick’s fifteen forecasts for ’15 follow, or FFFFFFFF:

1. the US dollar cannot keep it up. After rising 17% against other major currencies last year, the pool of analysts has reduced the Greenback’s average growth estimates to a mere 4% this year. Me, I go further. The dollar will fall in 2015 against major currencies by 3 or 4% in the second half after the Fed finally does raise interest rates. This will reverse the rent-seeking inflow of global of cash to the US$ and the USA because trade and profits will be hurt by an expensive currency.

2. The best performing market in 2014 will not repeat the exploit. Make an Exodus from Egypt, which in the past 18 months became the place to invest. The Sisi regime attracted money fleeing other Middle Eastern areas where ISIS threatens stability. Sisi is now The Nile denial to ISIS. We tried Egypt, but an Arab hand acquaintance, questioned a mere few months before the Cairene karoom, replied: “Are you mashugga?” So I tossed my crystal ball into the sea at Wood’s Hole. Big mistake. The worst developed country market (not counting Russia) was Portugal where there will be a reversal in 2015.

3. Europe is getting desperate, actually a good thing. The failure of half-hearted quantitative easing may open the way for a serious bond-buying exercise and even the launch of multilateral euro-denominated bonds to finance infrastructure and inflation, in return for nominal national reforms. A push to a common bond market and other reforms is long overdue.

4. The age of aggregation has not ended yet. There will be more mergers in the pharmaceutical sector. There will be additional acquisitions in energy. There will also be more takeovers in telecommunications. If this is not enough to keep investment banker bonuses up, there will also be underwriting, for new share issues, secondaries, bonds, and leading-edge lending, particularly to those most in need of the ready: emerging markets.

5. The mysterious miasma over Asian economies at this time, as we still have not reached the Chinese New Year, prevents me from forecasting the future in Japan, China, and India. After the Year of the Pig has grunted forward, I will cast my astro-charts anew and they may become clearer.

6. However, even if China barely grows (its December purchasing manager index is barely in the black at 50.1%) I am certain that another 10 million or so Chinese will enter the middle class, whatever that means in China. Welcome fellow bourgeois! Oink oink. However the top oligarchs there and in Russia will become less vulgarly ostentatious to avoid calling attention to their misdeeds. I mean, who really needs 154 Swiss watches or 42 uninhabited apartments?

7. A high dollar makes for better business for Canada and Mexico, first responders to US demand.

8. There will be political crises and regime change in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Colombia. The latter country, according to my favorite Colombia-born elf, Frida, becomes our top pick for good regime change. Regime change in the other lands  may go wrong. In Britain, the son of a foreign-born Marxist is not leading the masses leftward with a red flag but with a ballot paper. That is an improvement but the UK polls are still pretty tentative, the Paddy Power plc odds are not set, and my crystal ball is cloudy.

9. On South Africa I say: Cry, the Beloved Country. I am allowed to quote others.

10. In fulfillment of the Zionist dream, Israel in 2015 has become a normal country with gangsters and whores replacing zealots. Its people can vote for their pocketbooks over their ideals, for leftist populist price-cutters opposed to pro-capitalist modernizer land-snatchers. Israeli socialism is dead on Kibbutzim but alive and well in supermarket checkout lines.

11. Compared to the malignant rise of the European right-wing, hating foreigner immigrants, Muslims, and, sometimes even Jews, Israeli populism appears benign. You cannot be prejudiced against foreigner refugees in Israel because almost every Israeli is of immigrant stock. The same is true of the USA but American triumphalism has a short historic memory. To avoid 1930s-style nasties, serious economic moves to boost job levels are needed all over both regions.

12. More people will die of Ebola but a preventive vaccination is coming. Meanwhile in developed countries, a treatment based on blood from survivors will become standard operating procedure.

13. There will be no crashes of airplanes owned by Malaysian carriers. Other countries’ airlines may still crash, however.

14. However more computers will be hacked than ever before.

15. Vladimir Putin will cling to power by behaving better. I hope. Everyone hopes.