As is usual this time of year, all the investment houses will be punting ideas for this year. Oil is clearly a story at the moment, more with a negative than a positive bias. Also, views seem quite pessimistic on Europe as an investment destination. But what themes are being considered for 2015?
My guesses : usa does well Europe does not do well CAD gets weaker compared to USD Real estate prices in North America will grow slower than expected The interest rate hike will not happen yet
Avoid Europe for the 1st Quarter. The year started pretty harsh and the current situations are not helping either. I'd go with US real estate.
Yeah, I'm intrigued by the real estate picture. It's all going to be about consumer spending holding up and whether people start buying in anticipation of interest rates rising (whenever that would be). As long as credit conditions stay decent, things should be fine. But if European conditions worsen then we could see a knock-on effect again.
There is a lot of talk about the interest rates and I think this will cause people to pay more attention to their own mortgages. Itthink people will start to realise that they are paying ALOT for real estate and that money could be better spent elsewhere.
Oil is obviously going to be the most significant thing for 2015. There are two schools of thought going on right now, and both cannot be right. Either this is just a blip on the map, and oil prices are going to recover, in which case in a few months it might be a good idea to buy some of the companies that have been beaten down. Or else this is the new price of oil in which case you can play the companies that will benefit from oil prices that haven´t yet seen the benefit reflected in their price. I think we easily make it through 2015 without any change in interest rates. Oil is too big of a part of the economy to allow inflation to happen while the price of oil is this low. There are just too many reasons why prices will be lower of everything across the board.
