It's the start of the new year and I'm wondering what's in store when it comes to global business and economy this year. The past year has been critical for some countries like Greece and Puerto Rico because of bankruptcy claims. China's economy has also struggled during the last year. What are your thoughts on the trend for the world market this year? What impact do you think will the change of leadership in the US in a few months time do to the global market? How are businesses trading on your part of the world right now?
So far this week, I've seen a pretty good amount of unrealized paper losses, some realized gains in puts / shorts, and even a few bucks in realized gains on the long side.
No one can predict what's going to happen when we are talking about the whole world and a whole year. So your guess is as good as mine. We certainly seem to be off to a rough start which is kinda annoying since I'm on sick leave and there is no extra cash coming in right now so I could make some buys. I do of course have some cash stores in case we go low enough.
CNBC just put out this write up as to why they feel 2016 will hurt more then 2008. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/15/a-recession-worse-than-2008-is-coming-commentary.html
Ouch! It would be a real pain in the head for investments if what were stated in the article would come true. China's economic turmoil has indeed widely affected the world economy, and it' still fixing the damages from the big breakdown last year.
Brazil, Russia, China. Three of the top 10 economies are in freefall. All 3 of them are in far worse shape than we were in 2008. It is very difficult to having a growing economy with so much chaos going on outside our borders. I think the US economy and market is going to outperform the rest of the world, so I am moving a bit to companies that have more of a national presence rather than overseas. As always, keeping an eye on the oil pipeline as their is always a play in oil at any point of the economy. When oil prices bottom, it is time to evaluate how much production is offline, and then maybe buy into the drillers. Many of them are down 90% or more, so it is possible they could be scooped up by bigger companies. My plan now is just to wait until oil hits $10 over it´s bottom and then start researching the drillers.
It seems like this isn't a good start for economies this year, especially with the continuous downfall of oil prices and the economic state of the 3 countries you've mentioned. Although it's a good time to buy stocks but the predictions that this year could even get worst than 2008 is definitely a horror to the world economy.
Earlier this evening Forbes magazine summarized a number of 2016 outlook articles that I recognized as being published by Fidelity Viewpoint articles. As these are available to all (not limited to customers), perhaps some board members would like to have a look. HTH. YMMV.
How do you define freefall? I do understand that China is slowing down considerably... but they are still projected to have GDP growth of over 7% this year. That is still double of what is projected for the USA. So I don't know how that can be considered freefall. The markets are a different thing, people were expecting China to grow 10%+ so of course the stock market is taking a hit with the slowdown but I'm not sure if you could consider their economy to be completely dead. But yeah US based companies making most of their cash inside the USA seem like a good bet. I'm liking the job reports, more consumer cash due to low energy prices and the strong dollar has no effect as long as the customers are in the USA.