From Bloomberg comes the best of 2015 looking at next year’s markets. For stocks:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s David Kostin has made some of the most accurate calls on the U.S. market this year, with a first-half target for the S&P 500 that came within 1 percent of its peak in May and a revised year-end forecast that’s about 1 percent below Monday’s close of 2,021.15. The New York-based strategist says gains next year will be capped at 2,100, leaving him tied as the most pessimistic forecaster for the second straight year.
For bonds:
Janney Montgomery Scott LLC’s Guy LeBas, the most-accurate forecaster of the Treasuries market this year, says 10-year rates will end next year almost exactly where they are now, at 2.22 percent.
As for the rest of the global bond market, Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management’s Hideo Shimomura…whose bullish calls on government notes in 2015 proved prescient, is also bullish on bonds in Australia as low inflation gives the central bank room to cut interest rates. He’s avoiding the high-yield corporate debt market, which is heading for its first annual decline since 2008 amid a collapse in earnings at raw-materials producers and a flood of investor redemptions from junk bond funds.
For commodities:
Spot gold prices, down 9 percent this year, will probably drop a further 12 percent to $950 an ounce by the end of 2016 as rising U.S. interest rates reduce the metal’s appeal as an alternative investment, according to Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.’s Barnabas Gan, the most-accurate precious metals forecaster tracked by Bloomberg in the past three quarters.
For big forex:
Enrique Diaz-Alvarez of Ebury Partners Ltd., one of the few forecasters to predict that the dollar’s rally would take it beyond $1.10 per euro, now says the currency will reach 95 cents by 2017.
Michael Every, the most bearish yuan forecaster tracked by Bloomberg at the end of 2014, sees another 16 percent drop next year to about 7.7 per greenback as the biggest emerging economy slows and authorities guide the yuan using a basket of currencies rather than just the dollar.
Spot on, all of them.
