Predictions for 2019…The Fed Stops Hiking and Disney Will Make All-Time Highs

Last December I made THREE predictions on this blog for 2018:

1. Supply Supply Supply and we sure got that in 2018 with lot’s of ICO’s and IPO’s. The supply brought a crash to the crypto market and though I did not discuss stock buybacks which ended up having a record 2018, they did not help stocks in 2018.

2. More Fintech which we sure did get. I did think Amazon, Google and Facebook would make some moves in the sector, but maybe 2019. I also thought there would be more acquisitions, but the big banks keep trying to build stuff themselves.

I remain excited about fintech in 2019. The crash in Bitcoin and the late year panic in stocks only sped the inevitable learning process of the millions of ‘yoots’ onboarded to investing platforms the last 3 years. As I said in the 2018 prediction post:

The mental athlete is cool. Compounding and network effects are cool. Investing is cool. Learning the language of the markets is cool.

3. Nike would make all-time highs. Nike closed the year up 15 percent after spending most of the year making all-time highs. The stock has performed much better than the averages. I am long, but with the trade war and currency volatility I am not expecting them to continue to outperform.

For 2019, I will start with a stock and Fed prediction and follow up the next few days on Venture Capital and Bitcoin.

In 2019, Disney will make an all-time high.

I have covered it before on this blog. Barron’s had it as a cover story this weekend. Have a read.

I do not own it at the moment, but expect to own it again soon.

Netflix will not make it easy for Disney. They are spending billions on content and have all the attention. This Wired piece on their interactive Black Mirror movie (which is great) shows how incredibly hard Netflix is pushing. The movie has 312 minutes of content and 1 trillion unique story permutations.

Disney better get moving.

As for the markets…

I don’t make actual stock market predictions because they are worthless. I loved this tweet from Cullen Roche which sums up the stock market in 2018:

Elsewhere, Frank has a great roundup post on the last two months with incredible data and charts titled ‘The Pain Train‘.

There is some data around panics that suggest one year out stocks are generally higher.

My pal Charlie made it easy for me on a rate hiking prediction with this post titled ‘The Long Pause‘.

What Charlie and I both do NOT want to see in 2019 is the FED having to cut rates.