(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- It’s devilishly hard to pin down the future, but that didn’t stop us from trying. Here are some of our predictions from The Year Ahead 2019.
RIGHT
PrivacyWe said, “When it comes to privacy laws, [the U.S. is] bringing up the rear.” By failing to act on sweeping federal legislation and leaving things to the states, Washington set up consumers for another year of hacks, leaks, and cover-ups.Fannie Mae and Freddie MacWe said that key court rulings would help bring clarity to their future. An appellate court overturned a decision that directed Fannie and Freddie’s profits to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and they’ve moved closer to private ownership.
KINDA RIGHT
RecessionWe said that an inversion in the U.S. yield curve may not be as reliable a predictor of a recession as it has been, owing to the lingering effects of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing. The curve inverted in August. The risk of downturn in the next 12 months is less than it was this summer, according to Bloomberg’s economists. But it can take as long as 34 months for a recession to hit after an inversion.IPOsWe said, “Expect to see the most American tech mega-listings of any year this century.” It was indeed a big year for Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc., but many of the rest were disappointing, and Slack Inc. went for a direct listing instead of an IPO.UkraineWe put the incumbent Petro Poroshenko in the hot seat last year because Yulia Tymoshenko was beating him in the polls. But then the comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy won the presidency.ECBWe suggested that Mario Draghi might close out his seven- year term as president of the European Central Bank by raising interest rates for the first time in his tenure. But we also warned that “a protectionism-fueled global slowdown” might prevent such a hike, and that’s what happened.Venture capitalSoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son was in the hot seat, but maybe for the wrong reason—his relationship with Saudi Arabia, a major investor in his Vision Fund. Now the question is just how badly he misplayed his WeWork investment.
KINDA WRONG
ChinaWe predicted a bad year for Chinese hardware companies, but Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. have rebounded somewhat from the shellacking they took in 2018.LuxuryWe described Alchemist 2.0, a restaurant in Copenhagen set to push the boundaries of fine dining with multisensory experiences, saying it would cost $1.5 million to build. It opened this year at a cost of $15 million.
WRONG
SnapWe put Evan Spiegel in the hot seat and warned that Snapchat could fade away if it didn’t evolve. But Snap Inc.’s run of sales and spiking share price suggest, in the short term at least, it didn’t need any new ideas, after all. Right at this moment, Snap is starting to look as weak as it has all year, but amid the IPO carnage, it’s been a relatively safe harbor.BrexitWe said Brexit would happen on March 29. LOL.Interest ratesWe spoke to an economist who expected mortgage rates to hit 5.5% this year. They plummeted to 3.75% as the Fed slashed its benchmark interest rates.
To contact the author of this story: Silvia Killingsworth in New York at skillingswo2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Eric Gelman at egelman3@bloomberg.net
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