Dusting off the Crystal Ball: Ten Market Predictions for 2023
As the New Year dawns, it’s time to dust off the magic 8-ball and peer into the future to see what 2023 has in store for the markets.
Grab a cup of coffee, put on your tinfoil hat, and let's get started.
Inflation remains stubborn as Jerome Powell stomps on the hawk button before whimpering out at 5.50%. Stocks get slammed, then recover in the second half of 2023. The bulls say they are back in business, the bears ask “how high can a dead cat bounce?”
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new, new thing. VC’s can’t ditch their blockchain failures fast enough to get in on some “real innovation”. Andreessen Horowitz strikes it big with an AI tool that transfers data from defunct blockchains back to centralized databases.
Facebook shareholders tell Mark Zuckerberg that being a billion dollar company is “only cool if you weren’t already a trillion dollar company”. Zuckerberg is so attached to his virtual metaverse avatar that he ignores the naysayers, eventually needs more cash, and is forced to sell WhatsApp to Microsoft in a fire sale.
Crypto continues its spiral towards the nothingness from which it came, and closer to where it belongs. Binance finally succumbs to its fate, Tether plummets after agreeing to an independent audit, and Coinbase files for Chapter 11 citing “complications caused by an unprofitable business model”. Jim Chanos’s crypto shorts make him the richest hedge fund manager in the world.
Warren Buffet makes good on his pledge to buy all the Bitcoin in the world below his initial offer price of “$25”, and is proven right yet again! As Warren B predicted, owning all the Bitcoin does render it utterly useless and worthless. He sells it all to Cathy Wood and Michael Saylor, who remain the only buyers. The SEC investigates Saylor for a second time.
The SEC announces it is pursuing a major US bank for “green washing on an industrial scale”. The internet goes into a frenzy speculating that it is Wells Fargo, again! Charles Scharf denies Wells Fargo’s involvement in a single tweet “Due to labour market supply shortages, Wells Fargo simply cannot participate in more than one industrial scale fraud at the same time.”
Out of the ashes of crypto, rises a new token dubbed the BTMDC, or “back to Mum and Dad Coin”. The crypto crowd go wild when they learn that mum and dad won’t buy their used Teslas; M’s & D’s are old school and prefer Fiats and a reasonable rate of return. They also want their lawns mowed once a week and the pool cleaned. Tough love is back on the menu!
Elon Musk discovers that his version of “freedom of speech” is actually pretty expensive, even by his standards. New investors have learned that Tesla is actually a car company and re-align its P/E ratio with Ford and GM’s (6x P/E). Musk gets a margin call from JP Morgan and tweets the old chestnut “If I owe JP Morgan $1 million, then JP Morgan owns me, if I owe JP Morgan $100 billion, I own JP Morgan”. JP Morgan is unimpressed and just leaves Twitter.
Jamie Dimon receives a lifetime achievement award for finally discovering a use case for blockchain. He uses its immutability to discover every JP Morgan employee who defied him by trading crypto, and true to his word, he fires them all! Together they unite and sue him using a centralized law firm.
To settle the ongoing dispute between the SEC and the CFTC over who does/doesn’t want to regulate crypto?, a breakthrough occurs. A new joint organization is formed henceforth to be known as the Securities Union and Commodity Crypto Authority, or “SUCCA” for short.
And there you have it, my inaugural ten market predictions for 2023. Only time will tell to see who is in or out, up or down, right or wrong. So sit back, relax, and enjoy 2023. Until next year, happy market gazing!