Fortunately, the Denialist-in-Chief is staying home this year to implode the government, so he doesn't have to explain away inconvenient reality again.
"Can't we pretend these costs aren't real? We pretend everything else"
"Company blames liabilities, reconstruction costs and ‘increase in wildfire risk resulting from climate change’"
Doh!
Speaking of denial, I noticed that David Stockman just scattered the remains of his credibility onto the curmudgeon bonfire of the sanities. Getting past his free Russian history lesson, the argument appears to be something like: "It's ludicrous to believe Trump is a Putin-controlled agent - Everyone knows he's inherently deceitful, incompetent, and corrupt. What external assistance does he require? Hence, we claim full credit for this self-imploding gong show".
Duly noted.
Getting back to implosion in broad daylight, one of the worst timed predictions of 2018 was hedge fund guru Ray Dalio's prediction at Davos last January - that "Those holding cash are going to feel pretty stupid". One week later, the S&P tanked -10% in a straight line. Global markets never recovered from that point forward, nor did U.S. financials, nor the average U.S. stock.
One year ago (next week):
Timing of Dalio's comment circled:
The second worst comment by a clueless billionaire was Buffett stating back in May that he would love to see Apple go down in price, so he could buy more:
May, 2018:
In the event - despite human history's largest stock buyback, the stock lost ~40% of value from the peak. Then, earlier this month, Apple announced their first revenue decline in 12 years due to tanking iPhone sales.
The stock is now bidless.
While I'm on the topic of floundering Tech stocks, the Nasdaq 100 is now making its fourth lower high since September:
But the worst casino prediction for 2018 came from none other than Goldman Sachs in August. Just weeks before the wheels came off the global bus, they predicted that record stock buybacks would "boost" stocks. And yet, their own chart shows in the article linked below, stock buybacks peaked in 2007 during the last cycle, which is when the casino also peaked.
August 2018:
Which gets us to the best timed prediction of 2018, right before the wheels came off the bus in October. The prediction that the impending stock buyback blackout period would lead to "volatility":
Which gets us to Davos 2019. According to the above article, which month has the lowest buyback activity?
January
