Big investors have just wrapped up mid-year lookahead season — that point in the calendar where they articulate what has gone right and wrong over the year so far and attempt to make plausible predictions about the coming six months, all in the hope that they will not look silly when 2024 draws to a close.
To me, the most prominent word to come out of this flurry of analysis is “but”. Market predictions are always laced with a thick layer of caveats. No one knows the future, after all. Yet even allowing for that, a huge number of analysts and investors messed up their views six months ago.
It is July, and none of the supposedly nailed-on rate cuts from the Federal Reserve has yet arrived and, what’s more, stocks and other risky assets are still holding on just fine despite warnings of gloom after the run-up in rates. The US recession is just around the corner, and seemingly always will be. There’s a lot of humble pie on the menu.