Future trends

As of 8/2017, we’re in the cross road in many areas. Let me outline some of my thoughts. Check it one year later and see how many have materialized.

Economy

1.       Today the market is fundamentally unsound but technically sound. When technical goes down, it could be the time to exit the market.

2.       FAANG as a group of stocks is very risky to me. Netflix is the riskiest fundamentally.

3.       Oil price will take a break before its upward trend. I sold some when oil price was $50 and I bought them at $30. I expect there is a fierce correction and at that time most sectors including oil would go down. Why I expect an uptrend on oil after that? It is a simple supply and demand at work. Today drilling, exploration… are not economically feasible. Hence we should have less oil in the future and oil is still competitive and environmentally friendly.

4.       “One Belt, One Road” Initiative will have impact to the world economy. It will benefit the participating countries and provinces in west China. Even many American companies including GE and Caterpillar will benefit by providing heavy equipment that China do not build today.

5.       The world should benefit from the rise of China if China does not raise wars.

6.       From my estimate, only one job will be gained from 10 returned jobs from Mexico and China due to automation.

7.       The wealth gap will be widened due to robots and advance of artificial intelligent.

8.       Europe will finally recover despite the rising of terrorism.

US

1.       US is declining but we’re still leading in many sectors. We spend too much effort in being a world policeman while China is concentrating their efforts in improving the economy.

2.       Trump will not be re-elected. Will it be the trigger to bring down the market? Only time can tell.

3.       We used to be a nation of problem fixers, but now problem avoiders. Trump did that by dissolving his committee of business leaders. He does not want to fix the health care system but recommend one to replace it. So is Yahoo!Finance. I miss many nice features from this site that are no longer available.

We need the H-1B program to attract the world’s best programmers and scientists to make us more competitive. We need to monitor and enforce the program to ensure more benefits than harms.