Taps Coogan – December 31st, 2023
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With 265 articles and many thousands of Top News Stories published, 2023 is in the books here at The Sounding Line.
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2023 was an odd year for markets and a constant reminder that making forecasts is a fool’s errand. Pretty much every big-name investor and forecaster called for a recession and market trouble this year (here, here, here, here, here, etc…).
There were a few exceptions, notably Mark Mobius and Daniel Lacalle, with the former having had a remarkably good string of calls over the past number of years despite his seemingly ‘simple’ framework. The takeaway? Focus on nitty-gritty things you know well, not nebulous ‘Macro’ calls that are.
With no further adieu, here are my favorite charts from this strange year.
1.) The supply chain crisis ended. Are we headed back into another?
2.) China officially tilted into demographic oblivion:
3.) The banking system continued its relentless consolidation in 2023.
4.) The obviously terrible investment of zero or negative yielding bonds that boomed in recent years was finally revealed to be the obviously terrible investment it always was:
5.) Despite an odd sort-of-recessionary economy, the jobs market remained pretty strong all year.
6.) The federal interest expense on the national debt went exponential this year and it’s not going to get any better:
9.) Chinese youth unemployment eclipsed 20%, so… they stopped reporting it.
10.) Prime working age labor participation hit its highest level since 2002 despite the prime age worker skewing towards the top end of the ‘prime’ age bracket:
Looking forward towards 2024, our highest conviction view is that the cycle of high intensity conflicts will worsen. We hope to be wrong and often are.
Best of luck in 2024!
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