Belated 2023 predictions:
Prediction 1: Turkish stock market and ETF (ticker symbol: TUR) will crash in 2023. So will the Turkish lira (USDTRY). I forgot to add this in my original post. Turkey has the same problems that have plagued it from 2013-2021, such as brain drain, low IQs, lack of foreign investment, hyperinflation, incompetent leadership, etc.
Monetary gimmicks by Turkey’s central bank will only delay the inevitable crash. Without foreign investment and real economic growth, there is nothing that can save Turkey’s economy.
Despite high inflation, wokeness, and political division, the US still has the advantage of being an economic powerhouse and hub of economic innovation, like Silicon Valley. Or finance, such as Manhattan. Or payment processing, such as Visa and Mastercard. Or retail, such as Walmart and Amazon. Europe has none of those. As I have said many times, whatever problems the US has, whether it’s crime, taxes, inflation, corruption, Covid restrictions, censorship/political suppression, incompetence, civic unrest, or wokeness, it’s worse elsewhere:
-UAE: less woke, but it’s more corrupt, incompetent, oil dependence, no tech industry, low IQs
-Western Europe: more woke, more crime, less competence, and higher inflation due to natural gas and oil prices and heating costs. There are always protests going on in France yearly, whereas BLM and antifa got tons of media coverage in 2020 but otherwise do not do much.
-Eastern Europe + Russia: weaker economies, less growth, little to no innovation despite average/above-IQ populations, more corruption, but less woke. Lots of cybercrime.
-Southern Europe: more woke, more corrupt, less competent, no innovation. Lots of protests.
-Northern Europe, Nordic and Scandinavian countries: among the best parts of Europe, high-trust societies, low-ish crime, some innovation, high IQs, social stability
-South America: more woke, weaker economies, higher inflation, more crime, more corruption, no innovation, low/average IQs etc. Lots of protests in Brazil.
-Africa: low IQs, corrupt, incompetent, etc. but less woke
-India: some innovation/tech, not woke, but stunted in other ways such as high rates of poverty, disease (don’t drink the water!), and corruption
-China, Japan, and Singapore: not woke, competent, high tech, high IQs (second best economies to the US, especially China)
Prediction 2: Emerging markets will lag the S&P 500. For the above reasons, there is no reason to ever buy emerging markets when the US economy and stocks are superior.
Prediction 3: META stock will do very well, outperforming the Nasdaq. Wallstreet has already written off the Metaverse as a dud and is looking ahead to 2023. Despite some slowdown of growth and profits, META still stands to generate tens of billions of annual profits for 2023. Through its three platforms–WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook–META still has a near-total grip on social networking, save for TikTok and Snapchat.
META’s PE ratio is just 11 despite having a market cap of $330+ billion, still. This makes it very undervalued by almost any metric. By comparison, Walmart has a PE ratio of 23 and a market cap of $388 billion. So in other words, Facebook generates about 2x more profits compared to Walmart, which is crazy when you think about how big Walmart is. Facebook’s profit margins, excluding the Metaverse, is around 30+%, compared to 3% for Walmart.
Sure, Facebook may be losing some of its popularity among younger people, but it’s still otherwise dominant. Unlike TikTok or Snapchat, Facebook has the invaluable boomer/gen-x demographic, which has the highest CPC and CPM of any demographic, such a super-pricey insurance, healthcare, and financial services ads. Multinationals are emptying their wallets to target retirees and middle-aged people on Facebook (it also helps that boomers often accidently click the ads, which are blended in well with regular content). That is where the money is. Same for political ad spending. We’re in a 24-7 election cycle now, much like the 24-7 news cycle. There is always some election going on, whether local, senate, congressional, etc.
The only major problem I can see for META is if it continues to sink tens of billions of dollars into the Metaverse. For the above reasons I also like Google as well, which will also outperform the S&P 500.