Bitcoin & crypto currencies: have likely topped out. A $600 billion dollar market cap (Bitcoin + alt-coins) is just obscene, even for a someone such as myself who has been bullish on Bitcoin as early as 2013. A $300 billion market cap for Bitcoin is the size of a large tech company, which was the premise of my original $20,000 target. Much of this market cap is due to stagnant coins in storage and unused, with small numbers of traded coins pushing the price up and down 10%+ a day. If the balance of ‘buys’ and ‘sells’ is skewed sightly, like we saw a few days ago, the floor falls out. As mentioned earlier, sold some of my position around $19k. I expect Bitcoin to be negative for 2018. The ship has sailed on Bitcoin, sorry. It’s not going to $50k, $100k or $1 million or whatever. The problem is, the more something rises, the more people put money into it, and then more money goes into it, and then that money can just as easily be pulled out. There has to be some sort of fundamental reason for people to keep money in. People say there are only a finite number of coins, but they keep making news currencies and Bitcoin spin-offs as a way of bypassing this cap.
When Mike says not to worry about the fluctuations, that works if maybe you have $1,000 of Bitcoin and $1 million in other stuff, but much or all of your net-worth is in Bitcoin and suddenly you are sitting on a large windfall, you will worry about the price.
Stocks + tech + US economy + web 2.0: I remain as bullish as ever, and 2018 will be another good year for stocks. I was 100% correct in 2017 in predicting a continuation of the bull market and economic expansion, now in its 9th year, making it the longest ever. Was wrong about Snapchat though, which failed to live up to my expectations. Remain long Amazon, Google, Facebook. As discussed earlier, tax cuts will not cause inflation to tick up much, if at all.
Bay Area real estate: remain bullish. Was correct in 2017 in predicting prices would keep rising due to usual factors such as scarcity, booming local tech economy, foreign investment, and so on. Prices have continued to blast past their 2007 highs, long after the media called it a bubble in 2013-2014.
Trump: As predicted in 2017, no legislative progress on immigration, but tax cuts went through, which was an easy and expected victory. I predict for 2018, that like 2017, there will be scant or no legislative progress on immigration. Progress in terms of fulfilling campaign promises will remain slow. However, arrests are up and border crossing are at multi-decade lows.
Like 2017, there will be no national unrest or major foreign conflicts even though it may seem like America is more divided than ever. No major developments in Russia, Syria, or North Korea. China’s economy continues to hum along, no crisis.
For 2018, there will be no impeachment proceedings or major scandals in the Trump administration. 2017 was characterized by one tempest in a teapot after another–stories pertaining to emails, Trump Jr., firings, Russia, Muller, etc. that got a lot of media coverage but failed to directly implicate Trump in any way, leaving the left empty handed. The biggest scandal of 2017 didn’t involve Trump (as everyone was expecting in 2016, because everyone assumed Trump would disgrace the office and hurt America’s ‘global standing’, which he didn’t), but rather it was the Harvey Weinstein scandal, which no one foresaw and was another loss for the left.
The opposite happened: under Trump, with the stock market and US economy booming, America has become more powerful and relevant than ever.
Trump continues to surpass expectations, like in 2017, proving to be far more competent and level-minded than anyone could have ever anticipated. Scott Adams was right too in this regard.
Overall, with the exception of Bitcoin, I expect 2018 will be much the same as 2017.