Executive Summary: Every year I look back and grade my prior year’s Outlook. For 2024, I accurately called the Fed's soft landing, a charging bull market and the wisdom of avoiding long-maturity bonds. However, my call for a market rotation was off target, and foreign stocks lagged. My diversified portfolios remain resilient and positioned for long-term success despite these mixed results.
The incentives in the world of financial punditry are all wrong. The louder you are and the bolder the claim, the more attention and clicks you’ll get. If you’re right (or even close), you can shout about it from the mountaintops. If you’re wrong, well, it doesn’t matter, because no one remembers after 15 or 30 minutes, giving you the option to take another crack at it next year.
I try to hold myself to a higher standard. As I’ve done for years, I look back at my prior year’s predictions, what I call my Outlook, and report back on what I got right and wrong.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve shared my views on where I think we’re headed in 2025, as well as a market and month-by-month review of 2024. To round out the process, here’s a look at how my 2024 Outlook fared, with quotes from my Outlook followed by my self-evaluation. As you’ll see, I got some things right and others … well, read on.
I’ll say it right here: the Fed has achieved the elusive soft landing … I’m not ready to wave the all-clear … [however], I’m also not losing sleep over a potential recession.
You can ding me points for not waving the economic all-clear, but I was pretty spot-on here.
A year ago, I was among a select few analysts saying a soft landing had been achieved—now that’s common knowledge. I was also right not to be overly worried about a recession in 2024.
Consider the three big economic data points: unemployment, inflation and economic growth (gross domestic product, GDP).