Review of 2010 Predictions

I thought I would take a few moments today to review my 2010 predictions post, you can find it here.

The Market

My call that the market would not trade wider than a 30% range was correct.  That might sound like a no brainer, but relative to the previous two years it was very calm.

Google did not buy Twitter.  I think this was a mistake, Google has failed to shift from a “thing” centric web to a “person” centric web.  Twitter would have a been a big part of that shift.  I still think they both need each other.  Twitter has no clue how to do search, in fact, if you want to find someone on Twitter you most likely have to search their name on Google (facepalm).  I was wrong though, and Twitter decided to raise another 200 million this week, so it seems they are going it alone.

I was also wrong about the Google phone (Nexus 1).  That piece of hardware never caught on.  The Android platform exploded as expected.

Facebook did not go public, wrong again.  But it didn’t get bought, so I was right there.

Palm did trade under 6 dollars, and got acquired, I nailed both calls there.

Financials and homebuilders were the laggard sectors as I predicted.  Healthcare was not the leading sector, wrong there.

Paulson did make a killing in the gold miners and gold did hit 1,300 dollars an ounce, correct there.

Citibank did not trade over 7 dollars, correct.

Bank of America did not spin off Merill Lynch, wrong.

Economics

The housing market did extend it’s fall and the upper end is still hurting.

I was very wrong on commercial real estate, it did not fall another 10%.  But…I was dead on regarding how much well capitalized REITs would clean up, and they have.  Distressed real estate was huge this year.

NYC real estate prices did continue to fall as the shadow inventory is still significant.

The official unemployment rate did not dip below 8%, correct there.  This may not seem like it was a bold call at the end of last year, but historically the unemployment rate staying this high for this long is waaaaaay out of the ordinary.

The Federal Reserve certainly did not raise rates, completely wrong there.  Good thing I’m not an interest rate futures trader.

Politics and International Relations

Iran did not announce it’s ability to build a bomb, wrong there.  But there was no strike on any Iranian nuclear facility, correct on that one.  Given the overwhelming sense that there would be a strike, I think that was a pretty good contrarian call.

I said there would be no less than 5 senators or governors disgraced by scandal this year.  Let’s count.  New York governor David Patterson (interference in domestic abuse case), Florida governor Charlie Crist (financial), Louisiana senator David Vitter (sex)….so three, that’s all I got, damn.

Technology

Telecom providers did implement certain non net neutral practices, correct.

The cloud was everything this year as predicted, from stocks, to media, to general buzz, and even became a main stream phrase.  Rackspace was a huge winner as expected.

Foursquare grew but still isn’t huge.  I’m going to push on that call.  There wasn’t a company that really stepped up and served you mobile adds based on location, it’s just not that big yet, I was early with that call.

Mobile payments through services like Square still haven’t taken off, early on that one as well.

Mobile video streaming was huge, UStream killed it and just raised a monster round of financing, good call.

Apple did introduce its tablet device and it was a monster hit, the iPad revolutionized computing again.  I was a little heavy on the 5,000,000 unit sales in the first three months call.

The large hadron collider at CERN did not suck us all into a black hole (yet).  Correct.

Other

The NHL has not announced plans to move a hockey team to Quebec, a shame, wrong.

Derek Jeter has not been publicly embarrassed in some type of scandal, wrong.

Tiger woods did not go on Oprah with Elin to make up, and Stein did pay up on his hamburger bet, correct.

So I think overall pretty decent, I got some big ones wrong, but also got some big contrarian ones right.

Look for the 2011 predictions post next week.

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