Our Predictions for 2020: Markets, Economy, Politics, Society & Sport

It’s going to be an important year. December 31st, 2020 will mark the end of a decade, which still we don’t know how should we call it. We have seen the rise of populism all over the world, inequality tensions, migration crises, and wars. At the same time, we’re still on a tide of slow, yet visible growth, with everything expecting to go belly up. That’s why, my friends and I, discussed some of our predictions for 2020 and decided to publish it.

Disclaimer: All thoughts here are personal, based on subjective analyses, thoughts, and beliefs.

Do you know Scott Galloway’s, professor from Stern University NY, Author of “The Four” and L2 consultancy founder, yearly predictions? If not, have a look at his speech for 2019 forecasts:

Year-to-year he makes his own predictions, which he later sums up as yes/no/almost. He’s mostly “close”, but it is still fun to watch.

Kind of inspired by that, as a group of people from various industries, we wanted to play the same game and see how wrong we will be. Our team:

1. Peter — ex-consulting, currently a director at e-commerce platform

2. Simon — global product manager for tech industry companies — from hardware manufacturers to software

3. Thomas — debt market analyst, private investor and politics commentary

4. David — wealth management analyst, politics, economics and sports section

5. Me — consultancy, doctorate-in-progress, digital & media analyst

We know that the topics we’ve chosen are inter-connected in a closed system, but we had to divide them into the following categories:

1. Worldwide: Politics & macroeconomics

2. Worldwide: Top stocks & company predictions

3. Poland: Politics & macroeconomics

4. Poland: Top stocks & company predictions

5. Sports

We always put the first letter of each predictor’s name after the sentence, e.g. (P) or (PD) if more people agreed on the topic.

Predictions for 2020:

Worldwide: Politics & macroeconomics

Photo by Jørgen Håland on Unsplash

1. Donald Trump, despite all the scandals and impeachment, will make it to the end of his term (P).
2. Elizabeth Warren eventually wins the Democrats nomination and will go toe-to-toe with Trump and few p.p. will decide (P), but Trump won’t win in the end (T)
3. If Biden gets the Democrats nomination, Trump will win (P)
4. There will be a lot of talking about China-US trade deal, but it won’t happen, affecting Trump (T).
5. I say that Trump may win either way, mostly because of rising Chinese dominance (follow-up on point 7)(M).
6. Great Britain will leave EU this year. Once and for all (M). Boris Johnson becomes national hero as Brexit will be smooth in terms of political consequences, yet terrible in terms of economy (T).
7. We will see some recession in China, but pumping money to the economy will end with a burst of real estate bubble there. If there will be another financial crisis, we will see it in China between 2020–2022 (T).
8. Despite the above, China will surpass the United States and becomes the 1st economy in the world, granting reelection to Trump (M).
9. If there will be a change of seat in the Oval Office, we will see the push for Chinese isolation in the high-tech industry, e.g. 5G ban for Huawei, mostly because of cyber-security and human rights (Uyghurs case will come back) (T).
10. There will be NO open war with Iran, at least not in 2020 (T,M), but we will some level of tensions, proxy wars, drone attacks, cyber hacks, rocket strikes, etc. (D,T,M).
11. China will increase its Pacific dominance, threatening Japan, alerting US. They will deploy new rocket systems and 2–3 cutting-edge bluewater fleet ships (M).
12. We will see another level of tensions in Ukraine because of Russia(M).
13. The immigration crisis in EU will finally reach its manageable level (M).
14. Iran may try to put pressure on the Arabic countries (T); it will be a good year for the oil & gas industry, prices will go up (D,T).
15. We will start to see the recession in Europe, mostly in Germany due to automotive (T).
16. We won’t see the global crisis yet, but definitely a recession (M,D)
17. Macron may try to leverage it to become 1st EU leader (T).
18. ECB will use climate deal as coverage for additional money print (T).

Worldwide: Top stocks & company predictions

Photo by Rick Tap on Unsplash

1. We will see some flash crashes in the US, mostly because of FED’s comeback to “helicopter money” policy (T). We will see additional WeWorks cases (P).
2. If we see it in the US, then Europe will be the same. Deutsche Bank will need deep restructuring, as derivatives portfolio is a growing problem (T).
3. iPhone 11 will be the best selling phone of the year 2020 and Apple will be worth trillion dollars by the end of the year (S).
4. OnePlus will surpass Huawei and become the world’s third-largest premium phone brand by volume (S).
5. Netflix’s growth will decline majorly and by the end of 2020, they’ll not reach 200 mil subscribers. All thanks to HBO, Disney and Apple expansion into video streaming (S). They will growth though, but mostly because of Oscar content (T).
6. Spotify will remain no 1 in music streaming by volume and will continue to be profitable, but we’ll experience a decline in the growth of local and smaller players (Tidal, Gaana) and the rapid rise of Amazon Music and Apple Music (S).
7. Uber will lose half of its valuation ($57 billion USD) this year; Travis Kalanick’s Cloud Kitchen start-up will disrupt the local food industry and ex-CEO will be asked to come back to Uber as an advisor (M).
8. Amazon Advertising revenues will be higher than Facebook’s and the e-commerce giant becomes the 2nd biggest media player after Google (M).
9. Amazon will increase the number of its distribution centers in Europe. We will see the offering on Central-Eastern European markets, but without the Prime access (M).
10. TikTok will become the most popular app of 2020, surpassing the Instagram base, even more heavily, moving close to Facebook; it still will be hard to monetize it for B2B businesses (M).
11. Instagram will copy TikTok’s features, but we won’t see the same scenario as with Snapchat (M).
12. Facebook won’t ban political ads; we will see another fake news scandal (M).
13. There will be some regulations in US for TikTok, mostly because its Chinese and endangers US companies (M).
14. We won’t hear much about Snapchat this year. It’s done (M).
15. No brainer, but Warren Buffett will win with the market again (M).

Poland: Politics & macroeconomics

Photo by Kamil Gliwiński on Unsplash

Similarly to US elections, we had a discussion around presidential elections in our country, mostly around macroeconomic reasons. We agree they will happen, but it’s important if they occur before May 2020 or not:

1. Andrzej Duda won’t win in the first round, but still becomes President (P, M);
   however, if we see some level of economic depression (next points), Duda will fail (T,D).
2. We will see the inflation growth, most likely 4% Y/Y (P) or more, around 5–6% (T), while interest rates will remain the same (T), but we may have some early announcements about a potential increase (D).
3. These will lead to an increase in real-estate prices (P), but the bubble will burst as the Polish stock market won’t have fuel for growth (D,T).
4. We will have successions problems in PiS (Law & Justice, ruling party) (P); we’ll see political paralysis and early elections (T).
5. Poland will be more and more marginalized in the EU arena; we will hear more voices about potential Polexit (D).
6. There will be no movements in government till May elections; Mateusz Morawiacki will continue to work as a Prime Minister of Poland (M).
7. Borys Budka will become the leader of Koalicja Obywatelska (Citizen Coalition)(M).
8. Lewica (Left-wing) alliance will collapse after presidential elections, mostly due to Robert Biedroń's failure (M).
9. We will have a new series of strikes related to social issues, most likely feminine-related (abortion, birth-control) (M).
10. Donald Tusk won’t play any significant role in domestic politics, except support for other politicians and few mean Tweets (M).
11. Jan Spiewak will be exculpated by Andrzej Duda; he will become a supporter of the President (T).
12. Lech Wałęsa will do something stupid. 100%. (M).

4. Poland: Top stocks & company predictions

Cyberpunk 2077 Deep Dive Video

1. Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red becomes a massive hit (90–95% average score) (P), but still won’t beat the market expectations (M). We will see realized profit and then the company may grow again (T).
2. CD Projekt will announce a new game in The Witcher world, mostly because of Netflix's success (M).
3. Despite that, CDP won’t beat Santander in terms of market cap (P).
4. We will see another merger on Polish banking market(P).
5. There will finally arise a fintech solution in Poland that will revolutionize an experience of a small amount P2P money transfer, like UPI in India, WeChat in China or Venmo in the US (S).
6. Orlen will acquire another company, which won’t make any sense, e.g. retail or media (T).
7. There will be a new entrant on the Polish streaming market, mostly for sports broadcasting, slowing down nc+, Polsat Sport (D); however, nc+ still will become a leader of streaming sports platforms
8. Brand24 will manage to solve their Facebook problem and with TikTok and Twitch monitoring feature, they will beat 35 PLN stock prices before Q3 (M).
9. Polsat will buy another company this year; most likely something media-related, e.g. horizontal portal as they need it for full vertical/horizontal integration (all kinds of services available in all Polish big cities and villages) (M).
10. Alibaba, mostly because of InPost distribution, will increase its market share on the Polish e-commerce market (M).

Sports

Photo by Vienna Reyes on Unsplash

1. Poland will get into Euro football cup play-offs but that's pretty much it and they will drop out on a best of 16 stage (S,P,M); one says it’s going to be 1/4, but not more (D,T)
2. We will have one surprise-team in the Euro football finals (P).
3. Poland will get 10–12 medals in Tokyo Olimpics (P,D)
4. FC Barcelona will win Champions League, beating Liverpool (M).

Conclusions

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

We’re expecting to be wrong 80–90% of the time as obviously, the future is not something we can predict. Nevertheless, it’s always fun to play such a game, especially doing research, debating and trying to think rationally. Let’s call it “intellectual playground”.

We will be coming to this post next year to see how it worked.

Happy 2020!