Business

Even as increasingly more parts of the economy, especially those with exposure to manufacturing and industrial production, sink into the recessionary quicksand, one sector that was seen as immune from the malaise gripping US manufacturing and was outperforming the overall growth rate of the US economy, was housing, and specifically spending on private and public construction: a direct input into the GDP model.

Each year for the past three decades Blackstone's Vice Chairman of Multi-Asset Investing Byron R. Wien presents his top 10 "surprises" for the upcoming 12 months.

What constitutes a "surprise", you ask? A surprise is "an event that the average investor would only assign a one out of three chance of taking place but which Byron believes is 'probable,' having a better than 50% likelihood of happening." Last year's list included a few predictions that didn't exactly pan out including:

Via FactSet's Director of ETFs, Dave Nadig,

This week, the SEC gave us a belated Christmas present.  But what does it actually portend?

The present in question is an 88-page "Research Note" from the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets titled "Equity Market Volatility on August 24, 2015." It's an innocuous-enough title, but for us market-structure wonks, it's kind of a big deal.

Just before the aborted Santa Rally took off in earnest, on December 23 the famous US economic growth prognosticators at the Atlanta Fed (famous because unlike Wall Street they actually are right) slashed its Q4 GDP forecast from 1.9% to 1.3% citing weakness in real consumer spending and poor existing-home sales.

Saudi Arabia just doesn’t know when to quit. 

The kingdom’s plan to deliberately suppress crude prices in an effort to bankrupt the US shale space and preserve market share has cost Riyadh dearly over the past 12 months. The country’s budget deficit for 2015 ballooned to some 15% of GDP as oil revenue collapsed. For 2016, the deficit is expected to come in at a still elevated 13% of economic output.