Some of 2019’s wackiest investment predictions are coming true

When December arrives and trading is quiet, market strategists come up with their wildest predictions for the year ahead. Disclaimer: they don’t actually expect all of them to be right.

But 2019 is proving to be bizarre for traders and some of those calls are actually coming true. Of the eight “financial-market surprises” published by Standard Chartered, two have effectively materialised, while three more still remain possible.

Coming true:

The Federal Reserve cutting interest rates

The European Central Bank restarting quantitative easing

Still in play:

The US Treasury tries to sell 50-year bonds

The US and China reach an agreement to weaken the dollar

The UK faces a hard Brexit and the pound falls to parity with the dollar

Looking unlikely:

Hong Kong abandons its dollar currency peg

OPEC breaks up and Brent crude falls to $25 a barrel

Japan monetises the national debt, the yen climbs to 80 per dollar

Standard Chartered aren’t the only ones who had a punt. Saxo Bank A/S published their “10 outrageous predictions” for 2019 in December, including one that called a German recession. By most accounts, Europe’s largest economy may be in one already. There is no sign of some of the others — including a solar flare creating chaos and a global transportation tax.

Still, it must be noted, they missed some too. Neither bank predicted a $17 trillion pile of negative-yielding debt — bonds guaranteed to lose investors’ money if held to maturity — a meltdown in the US repo market or a drone attack on a Saudi oil facility. But hey, you can’t get everything right.