Yeah but he’s an economist - so what would he know?
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Yes agreed, the other night we were discussing all the predictions for the year which turned out to be wrong, including the economists predicting the economy would be in recession by the end of the year, unemployment would go above 10% and house prices would drop, all of which turned out to be completely wrong. :)
Yes well its all good to kick the "so called pros" down but there were some on here that are very knowledgeable that were equally as gloomy. We simply can't build houses here fast enough, add the amount of people coming back to live in N.Z = Supply & Demand constraints. Its not going away for sometime.
Forecasting earlier in the year was a bit like pinning the tail on the donkey while blindfolded. Thankfully they were wrong for NZ. Taxpayer wage subsidies/falling interest rates/lack of a general CGT is a heady combination for promoting investment fever in residential housing when there is small share market.
We will have to hope that the more infectious covid variants have been kept out of the community over the holiday period.
There were quite a few folks heavily weighted to cash, worried about all sorts of bad things that can affect the market, then along comes one thing no one was talking about. A pandemic.
Look what that did though, create a whole range of amazing buying opportunities across the market. Some really clever ones would have sold the TA and bought the TA later on, albeit heart in mouth stuff on a wild ride.
In OCA's case it got to half of IPO under 40 cents, traded up for awhile well under NTA offering sustained outstanding buying, then continued up. All the while gifting those who deployed the dry powder, a buying opportunities that may never present themselves again.
On top of that OCA finished up the calendar year about 7% +ve on 2019 not including dividends. Albeit challenging to remain objective in such wild times, the moral of the story is sh1t happens and those with a few readies stashed aside and/or trading skills, can do very well in the 'bad times', very well indeed.
yes they keep saying a once in a life time opportunity. But the world is filling up with people and every ten years or less there now seems to be some big pull backs. Brokers we have spoken to recently are saying its a ten year cycle. Yes hold on to those prices you got. We only missed one good one and that was the freights as we thought they would go even lower before bouncing. You just did not know what was going to happen this time.
And in the deep heart of south africa they are expecting more viruses and even more powerful ones.
Heart of Darkness.
But this “so called pro” is Westpac’s chief economist. That is a title that should come with a degree of mana along with a generous salary. The guys and gals on this site offer opinions and most would tag that with A plea that people should Do their own research. The economists have the gall to keep making predictions without qualifying them with a similar tag. In fact I would say that it would be better to pay more attention to the very learned and experienced members of this site then the rag tag bunch of economists that seem to have the ear of the popular press.
Maybe so, but they aren't mind readers nor are they perfect. No one could predict what we have all just gone thru especially given this is a one hundred year event (perhaps). Lessons to be learned by all..
Ahh, while no one predicted the arrival of the Covid pandemic, the predictions we are talking about were made post arrival of Covid i.e. in the new environment , as a result of Covid they expected house prices to drop, unemployment to go to 10% and the economy to be in recession by now.
To some extent people's decisions are influenced by these 'expert projections' which are frequently aired in the media, they do have consequences, missed opportunities, postponed decisions,changed plans etc.
It is after all their specialist area, for which they are respected & well paid, and while they are applauded when they get things right, they can take a bit of criticism when they get things horribly wrong.
But I agree, its not a perfect science & as someone said, 'prediction is difficult, especially about the future!'