2006 Predictions
 

- Apple sells record number of commercial video downloads

- Free Wireless Internet Access covers commercial and residential areas; many skip home wired access

- Gwen Stefani has baby boy; does not sing in public this year

- Steelers win Super Bowl; Bettis MVP

- Warriors make NBA Playoffs; Swept by Spurs in First Round

- Oakland Arena naming rights finally sold; to be called Larry Ellison Grand Arena

- 49ers booed out of town; move to Anaheim of Los Angeles

- Whole city of New Orleans named Time's People of the Year

- China takes over the world. GO CHINA!

Rock Steady gets a sex change operation.

DOW 14000
NASDAQ 3000
GOOG 450
YHOO 55
RHAT 35

The Eagles will start the 2006 season with a great deal of promise due to some exciting draft picks and suck their way through the rest of the season.

Ohhh such a sense of deja vu....

Ravens sign Maurice Clarett
Victory declared, withdrawl underway (we'll be keeping some bases btw)
Kurds declare complete independence (good for them)
Small government Republicans continue to grow government
Dems urged to get behind unity candidate Hillary (unelectable) Clinton

DJIA 11800
bears and goldbugs continue to cry about the end of the world, hosers continue to bet on lame brained "momentum" stocks, old school investors continue to make money through flat market investing.

begin withdrawal from Iraq
many scream about the losses and failures of the war, more scream about the fantastic victory. most realize that accurate history won't be written for years to come.

overpaid crybabies will win rings and get more extravagant contracts. other overpaid crybabies won't win rings and will still get more extravagant contracts.

Jaguar will come out and admit that he is, in fact, Tony Blair. He has only been playing an elaborate joke with his friend GWB, a.k.a. Marichiko

Wouldn't that be sweet?

I suppose a DOW guess is in order... 11300

I think 5650 pair of DOW implants is pretty conservative. :eyebrow:

In 2006, embattled GM chairman Richard Wagoner Jr will take a page from Willy Wonka and lock 5 golden tickets in the glove compartments of GM cars and trucks in a desperate attempt to find a successor who can bring the company back.http://www.cellar.org/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

Lookout is calling for a 10% DJIA increase. UT is calling for a 30% increase in 2006. 2005 saw no change in the DJIA. Also since 2001, no change in the DOW. Just wondering where a 10% or 30% increase comes from when nothing significant justifies such predictions and since people such as Greenspan and Friedman worry significantly about massive debt increases both in the consumer and in government.

Outta my ass. Where's your predictions?

well, let's see... massive cash stockpiles in corporate accounts, a realization that oil won't crash the economy quite as easily as some thought, a public that is starting to realize that it may be a good time to pull some money out of real estate (gotta have it working somewhere), and most importantly distance from the bear market. people will talk to the neighbor over the fence and realize that solid returns can be earned in a "flat market" and they will slowly move back into the water, and by doing so will nudge the market up.

I didn't see any reference to interest rates. Almost no interest rate increases are what other market monitors cite as a reason for market improvement.

that will most likely play into it, but the fact that it is a new guy will cause some short term speculation as people try to read between the lines with everything he says.

There is no single economic corellation with stock market movement. But there is one non-economic one: optimism or, if you prefer, exhuberance. Rationality notwithstanding.

Interest rates affect stock prices but do not determine them. One reason the effect of rates on stock prices is not certain is that in an increasing rate environment, corporations turn to equity markets for capital and away from debt. This leads to a decline in new debt offerings. If the supply of new debt falls, investors must choose between existing debt which is declining in value because of the increase in rates or equity. If, during this time, investors are generally confident (optimistic) then the money will flow in, the demand for debt will decrease and interest rates will experience a downward pressure which even if it is not sufficient to decrease rates may be enough to slow their increase.

Bottom line: If everyone thinks the stock market will improve then it will.

I sent in some of these predictions in response to a newpaper article on High-Tech Predictions. Looks like I have more work to do on one prediction that I just pulled out of my ass.

Thanks for your predictions.

I'd like to use one of them: number 5, on wireless Internet access.

To meet my rule, however, you'd need to rewrite your prediction to include some specific detail -- such as the number of households that will be using municipal Wi-Fi at the end of 2006 -- so that we can look back in a year to see if you were right or wrong.

Do you want to make such a revision? If so, I need it by noon Tuesday.


EDIT: Here is the revision that I submitted:

Free Wireless Internet Access challenges home wired access.

By the end of 2006, of 570,000 residential households in Santa Clara County, 200,000 households will have access to free Wi-Fi Internet connections within their homes. Over 20,000 households will have people that use the service at home for convenience. Perhaps as many as 2,000 households will use the free Wi-Fi as the only Internet connection in their home.

Jeb Bush will change his title to CeO of Florida after another hurricane of Katrina proportions sweeps the city of Miami along with much of the rest of south Florida off to Cuba. Halliburten will be awarded the contract to govern what is left of the state and Democrats will complain of gerrymandering on the part of FEMA crews.

George Jr. will give 7 progres reports on Iraq, explaining that we are doing such a great job that we can't possibly leave just yet. WMD's will be sighted by a goat boy who had already gained notoriety earlier in the year by claiming to see a vision of W smacking Out Lady of Guadalupe over the head with a Koran. These remarkable occurences will be pintpointed by sources within the Pentagon as having actually occurred at about the same coordinates as the ones for Goldbug, Kentucky.

Many Hollywood stars will lose or gain weight, have divorces, get married to losers, have affairs with their pool attendent and publically come out as having had face transplants. You will read about these things as you stand in the supermarket check out line.

UFO's will be seen by many isolated and scattered ranchers in the middle of Montana. The UFO's will fly in formation with eerie blinking lights to create the message, "Hey, Stupid! Knock it off already!"

Lookout will finally reveal his true idenity as Nat King Cole.

Brianna will be named poet Laureate of the Maldive Islands, and Tonchi will set fire to Fresno and escape town at long last with the Queen of the Universe hot on her heels.

Yessss!

Oh, yeah, um, I predict that UT will give up and become a biker with the Hell's Angels, and will insist on directing their Toys for Tots program every Christmas. This will cause a lot of hurt feelings and jealousy within the group and he will be asked to step down. He won't. Bruce will re-marry and be deliriously happy, richlevy will become host of a critically acclaimed cooking show and wolf will finally admit to being powerless over Nancy Grace and CourtTeeVee and enter rehab. A&E's INTERVENTION will film the entire thing.

New Orleans will be hit by another hurricane, just to make sure that we got the idea the first time ...

Hmm... I'll predict that more states will pass laws restricting or banning free WiFi access due to "security concerns" and encouragement from the DHS and large telcom companies.

Florida will take a hit from at least one major hurricane and two minor ones. Tampa will, of course, be spared. :ipray: GA/SC will also see a very destructive hurricane that will run a path clear into NC. In the late summer, the southeast US will see a drought.

Housing will slide, but condos will crash. ...except in Florida, where destructive hurricanes will once again cause a housing shortage.

A new trend will emerge that sees thousands of retirees flee to Mexico and other countries where their dollar will go a greater distance than in the US. Counterfit prescription drugs will become a major blip the US radar.

More companies will decrease insurance coverage and decrease or eliminate pensions all together. The generation just behind the boomers will begin to panic and scramble to save themselves. Stocks will rise on this news, then rise even more as money allocated for retirement begins to flood into 401ks and SEPP-like accounts. Then, without warning, it will all be flushed down the toilet by bad earnings reports after the 3rd quarter. Social security will be examined and painted in a bad light, again.

More damning evidence against the Bush administration will see the light of day. The people of the United States will continue to ignore it and mostly not care.

Easter will be next to "fall under attack by the left". Abortion will hit the supreme court. Gay marriage will be permitted by some states and then banned by the federal government.

UK-like surveillance will be proposed by several states and the federal gov't under the guise of anti-terror bills and consumer convience. People will love it, critics of it will be denounced. "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about." Cameras on street corners will begin to be accepted in cities followed by neighborhoods, RFID tags will spread beyond your passport, GPS will be put in wide use by some states for toll road tracking, and ultra-secure subdivisions will explode in popularity for the middle class.

Gas will hit more than $3/gal, again.

Bird flu will be a bust while the normal flu will kill thousands as usual.

:lol: you bad.


Reality TV will combine UK's "space cadets" with USA's "American Idol" to produce a warehouseful of William Hungs. :eek:

Unusual winter weather in many parts of the US will be blamed on global warming. Solution will be found in raised gas prices.

Cheney will be hospitalized for a heart issue.
Bush will be hospitalized for "routine tests"
A member of the British royal family will be hospitalized for a "lodged fishbone in the throat".

I may well kill one or more of my children. I draw the line at eating them.

That may be true for dark ages states like kansas and pennsylvania. But, my newspaper was asking for predictions related to our area and industry in the Silicon Valley.

Our city here in Sunnyvale was the first municipality in the nation to sign a free Wi-Fi deal and we did it without the text-filter snooping of "Big Brother" Google.

MetroFi plans to run local and national ads on the service, but will not track the browsing habits of its customers, Haas said. The only thing MetroFi will know is that their customers are in Sunnyvale, "which is valuable to local advertisers.''

It'll never last. Either they will cave to the economic juggernaught or W will have their arms twisted out of their sockets. Or both.

Philly's next, you know. Despite a multitude of more significant problems (fix the transit system, provide more effective crime control, reduce unemployment, increase business opportunities and ownership, stop people from fleeing to the suburbs and other states at the rate of about 10-20K per year, or even getng the trash picked up on schedule, etc.) John Street is totally hot on the idea of making Philadelphia the first 100% WiFi accessible major city.

You mean Sunnyvale pop. 130,000 is not a major city? We have Yahoo! hqd here. What does Philly have? Unisys? :D

Philly doesn't even really have that. Unisys is in Blue Bell, which is quite a bit out of the city.

And come on ... it is totally much cooler to have the first real computer company in America than have the series of really successful ones, isn't it??

wolfs post count eclipses 13,000








[j/k]on the PosseComitatus.org forum[/j/k];)

Someone's going to die after following some whacked out herbal regimen they heard about on TV and get the FDA all up in the snake-oil industry like white on rice.

More hurricanes, but Mississippi is ground zero, not Nawlins.

No interest rate hikes at all. DJIA = 11k plus, unless we get another terrorist attack.

No successful domestic terror attacks, but a close call over the summer.

Saddam gets executed, we find out bin Laden has been dead for 2 years.

GM goes belly up, is bought out by a foreign interest.

Iran makes some kind of move, hoping to use our indecisiveness over middle east policy to get a Democrat in the White House so they can operate with impunity. Well, with UN bluehats buzzing around like mosquitoes, but basically with impunity. Attempt fails. Dems still don't have an agenda outside of "impeach Bush" so we'll have to settle for whoever the GOP throws in there...maybe McCain. Newt Gingrich tries for the nomination, but fails.

About a dozen more gay cowboy movies. Maybe not cowboys, though. Like, sailors.

A really, really big forest fire happens. The biggest ever. Somewhere like Siberia or Canada.

Big upswing in X-Files type stuff -- UFO sightings, Mary on tortillas, etc. Ghosts lose some market share though.

At least 5 more major metropolitan areas ban smoking in public places.

Gasoline = $1.50/gal at some point.

Britney Spears and Kevin Federline will get divorced. I know, obvious, but this part isn't: it will be in May.

i'm surprised no one has bumped this one yet. how did we do?

i mean other than the obvious fact that we spend all year, every year just going through the motions of living out tw's predictions.

I predict that 2006 will end at 00:00:00 Universal Time, January 1, 2007.

Don't be afraid because I have the gift of second sight.

What am I thinking right now?

"Man, is this guy full of shit."

What do I win? Does it involve cheesecake photos?

Absolutely!
 

Here you go:

DOW Predictions:

UT: 14000
L123: 11800
Griff: 11300
Nood: over 11000
TW: nothing significant justifies an increase like 11800

Actual result: 12463

Winner: L123
2nd place: Griff
3rd place: Nood
4th place: UT
5th place: TW

Umm...send your money to L123 again this year if you want return.

that'll work. or you can listen to flat market investors in your own neck of the woods. the market doesn't have to be in a boom to make solid returns if you don't buy in to the whole "index funds rule" mindset.