2016: a bad year for predictions

Talk about Black Swans, 2016 was full of them! From elections to markets, from hacking to terrorist attacks, it was one unexpected event after another. Each a complete shocker in its own way. Especially in sports and politics. Portugal winning the Euro football tournament, Leicester winning the Premier League, Britain coming in second at the Olympic game medal count, or the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series were as big as Black Swans as Brexit or Trump. 

It goes without saying that a year of Black Swans was a terrible year for forecasters. Even the biggest names of the 'industry' have stumbled and failed to predict the biggest disruptive events of the year: Brexit and Trump. Not my company. We got Trump spot on. Just to remind my readers, we called 47 states including the most important swing states like PA, FL, NC, and OH for Trump. Our unique prediction method, that was further perfected since Brexit, has hit bull's-eye!

Our almost perfect prediction for Trump
Oraclum Intelligence Systems

I cannot say the same for myself however. I usually make my prediction at the beginning of each year. So far I boasted some big hits like the UK general election of 2015, the success of anti-establishment parties in the EU 2014 elections, the Scottish referendum, oil prices, interest rates, year-on-year economic growth projections, and even Germany as the winner of the 2014 World Cup. 

But this year it's been quite a few misses for my beginning-of-the-year predictions. The very title of my January 1st blog signifies the extent of the miss - "women in charge". I predicted that by the end of the year Hillary Clinton is expected to join Angela Merkel, Janet Yellen, and Christine Lagarde (and Irina Bokova as the UN secretary general) to have five out of ten most powerful political positions be held by women. That was a big miss. Hillary lost, Bokova lost, Yellen will most likely be replaced by Donald Trump, and Merkel is facing a tough election next year (although she will probably hold on). The woman I did not see coming was Theresa May, the new UK PM. Even if I had predicted Brexit back then I would have said that Cameron would have been replaced by Boris Johnson, not Theresa May. Again, a true Black Swan. 

Brexit was another big miss. I was categorical in saying that Britain won't leave the EU. I wasn't even sure the referendum would be held this year (this wasn't decided until February, as Cameron wanted to move quickly to capitalize on his general election victory). I had a bunch of rational explanations on why the Brits will not vote Leave. All of which apparently biased by my liberal worldview. I wrote a comment on this after the event, making a couple of other bold predictions on the way. I just can't get enough of predictions, apparently.  

In the US not only was I very bullish on Hillary, I didn't even predict Sanders to give her a run for her money. I did give Trump the biggest probability to win the Republican presidential nomination (I had Rubio second), but I still gave Hillary 55% to clinch the Presidency in November. Interestingly enough I didn't change my mind on Hillary's chances until the last few days of the campaign when I saw our model estimating a Trump victory. It was a shocker, but we did get it right. The lesson was to trust my data, not my guts. 

The second lesson from this was that with election forecasting I should wait for the last few weeks before the elections to figure out how the voters feel. After all I now possess a powerful method to do just that, so I will refrain from making any more election predictions a year in advance. Plus, I'll rather sell this info to our clients rather than boasting on my blog. 

Oh, and I also missed my sports predictions. I said that either Germany or Belgium will win the Euro, but in the end it was a final between Portugal and France, won by - surprise, surprise - Portugal. For the Olympics I was right that the US will win the most medals but I never even dreamed that the UK will come in second. In front of China! Now that was a surprise. 

The hits

It wasn't all misses. I had some good wins. Such as the economy, which unlike politics was rather predictable last year. Ireland was, as predicted, the best performer of the year in the EU, while Greece was the worst. The developed world grew more robustly, although the recovery is still slow, particularly in Europe. The US continued a steady growth trajectory and unemployment fell below 5%. The Fed raised interest rates only slightly in December, while other central banks (ECB, BoE) went for the opposite following the massive political uncertainty in Europe.

Oil prices did not go above $60, China did not go into recession as many were screaming early this year, and Putin came out of the year stronger than ever. Japan is still stagnating, and India overtook China as the fastest growing economy. All of these were good predictions, the kind that were slightly easier to make. 

Oh and here's one big hit - I predicted no terrorist attacks during the Olympics in Brazil or the Euro in France. This was a bold prediction but I was confident nothing would happen given the level of security usually associated with these events. Terrorists will not get away with it if everyone is paying extra careful attention to spot them out. 

Interestingly, with all the Black Swans that happened this year none of them went 'under the radar'. In other words Brexit or Trump had a realistic chance of happening, even if many estimated those chances to be low. Leicester or the Cubs on the other hand - those were the true under-the-radar Black Swans.

Anyway, if you think this year was hard to predict, think of how difficult the next one will be. No one has an idea of what a Trump presidency will look like. No one has an idea how Brexit will turn out (I'm sure Britain will Leave, the question is under which circumstances). Politically it could be another shocker with elections coming up in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The last two could bring leaders that could spell and end to the EU itself. What about Syria and the EU refugee problem? Will Putin and Trump solve these issues? What about the potential US trade war with China? We're in for quite a ride!