No one knows what the top-performing asset class will be next year. Lacking this prescience, your next-best solution is to own all of the classes and rebalance regularly.
It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.
History shows us that people are terrible about guessing what is going to happen - next week, next month, and especially next year.
Regardless of whether this upcoming release shows inflation today, given the supply shock to oil, we're expected to see inflation move higher in the next few months. It would certainly put a fork in the concept that the Fed has the opportunity to pause.
There is a lot of economic news to digest between now and the next meeting. If we see economic signs that are positive, then that would encourage the Fed to stay on the course of gradual rate hikes, but if things slow down then maybe they would skip a meeting or two.
We very much benefited this year from the still-low interest rates, with the Home Depot's and Lowe's of the world doing well, ... The whole universe of homebuilders and mortgagers did really well, too, but as interest rates continue to rise next year, that's going to dry up some.
We need to see a confirmation in the next few weeks. We need another session of gains of 1 to 2 percent for all the major indexes before I'll be confident that this is a bottom.
Stock valuations have been stretched, everyone knows a rate hike is coming and great earnings are already baked into the stock market, so you're seeing this churning, and unfortunately, I would expect it to continue for the next few weeks.
The budget deficit is going to have to go up over the next three to seven years.