Byron Wien's top 10 surprises for 2008

Byron Wien, formerly of Morgan Stanley, offers his list of top 10 surprises at the beginning of each year. Duff McDonald over on Portfolio.com reproduces Byron's 2008 list in a post entitled "Byron Wien's 10 Surprises Coming in 2008." Read the details there, but I'll simply list the surprises concisely here:

1. Recession
2. 10% stock market correction but recovery during the summer
3. Dollar bounces around as low as $1.35 and above $1.50, foreigners continue to buy cheap U.S. assets
4. Inflation rises above 5%, 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rises to 5%, lots of talk about stagflation
5. Oil bounces between $80 and $115
6. Agricultural commodities are strong, gold hits $1,000
7. Chinese economy slows due to U.S. recession, Chinese stock market declines sharply
8. Russia asserts itself politically, Brazil and Russia stock markets do better than India and China stock markets
9. Infrastructure improvement as an election theme causes construction and engineering stocks to rally, global water problems cause desalination stocks to soar
10. Barack Obama wins, Democrats get a clear majority in Congress

Wien's approach is to pick surprises that people generally feel have only a 1 in 3 chance but he believes have a 50% chance of happening in the year. It is not uncommon for half of his surprises to (sort of) come true.

-- Jack Krupansky