At the beginning of 2023, I made a number of predictions for the year, and many of them ended up surprisingly accurate. Let’s take stock:

Economic predictions

Many of my economic predictions went against the consensus of economists and economic pundits. However, it looks like I got things slightly more right than the consensus of the economic profession. What to make of that, I’m not sure..

Markets are bouncing along the bottom at the beginning of 2023

10/10 - whoever invested on the 4th of January this year, when the original post was written, would have more or less timed the exact day of the market bottom, give or take a few days. As it stands, the S&P 500 is up almost 23% year to date, the Nasdaq index is up by over 52%. I personally profited, by moving into the market in the second half of 2022 and early 2023.

Inflation peaked in the summer of 2022

10/10, this also proved correct, and we are not well on our way down to the target inflation rates of central banks.

Tech layoffs peaked in Q4 2022

7/10 - I was off by one quarter, if using layoffs.fyi as a judge. Not quite right, but close enough.

US will see a soft-landing, EU a mild recession

10/10 - Most pundits predicted a US recession, did not think one was likely. Turned out I was correct. EU recession is probably also correct, though data on this is conflicting.

H1 of 2023 will feel grim, H2 will see greenshots

I’d give this a 5/10, on account that the original prediction was not precise enough to prove or falsify properly. Subjectively, I could call it correct, but someone else could call it false also, and it depends on where you are based.

Tech predictions

Crypto/blockchain will die out with a whimper, not a bang

8/10 - Generally right, crypto investment is down by some 90+%, many people seeking quick riches in the space seem to have moved on to AI. The only counter-factual is that Bitcoin is up significantly. However, as we know, the price of crypto is easily manipulated, so whether this increase is real or artificial remains to be seen.

Microsoft Bing will make a dent into Googles dominance

3/10 - Bings marketshare is up a little, but not significantly.

Days of going to the Big 3 (AWS, Azure, GCP) when adopting the Cloud are done

8/10 - 37Signals jumped on the cloud exit bandwagon and to an extent, have been leading it. We are seeing clear signs that the 3 big hyperscalers are no longer the only game in town.

Streaming services will pull back on production spending

10/10 - this is pretty clear, it is happening, and is ongoing. The golden age of TV shows having higher production values than cinema might be coming to an end, as studios and streamers go back to more economically viable productions.

Conclusion

On the economy, I’d say I got 3 bulls-eyes, 1 good hit, and 1 inconclusive result. On tech, 1 bullseye, 2 hits and 1 miss. 7/9 predictions being accurate is pretty good I think..

Averaged out, it’s 8.4/10 on the economy, 7.25/10 on tech, or 7.9/10 in total.