Byron Wien has been publishing a New Year's list of possible economic and political "surprises" for years, often with impressive results. The idea is to identify events that are likely to happen but that the market believes have a low probability of occurring -- and that are therefore mispriced. Since the consensus outlook for 2012 is pretty miserable, most of his surprises are positive.
Wien is calling for oil to fall to $85 a barrel, for gold to return to $1,800 or for stocks to surpass 1,400 as measured by the S&P 500. Some of these would seem to be mutually exclusive. It's very hard to imagine 3 percent U.S. growth and $85 crude happening simultaneously. But Wein isn't saying all 10 predictions will come true. He's saying that many of these are likely to happen.
Here is Bloomberg's gloss:
Wien says his list is made up of events that investors assign 1-in-3 odds of happening but that he says are more than 50 percent likely to occur.
Here are Wien's top 10 surprises for 2012, as recounted by Bloomberg. The one about $1,800 gold was a bonus prediction.