Forecast 2021: The Stock Market

• John Mauldin |
• Thoughts from the Frontline
• |
• January 22, 2021

On the Gripping Hand, Part 3

“Extrapolated Indefinitely”
What Were You Thinking?
Decision Time
Vaccination, Geopolitics, and Uncertainty

This will be the third part of my 2021 Forecast Series. You can read the first two parts here and here. The general theme has been “On the Gripping Hand.” Science fiction writers imagined a three-handed alien race with a left hand, right hand, and a very strong Gripping Hand. 2021 is the year of the Gripping Hand, and COVID-19 is what’s gripping us. Making a forecast without the virus at its center is pointless.

All that being said, today we are going to focus on my stock market expectations. As I promised last week, this is a “Generational Call.” For reasons we will go into below, I think we are at a pivot point for stocks, with some clear exceptions I will outline. So maybe like generational call* with an asterisk.

On the Gripping Hand, Part 3

Britain’s refusal to give the EU’s ambassador full diplomatic status is a childish insult

Date: 23‑01‑2021

Source: The Guardian

This petulant slight echoes a move by the Trump administration – one that it quickly saw fit to reverse

‘Our man in Brussels, Sir Tim Barrow, was previously UK ambassador in Moscow and he is unlikely to take kindly to having his own status downgraded, which is the obvious reciprocal action the EU can take.’

Of all people in government Boris Johnson should be first to recognise the status of European Union representatives. His father, Stanley, was a European commission official for many years and the European taxpayer paid the prime minister’s school fees at the expensive Brussels International School and then Eton. 

However, in a row that has been rumbling for a year alongside Brexit trade talks, the government is refusing to give full diplomatic status to the EU’s ambassador to the UK, João Vale de Almeida and his 25‑strong mission. The Foreign Office claims it does not want to set a precedent by treating an international body in the same way it treats a nation state, with diplomats afforded the privileges and immunities under the Vienna Convention.