51 Predictions for 2024

Let's See How Many People Agree With Me

Dec 31, 2023

Hope you have a Happy New Year. Thank you very much for participating in this blog experiment. I truly am grateful to the people that comment, share, and interact on this blog, or as some tell me “newsletter” which sounds weird to me for some reason. I hope to innovate on it in the next year. If you aren’t with someone that is special to you on New Year’s Eve call or Facetime someone that is special to you. Open a glass of bubbly if you imbibe. As Churchill said, “A single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced, the imagination is agreeably stirred, the wits become more nimble. A bottle produces a contrary effect. Excess causes a comatose insensibility. So it is with war, and the quality of both is best discovered by sipping. Winston Churchill, 1898”. He also supposedly said, “‘I could not live without Champagne. In victory I deserve it. In defeat I need it.’ We have had collective victories and defeats this year. Celebrate both. Don’t ever quit. Compete. We will win.
Joe Biden won’t be the standard bearer for the Democrats in 2024. He will be until the convention in Chicago. Then, bait and switch. Democrats love the smoke-filled back room. Hillary would love to have it but she can’t beat Trump, or any of the other Republicans. In addition, Obama is the power broker of the Democratic Party and he detests her. Can’t blame him.
Hello Gavin Newsome!

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer will be his running mate. I also predict Joe Biden will pass through the physical bonds of earth some time in 2026.

Nothing this evil ever dies. This grainy photo is from 2008 when my friend Terry Duffy (TDA) put his strong arm on me to donate to Hillary…..he still owes me for that one (in perpetuity, his great friend Vince would be rolling over in his grave). I also donated twice as much to McCain….not to Obama. I knew what Obama was, and still is. The 2008 election might have been “great” because it proved a non-white could be elected to the most powerful office in the world. However, that man is one of the most toxic men the world has ever produced. So is his wife.

Trump will win the Republican nomination and the Presidency. His VP will need to soften his rough edges and have won elections. Kari Lake, you are not it. His VP will not be Haley, Christie, Pence, or some other establishment retread. The establishment hates Trump and would rather lose an election than have him win. It has to be someone who will not fade in the white-hot spotlight that Trump attracts so Kristi Noem is out. DeSantis would be good but I don’t think Trump can offer it to him. He is the best, or second-best candidate right now in my eyes. I haven’t pinpointed who it will be, but South Carolina Senator Tim Scott maybe. A dark horse would be Sarah Huckabee Sanders. This isn’t 2016. Trump is a known quantity.
Argentina’s economy will boom. American tourists will flock there. President Milei is tremendous. We need him in the US. Argentina’s economy will be so good, that some illegal aliens will think about going there instead of the US.
The Tango will become “the hot dance” on the internet.
The war in Ukraine will be negotiated to an end. Ukraine will have given up territory. The West will have spent trillions unnecessarily. Biden blew it and all he had to do was not invite Ukraine into NATO. If a Democrat wins the White House, the war will begin anew.
Israel will spend the entire year at war. They will not only have to fight in Gaza, but they will also have to take care of Hezbollah and do surgical strikes inside places like Yemen.
Iran skates for now though that is the big problem. No one has the stomach to take them out….yet.
China continues to threaten Taiwan. If a Democrat wins the White House, during the next four years they will make their move. Taiwan will not win.
The Fed will not lower rates during the first two quarters of 2024. If inflation continues to wane a little, they will lower by a .25 at the September meeting.
What’s bigger? The border or abortion? I predict the border.
What’s a bigger issue, abortion or the sex transitioning of children? Republicans are generally on the right side of history on sex changes. Except Mike DeWine.
Minorities will vote for Republicans in greater numbers than ever before. Why? They hate what is happening to their cities and they hate being crowded out for illegal aliens. The most toxic thing to American values is chardonnay drinking wealthy and upper-middle-class non-STEM college-educated white women.
Democrats will lose the Senate and the House. Given I think Trump will win the Presidency the Republicans have a golden two-year opportunity to reform lots of things in the vein of Milei, but they don’t have the stomach to do it. See the establishment or Rand Paul’s Festivus rant on Twitter.
The stock market will be higher next year after a rough start in January. Since 1928, it’s never been lower in a Presidential year. If it is lower, it will be a landslide for Trump with coattails in state legislative elections.
Thomas Wolfe’s essay on Radical Chic will see a massive rediscovering and rebirth.
Population trends will continue. People will flee blue states to go to red states.
Artificial Intelligence will quickly inject itself into all kinds of business processes. It is ready for prime time and you will notice. Democrats in Congress will want to regulate, but they won’t get it done in an election year. By then it will be too late.
Bitcoin will still not be ready for prime time. It will set new speculative highs. Someday……but the lawsuit filed by the NYT against AI companies will lead to crypto adoption, since patents and copyrights might have been innovated out of their useful life.
X (Twitter) will become the dominant social media platform next year.
Elon Musk
will win again.
The IPO window will open for the year's first six months. After that, probably not.
Pot stocks will still not get high. It’s a commodity folks in a commodity business.
DEI will continue to be disbanded across America, except at super-elite institutions where it will be dug in. Climate change is next.
Education innovation will get a tailwind as school choice and vouchers sweep red states across the nation
Startup funding will hold steady. The risk-free rate will still be high enough to attract capital.
Listen for the phrase, “Data is the new oil”. You will hear it a lot. With AI, it is.
Michigan will win its first outright national football championship since 1948. By the way, in 1997 Nebraska would have killed them.
Miami, Salt Lake City, Nashville, and Austin will become the next startup cities as talent migrates out of SF, LA, NYC, and Chicago. Watch SLC closely. By the way, Dallas has the second largest corporate fintech center outside of NYC…..did you know that?
Not a tough prediction: The US debt will continue to soar to records. It’s a tax on your future earnings, and the future earnings of following generations. Thanks, Captain Obvious.
The Cubs will win the World Series.
Portillo’s will open in Las Vegas
With the Fed on hold, interest rate traders will find life boring once the market realizes they are on hold. Look for the short end of the yield curve to adjust accordingly after the first Fed meeting. The move will be swift and then stop.
Volatility sellers in the stock market will have fun picking up dimes in front of steamrollers.
The Greatest Generation will get another rebirth thanks to Professor Donald Miller’s superb book, “Masters of the Air” being shown in a series on HBO.
Hoodies and sweats will be out; dressing more smartly will be in. Part of it will be a rebellion against the political leanings of Mark Zuckerberg and the elites.
I will break 80 from respectable tees on my home course. I say that knowing I won’t play golf until the end of May, take the summer off in Minnesota and be back to playing regularly in October.
Woke economists will continue to tell you that higher minimum wage costs do not hurt employment despite actual data that flies in the face of their statement. They will tell you they are data dogs and cite studies that don’t account for that pesky economic concept called “opportunity costs”.
Unions will see membership continue to decline.
Robert Reich will still be too short to go on rides at Disneyland
Private Universal Basic Income experiments will start to fail. But, instead of admitting failure, the proponents will just say they need to adjust things.
My wife and I won’t do a rehab this year, but we will get a second grandchild we are very excited for. It will be a boy though the happy couple doesn’t know the sex so this is a true prediction. (My wife thinks girl)
Baby boomers will continue to pull the levers of the economy despite the protestations of younger generations. Younger people who embrace the work ethic of the boomers and prior generations will thrive. Their peers will wonder why.
The world will start to be divided not on wealth or race, but between risk-takers and sheep. (there are a lot of sheep in this world)
The woke will try to cancel
Marc Andreessen
and he will laugh.
One person will use AI to take an idea, turn it into a useful startup, and exit and make a few million dollars doing it. AI will be the gateway drug to Cryptocurrency adoption.
Despite being a pump and dump scheme after its founding, Helium mobile will grow and just begin to be a thorn in the side of Big Telecom.
30% of DEI/Green/Inclusive/Underserved Market VC firms will totally fail.
“Vintage” cars from 2005-2018 will make a big comeback. New car sales, both gasoline and EV will slip. If Trump wins the election like I think he will, gas prices will begin to decrease dramatically in late November with the expectation that Trump’s energy policy will be a 180-degree turn from Biden’s.
Existing real estate will see a small drop in valuation and desirability. Brand new home construction will get hot.
Festivals like Coachella, Burning Man will become passe.
Climate change won’t affect us at all. We will have to be constantly pestered with the blather from vapid ideologues like John Kerry who hasn’t monetized the climate as well as his buddy Al Gore. We will survive 2024 and live until 2025. The polar ice caps will remain intact and real estate next to big bodies of water will still be more valuable than real estate inland.