This Financial Times article on 10 trends in 2024 is worth reading because FT is pretty balanced and insightful.  To summarize:

  1. Democracy in Overdrive:  Major elections will be occurring all over the world.  A 200 year-old record will be broken when 46% of the global population will have a chance to vote.  Populism is on the rise, so that should be interesting.
  2. Bond Vigilantes versus Politicians:  Politicians like low interest rates, but they aren’t likely to drop very fast.
  3. Backlash Against Immigration:  Immigration is exploding in the Western world, and the citizens don’t like it.
  4. The No-Bust Cycle: Economies are still slowing down, but likely to avoid a classic bust.
  5. European Resilience: Europe already to a hit for the high interest rates, now the US is likely to start feeling the pain.
  6. China is Fading:  Net foreign investment in China is dropping and their economy is in worst shape than the official numbers suggest.
  7. Emerging Outside China:  Emerging economies, like Vietnam, India and Mexico no longer rely on China and are growing.
  8. Dollar Decline:  With the US debt at a record 6% of the GDP, the dollar is losing it’s status in the world.
  9. Splintering the Magnificent Seven:  That is Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla and Microsoft, won’t all rise together.  A.I. is the next big thing, so they are all dumping money into it, but only Nvidia is making money off of it.
  10. Hollywood’s Napoleon Complex:  Ticket sales are about half what they were at the peak in 2002, and down 25% from 2019.  It won’t be getting better.

Some of these are continuations of trends that have been ongoing for a few years, but eventually, some of them will hit big.