The world is an increasingly fragmented and complex place, but everyone I meet appears to be obsessed with just one person: Donald Trump. All projections about the coming year assume Trump will dictate global economic and market trends.
A single factor is never a solid foundation for forecasting. The world is not unipolar and does not revolve around one personality, not even one as big as Trump’s. Historically, the impact of US presidents on markets has often been surprising, and at times minimal.
Investors were braced for a negative shock when Trump came to power in 2017, but that year turned out to be one of the least volatile for US stocks ever. Trump constantly threatened to undermine China with tariffs and yet, during his first term, the best-performing major market in the world was China, outpacing even the US.