IMF The “Impossible Missions Force” made famous by the Mission Impossible Franchise and Ethan Hunt is a bit better known than the “International Monetary Fund” IMF which has the drier and more impressive mission to
… ensure the stability of the international monetary system
Some would say that this mission is as equally impossible as Ethan Hunt’s escapades but, like Ethan, they have had their successes. If you are one of the 189 membership countries you share your economic data with the IMF and they monitor and provide assistance with each countries’ economy – this may be with advice – or even to help out with a loan … and they also come up with projections for world economies. These are represented by the dotted lines on the chart below. As you can see, for 2018 and beyond, the boring IMF is quite optimistic on the overall world and emerging economies (China +6.4%, India +7.8%, Indonesia +5.5%, Philippines +5.8%) but less so for the advanced economies (US +2.7%, UK +1.5%, Germany +2.0%, Australia +3.1%). The percentages represent IMF Real GDP growth forecasts for each country in 2019.
In fact, they have lifted their world growth forecasts for 2018 and 2019 to 3.9%, Now these are just projections based upon a forecast of buoyant trade and investment ( as well as recent US tax reforms). These projections are not set in stone and subject to world events – Yes I’m talking to you Donald! – but they are reasons for optimism. I am glad to be diversifying my risk by being a holder of the Vanguard Asia (Ex Japan) ETF – VAE.
Long live the IMF – impossible mission accepted!
Brexin
In a whirlwind cycle … within 2 weeks of getting out of the UK Index, I’m back in! – this is just part of the way that markets move sometimes. Although Slack Investor prides himself on the minimization of decisions, through looking at historical data on the ASX over 40 years, he has found that it is advantageous to act on weekly signals to get into the stockmarket and stick with monthly decisions on getting out of the market. As a result, the weekend reading of the FTSE 100 chart has given me a buy signal at 7264 and a new stop loss of 6866. More detail on the UK Index page.