In short, it was a year of surprises – that was the least surprising thing about it. Getting the details right in 2022 will be no easier – but a few broad themes are likely to persist.
A year ago, the average stock strategist may not have seen that the world’s best-performing index in 2021 would be Mongolia, or that a movie theatre chain would rise 13-fold.
And while many were bullish, few predicted the sheer ferocity of the rally that pushed European and US stocks to successive records, or the dip after the emergence of the omicron variant of Covid-19. Even fewer had forecast the slump in China or the liquidity crisis affecting the nation’s developers.
