Three Huge Stories We'll Be Talking About In 2016

It's a busy start to the year. Here's my contribution to today's Forward Guidance newsletter, which you should sign up for here.

Welcome to the first full trading day of 2016! It's already a very interesting start to the year. As it stands right now, it looks like we'll definitely be talking about three big stories throughout 2016.

One of them, obviously, is China, which we can see today. With the manufacturing slowdown intact and further weakness across financial markets, it seems unlikely there will be any letup in interest in China. Expect every morsel of Chinese data and policy to be scrutinized immensely this year.

Another big story is the U.S. economic debate. With the Fed having commenced its hiking cycle, the stakes are high for the economy to maintain its momentum, particularly as the central bank promises to be "data dependent" with the pace of tightening.

And then finally, there's no doubt we'll be talking a lot about politics. George Magnus, senior economic advisor at UBS, predicted that 2016 is the year when politics will trump economics, as pressures build on both the far right and the far left to disturb the existing consensus. With an election in the U.S., a referendum in the U.K., and radicalism on the rise in Europe, there will be little choice but to pay attention to all things political.

Anyway, these are three things we'll surely be talking about. Obviously there will be themes and stories that none of us can foresee right now, and there's a good chance it will be one of those things that ends up really defining the year.

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