Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and a lovely solstice and holiday season to you, whichever traditions you choose to embrace.  It’s awfully dark and cold here in New England as the year begins to turn, and I hope you’ve got enough love and friendship to keep you warm… I’m having a nice end of the week as I write all the checks for some great charities who are beneficiaries of our latest membership drive, so a special bit of warmth and joy is heading toward those of you who joined us in that effort last week — thank you!

Stock Gumshoe closes down over the break between Christmas and New Year’s Day, so this will be your last Friday File of 2021… and that means it’s time to look back a little bit and see what happened.

According to the great pundit rule manual, I should currently be focusing on my predictions for next year and giving you the impression that I know what’s going to happen. Sadly, my best efforts at reading the dregs in my coffee cup this morning have come to naught, and I’m left guessing.

Probably this Omicron wave that’s peaking in the next couple weeks as we all gather and breathe on each other will end, and bring a quick recovery and a reopening… but maybe not, maybe it will be worse than expected and the cruise ships and concerts will shut down and they’ll play the Super Bowl in an empty stadium, with backup players. I’m optimistic that this is the beginning of the end for the pandemic, but I don’t know for sure.

And probably inflation will soften after this peak of stimulated spending and supply chain pressure, given the strong deflationary trends in the world… but maybe not — maybe employees will be empowered after a decade of eroding spending power and will demand a bigger piece of the pie, which will panic some of the Titans of Industry and cause the Wall Street Journal editorial board to wet itself. I’m optimistic that inflation will return to the more typical ~3% range by next summer, and we’ll stop talking about it… but I don’t know for sure.

Probably next year will be out of the ordinary, since we’ve been through a couple of crazy years… maybe we’ll have a repeat of the 1970s or a massive crash that scares everyone ...