From net neutrality to new tax legislation, there are many factors that could impact the markets in 2018. Commonwealth Financial Network CIO Brad McMillan and Icon Advisors CIO Craig Callahan share their outlooks for the year ahead.
"December has been messy, with people trying to guess the effects of net neutrality and the tax bill," says Callahan. "But we expect the leadership from last year to continue into next year." Callahan says he expects the market to move up about 10 percent in 2018 from a very neutral pricing seen today.
"I think we've already seen all the good things that we are going to see here," says McMillan. "Even though this will be positive in the short run, it's going to be a one-off effect." McMillan says after we get past the next quarter, he doesn't expect to see much impact from tax reform in the markets.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
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While Nvidia's meteoric rise led it to briefly dethrone Microsoft as the world's biggest public company, there's a lot more going on in this market than A.I.
