It’s once again time for my recurring series where I try to make the most ridiculously bad predictions imaginable!

Okay, so that’s not quite the point of my annual Recklessly Bold Predictions, but you could definitely be forgiven for thinking that was the case this year. I honestly don’t think I could’ve made worse predictions if I had tried. Not only did the majority of my predictions not come close to happening, but several went to the opposite extreme.

Let’s get these over with quick, so we can get on to some 2023 predictions which can’t possibly be any worse than my 2022 ones…. right?

2022 Predictions

Novocure (NVCR) will triple

I still have really high hopes for Novocure and I’m hoping that a few years from now I’ll realize I was perhaps a year too early with this prediction, given the current schedule of anticipated trial results. In fact, I just might re-up this prediction for 2023. For 2022, though, this was an epic miss. Novocure was essentially flat for the year, which is a far cry from tripling. Still, that is far from my worst prediction. That honor probably would go to…

Redfin (RDFN) will triple

Redfin dropped roughly 90% in 2022. 90%! I don’t even have the words to describe how bad this prediction was. The whipsawing of the housing market from red-hot to ice-cold in a matter of months certainly did Redfin no favors and I probably underestimated how big of an impact a challenging real estate market would have on the company. I think management has done an excellent job navigating a super difficult environment and that in many ways the company is better positioned relative to their competition but this is a painful reminder that some factor’s are outside of a company’s control and those things can absolutely wreck havoc with the business. I still love the potential of Redfin long term, although 2023 could continue to be rough if a recession joins high interest rates as headwinds for the real estate market.

Teladoc (TDOC) will triple

Another really awful prediction. I’m really torn with Teladoc. Every quarter their results have some fly in the ointment, but the future looks rosy to me and I think the worst might be over, only to have more concerns pop up in the next earnings report. There still seems to be a big opportunity in telehealth, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s as big as I once thought and if Teladoc has any appreciable moat.

FuboTV (FUBO) or Nano-X (NNOX) adds $22

If “Redfin will triple” wasn’t my worst prediction, then “Fubo adds $22” certainly has to be. Instead of adding $22, Fubo lost roughly $13 going from $15 to $2. Similar to Redfin, I think Fubo was a little bit a victim of changing macro conditions. In 2021, the market was fairly forgiving of money burning companies that were putting up great growth numbers. In 2022, there was a lot less appetite for those types of companies. To make matters worse, Fubo also abandoned plans to grow a sports gambling business to pair with streaming service, which makes it a little harder to envision how they might turn profitable in the near future.

Not sure if I have much to say about Nanox. It’s a company I think I was just flat-out wrong about and that doesn’t seem nearly as capable of executing as I hoped. I sold my shares in mid-2022 and haven’t looked back since.

Annual Inflation Rate for 2022 is > 8%

Finally! Something approaching a win! It looks like inflation for 2022 is going to come in a little closer to 7%, but given how atrocious my other predictions were…. can I at least have half a point for this one? Please?

Regardless. Let’s put 2022 in the rear-view mirror and look forward to 2023.

2023 Predictions

Novocure (NVCR) will triple

No, I didn’t accidentally copy and paste and forget to change the title. As I alluded to above, I’m circling back to this prediction again. Why might Novocure triple in 2023 when it couldn’t get it done in 2022? Two words: Trial Results. Novocure is expecting trial results for the treatment of lung cancer and ovarian cancer in 2023. If they receive positive results, that could really expand their total addressable market to 4-5x where it currently is. It would also make me more optimistic that they would receive positive results from their brain metastasis and pancreatic cancer trials which they expect data from in 2024. Those two cancers could double their total addressable market on top of 4-5x from lunch cancer and ovarian cancer. There are a lot of potential positive catalysts for Novocure in 2023. I think some of them will pan out.

Sea Limited (SE) back above $100

On one hand, getting back to $100 a share would mean roughly doubling from where it is now, which seems pretty extreme. On the other hand, shares were trading for over $300 a little over a year ago, so $100 a share doesn’t seem that ridiculous. There are a lot of fair reasons why Sea shares have dropped over the past 18 months. Their gaming division has seen a drastic slowdown and they have closed operations in a bunch of countries because they were proving too difficult to turn profitable. A strong argument could be made that they were too aggressive trying to expand internationally. However, I still think there’s a lot to like with Sea. Southeast Asia still has a lot of strong demographic tailwinds and I think ecommerce and digital currency growth will continue even without a global pandemic accelerating growth. Will their gaming segment ever recover? That’s a little harder to say, but if Sea can continue to show strong growth with Shopee and Sea Money, I think the market will eventually take notice.

The Trade Desk (TTD) back above $100

I’ve been really impressed with how well the Trade Desk has executed over the past few years. Not only have they had to deal with changes in consumer behavior due to the pandemic, but they’ve also dealt with a shifting ad landscape with Apple’s decision around iOS 14.5. I’m a little baffled why the stock is down over the past year, especially considering how much growth they still have in front of them. The shift to streaming services and connected TV seems clearer than ever, and yet the ad spend there still hasn’t seemed to have caught up with reality. Add to that that services like Netflix are considering ad-supported tiers and it seems like a lot of opportunity for a company like the Trade Desk.

Bitcoin back above $30k

Over the past few years, a lot of people have asked what my thoughts were on crypto. My go to response was to compare it to the early days of the internet: I thought there was a lot of potential and almost certainly some huge opportunities, but also probably a ton of pretenders / frauds as well. I’m old enough to remember the times before the dot com bubble bursting where companies were raising huge amounts of money without any clear business plan or idea how to become profitable. The hysteria around NFTs and cryptocurrency trading seemed very similar to me, which is why I only ever dipped my toe into Bitcoin and Ethereum despite being fairly bullish on crypto.

2022 has been a rough one for all things cryptocurrency related, and to carry on my internet-analogy further, I wonder if we just saw the equivalent of the dot-com bubble bursting. Time will tell. However, nothing that has happened over the past few years has made me any less bullish on Bitcoin. I still think there is a big need for a decentralized and non-inflationary currency / store of value. If anything, the events of 2022 simply cause me to believe that even more strongly than ever. Which brings me to…

The Fed will reduce rates to 2.5% (or lower) in 2023

I typically don’t try to worry too much about what the federal reserve might do and I don’t let it affect how I invest. However, I have long been fascinated by the whole monetary situation around the US dollar, the federal reserve, and the ballooning debt of the US government. Simply put, it seems impossible for the federal reserve to continue to raise interest rates and keep them there for any length of time without causing some severe issues for the US government. We’ve seen some historically fast increases in interest rates this year, and I wonder if we might see the reverse in 2023 even if inflation doesn’t completely get squashed.

Well, those are my recklessly bold predictions for 2023. I don’t think it’s possible that I can do worse this time than I did in 2022, so I at least have that to look forward to. What do you think? Have any bold predictions of your own? Let me know!