3 things Wall Street got wrong in 2023

As the Federal Reserve's interest rates and inflation outlooks appear more hopeful heading into 2024, Wall Street seems to have misfired on certain calls this year.

Yahoo Finance's Madison Mills breaks down the top three biggest themes and forecasts Wall Street got wrong in 2023, including calls for a recession, bearish sentiments, and China's economic recovery.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Well, pobody's nerfect. No, I haven't hit that New Year's champagne too early. That's what strategists and economists learned this year. Here were the top three things that Wall Street got wrong in 2023 is our very own Madison Mills--

MADISON MILLS: I was like, what is in the prompter for Rachelle? I was worried about you. And you crushed it, and so did our team who wrote that in the prompter for you, Rachelle. But Wall Street did not necessarily crush it in 2023.

I want to run through three different things that we really saw go wrong in terms of the calls this year; recession, bearishness, and China. So starting with the recession calls, GDP stayed strong. Over the past year, we saw inflation cooling and the consumer continuing to spend.

The bet from a lot of strategists was that the consumer was going to start to finally buckle under the rapid tension and continuation of inflation. And we did not see that this year. In fact, the consumer continued to spend, spend, spend. It's just another reminder, never bet against the consumer, which makes up 2/3 of our GDP.

That spending starting to lean into credit card delinquencies in the recent data. So that's going to be something to watch heading into the new year. But it looks like that recession call is starting to be on the back burner, particularly when you look at the market action.

Which brings me to my next bad call, there's a reason why a lot of the bears are in hibernation mode when we've gotten these calls for 2024. That's because their calls for this past year were not correct, to put it lightly. The S&P 500 climbing more than 20%, the NASDAQ over 50%. That was the biggest annual gain for both indices since dot.com boom.

We saw earnings growth across the board as well. Mike Wilson was saying that we were not going to see earnings growth because, again, the consumer was going to buckle under inflation and that companies were not going to have the pricing power that they did previously. Neither of those ended up being true. We saw a lot of earnings growth over the past year. And the S&P was inching toward highs, today record-breaking highs. I'm not so sure we're going to be able to break that news today. But still, a banner year, of course, for the S&P, given that consumer growth and the AI boom.

And lastly, we got to talk about China. There was this big bet that we were going to see this post-pandemic boom coming out of China as pandemic restrictions were tapering off. That definitely did not come true. I want to take a look at the MSCI index, down 13% year-to-date.

A lot of issues when it came to the picture, coming out of China. One of them being that we didn't really know the status of COVID-19 cases in the region. It's very difficult to get a clear picture of things on the ground from Beijing. Also, the property market is a mess right now in China. But that's one reason why my sources are telling me they think there's nowhere to go but up for China heading into next year. That's why we might be seeing the CSI index starting to creep up over the past couple of days as we head into the end of the year. So strategists have flipped from bearish to bullish, and they're still maintaining this China growth story.

- It's so fascinating, especially to your point, Madison, about the recession calls for this year. There were so many early in the year. So obviously, that was one that was wrong. And now, when you look at predictions for next year, in terms of any calls there, it's like it's a coin toss. It's like 50/50 because people are like, oh, we got 2023 wrong. We might not want to stick our neck out there too far for 2024.

- I mean, is it luck? Is it skill? You never know.

- You don't. We'll put a pin in it for now. Maddie Mills, thank you.