Winding Down

Since we're nearing the peak of the holiday shopping season and 2004 is rapidly drawing to a close, I thought I'd make a couple of predictions for the last few weeks of the year:

• While retail sales have started off slowly for this holiday season, they will rebound and retailers will post some nice numbers for December.
• Oil prices will stay down fueling consumer confidence. I look for oil to close the year around $45/bbl.
• Stocks will continue their rally from November and the Dow could finish the year as high as 10,750.
• What's the holiday season without a terrorism scare? It will turn out to be nothing, but I would expect a scare of some significance around Christmas.
• The media continues to ignore the corruption in the UN even with more evidence of fraud in the oil for food program.

That's all for now, I'll be making some predictions for 2005 soon.