Investors and markets don’t like surprises. Will interest rates rise slowly or quickly?  Will Congress appropriate mega-funding to US infrastructure, slash taxes, or both? Are Trump’s growth plans mere dreams, or rooted in reality? What will happen to the Affordable Care Act? As financial pundits pondered these post-election questions, the January markets quietly defied expectations. There’s a lesson in that. 

Don’t Believe the News — We may look back at 2016 as the year in which Russia and fake news helped elect an American president. In the financial markets, it was a year of misleading news as well. The facts were right, that’s true, but most financial analysts got the forecast wrong.