The point of making public predictions is not to be correct, but to at some point in future to ponder over the reasons for incorrect interpretation of the present.
And most importantly it's a fun endeavor.
LinkedIn (Microsoft) will acquire Up-work or a similar freelancing platform. Currently, it is a missing piece in the company’s vision which is to empower the world’s population to be more and more productive.
There are new classes of careers and companies that are made on freelancing platforms and LinkedIn needs to be in the game one way or the other.
Last year has been a tumultuous one for Facebook, and the most important asset they lost is the trust in their brand by both lawmakers and users. Users are still excited about Instagram, but there is a good chance that regulators are going to make things more unfriendly for Facebook.
Starting with some small country in the European Union, Facebook will be banned by a first world nation, and will eventually lose at-least $100B more in market cap. Currently, it is $395B.
Disney
Disney will launch its new streaming service (duh) and get this, it will cross 20 million subscriptions within first 3 months of the launch. And its stock price, currently at $113 will be doubled in next 12–16 months.
Netflix
Netflix’s stock price will be cut in half (currently at $300). The streaming company is heavily overvalued and there is no rational story for its profitability, yet. With more competition from Disney, Netflix will only double down on its ever-expanding debt. Golden Globes are nice but they don’t clear debt and investors will soon see that.
Netflix will acquire a small or a lesser known production house to fill it’s content beast’s appetite.
Walmart
Walmart’s stock price will be doubled in next 12–16 months as it will emerge as the winner in online grocery sales.
Instacart
Instacart will be acquired by Walmart/Kroger — my bet is on Kroger.
Acquisitions
More acquisitions will happen in SaaS Companies with subscription revenue stickiness. The companies acquiring will be Oracle, IBM, Salesforce & Adobe while the ones that will get acquired are Dropbox, Box, Atlassian, Tableau, Zendesk & Workday. For Oracle & IBM, it is mostly compulsion to beef up their balance sheets with cloud growth, which is the metric the market is most interested in. But for Adobe & Salesforce its a more flexible choice based on the right strategic fit.
Last Mile Consolidation
Its the beginning of the end for scooter startups (please don’t start another one if you are in the U.S). Any remotely successful scooter startup will be acquired by either Lyft or Uber, while the others will run dry of their series X cash. This is specific to the U.S, other places in the world will see more scooter mania.
Airbnb
Airbnb will launch its own version of WeWork. WeWork is essentially semi-vertically integrated enterprise version of Airbnb. So they will soon realize that they can leverage their assets, operations & software to create workplaces that compete with WeWork.
Some of these predictions make strategic and product sense on paper while some of the above are just pure wishful thinking, and every one of them is not researched.
In markets, for both economic and political, 2019 is going to be much crazier and volatile than 2018. Welcome to the freak show.
Prosperous 2019.