Tag: forecast

Impact Lab > forecast
Analysis, Globalism, Internet, Science & Technology News

Hottest social networking countries around the world

socialmedia

There are 1.2 billion social networking users worldwide.

U.S.-based social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter usually get most of the publicity, but eMarketer predicts that the worldwide social networking phenomenon will encompass nearly 1.5 billion internet users by the end of this year.

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Analysis, Business, Latest Trend

U.S. companies that will be the most profitable in 2012

apple

The market appears to anticipate rapid growth from Apple.

24/7 Wall St. forecasts the publicly traded U.S. companies that will have the highest profits in the year ahead every January.  For 2012, Apple is likely to pass Exxon Mobil as the most profitable corporation in the Fortune 500. It already passed the oil giant in market capitalization for a while last year. The market appears to anticipate rapid growth from Apple comparable to that of the past two years. The stock has reached several all-time highs recently and now trades around $425, up nearly 25 percent in the past year.

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Business, Great New Product, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

RazorChain – simplifies sales forecasting and operations planning

RazorChain

Featured invention at the DaVinci Inventor Showcase 2011

RazorChain delivers business forecasting made simple by a cloud based subscription service (SaaS). RazorChain is a website that helps Sales and Operations Managers to consolidate and communicate forecasts.  RazorChain helps you answer the questions:

 

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Analysis, Business, Economy, Globalism, Latest Trend

3 Macroeconomic Trends That Could Impact Your Investments

global

Cashing in on global macrotrends.

Investors that ride with global trends find excellent opportunities, while those that run against to them tend to find that the going gets very difficult. Identifying trends and identifying which companies will prevail in those trends is vital to long-term investor success. In this article, we’ll take a look at three trends that may impact your investments.

 

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Analysis, Economy, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, Money Talk

Tax Hikes and the Coming 2011 Economic Collapse

5 Laffer 453

Arthur Laffer predicts a gloomy year ahead because of taxes

ARTHUR LAFFER
People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.
Likewise, who is gobsmacked when they are told that the two wealthiest Americans—Bill Gates and Warren Buffett—hold the bulk of their wealth in the nontaxed form of unrealized capital gains? The composition of wealth also responds to incentives. And it’s also simple enough for most people to understand that if the government taxes people who work and pays people not to work, fewer people will work.
People can also change the timing of when they earn and receive their income in response to government policies. According to a 2004 U.S. Treasury report, “high income taxpayers accelerated the receipt of wages and year-end bonuses from 1993 to 1992—over $15 billion—in order to avoid the effects of the anticipated increase in the top rate from 31% to 39.6%. At the end of 1993, taxpayers shifted wages and bonuses yet again to avoid the increase in Medicare taxes that went into effect beginning 1994.”
Just remember what happened to auto sales when the cash for clunkers program ended. Or how about new housing sales when the $8,000 tax credit ended? It isn’t rocket surgery, as the Ivy League professor said.
On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush’s tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.
Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there’s always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.
Now, if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.
Also, the prospect of rising prices, higher interest rates and more regulations next year will further entice demand and supply to be shifted from 2011 into 2010. In my view, this shift of income and demand is a major reason that the economy in 2010 has appeared as strong as it has. When we pass the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe “double dip” recession.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan—with bipartisan support—began the first phase in a series of tax cuts passed under the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), whereby the bulk of the tax cuts didn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 1983. Reagan’s delayed tax cuts were the mirror image of President Barack Obama’s delayed tax rate increases. For 1981 and 1982 people deferred so much economic activity that real GDP was basically flat (i.e., no growth), and the unemployment rate rose to well over 10%.
But at the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 1983 the economy took off like a rocket, with average real growth reaching 7.5% in 1983 and 5.5% in 1984. It has always amazed me how tax cuts don’t work until they take effect. Mr. Obama’s experience with deferred tax rate increases will be the reverse. The economy will collapse in 2011.
Consider corporate profits as a share of GDP. Today, corporate profits as a share of GDP are way too high given the state of the U.S. economy. These high profits reflect the shift in income into 2010 from 2011. These profits will tumble in 2011, preceded most likely by the stock market.
In 2010, without any prepayment penalties, people can cash in their Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), Keough deferred income accounts and 401(k) deferred income accounts. After paying their taxes, these deferred income accounts can be rolled into Roth IRAs that provide after-tax income to their owners into the future. Given what’s going to happen to tax rates, this conversion seems like a no-brainer.
The result will be a crash in tax receipts once the surge is past. If you thought deficits and unemployment have been bad lately, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Mr. Laffer is the chairman of Laffer Associates and co-author of “Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status” (Threshold, 2010).

Arthur Laffer:  People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.

Continue reading… “Tax Hikes and the Coming 2011 Economic Collapse”

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Analysis, Business, Latest News, Latest Trend

Google’s New Tool for Forecasting the Future

google 872

Talk to the hand

Now Google is throwing the element of predictability into the mix. Looking at a particular trend’s historical search popularity, Google forecasts the trend’s future performance. For example, Twitter. Google looks at Twitter’s search trend from a point in time (normally one year ago), and forecasts its future searches based on historical data available leading up to that point. It then compares that forecast with the actual data from the past year. If the error between the predicted trends and actual trends are small enough, Google calls the trend predictable.
Google has found, not surprisingly, seasonal activities such as skiing and surfing, to be much more predictable than, say, entertainment searches. This means that Google can produce a forecast for about half of its popular searches. The other half? Out of luck.
Search for skiing, and you can see the following, complete with 2010’s forecast:
Search for something less stable, like the Jonas Brothers, and you see this:
No forecast included. Sorry boys. You might be too of-the-moment to have a future.
As Google Trends and Insights for Search are helpful concepts for advertisers and marketers, the forecast feature adds an extra punch of useful to the package, but 50% of searches deemed unpredictable leaves a lot to be desired. I think it’s safe to say that almost anyone could predict when in the calendar year the search term “skiing” would see a spike.
Via FastCompany

Last year, Google updated Google Trends and launched Google Insights for Search, allowing advertisers and marketers to track search behavior based on frequency of searches, time frame, or geographic location. Now Google is throwing the element of predictability into the mix.

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Analysis, Big Problems, Globalism, Science & Technology News

U.S. Sea Levels Could Rise Significantly Due To Greenland’s Melting Ice

U.S. Sea Levels Could Rise Significantly Due To Greenland’s Melting Ice

An iceberg is pictured in Ilulissat fjord in Greenland

New York, Boston and other cities on North America’s northeast coast could face a rise in sea level this century that would exceed forecasts for the rest of the planet if Greenland’s ice sheet keeps melting as fast as it is now, researchers said on Wednesday.

Sea levels off the northeast coast of North America could rise by 12 to 20 inches more than other coastal areas if the Greenland glacier-melt continues to accelerate at its present pace, the researchers reported.

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, New Discoveries

Humans Can “See Into the Future”

Humans Can “See Into the Future”

 News from the future:  You can’t get there from here

A new study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute suggests that the human visual system is equipped with the ability to foresee the future.

Assistant Professor Mark Changizi says that it takes nearly one-tenth of a second for the brain to perceive what the eyes see.

To compensate for such neural delays, he claims, the visual system has developed the ability to generate perceptions of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. Changizi says that it is due to this quality of the visual system that when an observer actually perceives something, it is the present rather than what happened one-tenth of a second ago.

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Analysis, Latest Trend, Money Talk, Report

Mobile TV to Drive Mobile Ad Spending

 Mobile TV to Drive Mobile Ad Spending

Mobile TV will drive advertising spending in the hand-held market

Juniper Research forecasts that by 2013, worldwide mobile advertising spending will reach almost $7.6 billion, up from just over $1 billion in 2008.

Text message advertising currently accounts for the largest share of mobile advertising with $335 million spent in 2008, but as mobile TV services proliferate, SMS advertising spending will rise to only $2.5 billion by 2012.

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