ITR Economics - February 2014 Update

In January 2012, I attended an economic forecast.  I’m sure many of you have attended these types of events over the years and they are generally interesting sessions.  This particular event featured Brian Beaulieu, CEO of ITR Economics and this forecast seemed different than many of the others I had attended.  The first notable difference was the time horizon discussed.  Most of the time these forecasts seem to focus on the next year, reflecting on recent economic data (at least during the presentation).  Mr. Beaulieu, an excellent public speaker by the way, presented decades worth of data which served, in part, as the basis for his predictions over the next few decades.  He did also speak back in 2012 about his outlook for the next 5 years and suggested that meaningful growth would occur in 2015 – 2017 after a few years of weak/modest growth.  He even stated that if one was thinking of selling a business in the coming years, 2017 would be a fine year to do so.  He went on to say that in the late 2020’s we could see another Great Depression scenario develop.  Time will tell how good Mr. Beaulieu’s crystal ball is.

That presentation, over two years ago, made an impression on me.  ITR publishes monthly outlooks and I thought that sharing the February 2014 report (click this link) might be worthwhile for you to review.  There is also a Steel Futures Report as well which might be of interest.  Let’s hope Mr. Beaulieu is at least correct with his prediction of strength in the next few years!