Today's blog features forecasts by our special correspondent, Fearless Fosdick, who, aided by his abilities in reading Tarot cards, stars, crystal balls, palms, and entrails, will forecast the best stocks for the coming year based on his hunches.

Featured Fearless Fosdick's fifteen forecasts for '15 follow, or FFFFFFFF:

1. the US dollar cannot keep it up. After rising 17% against other major currencies last year, the pool of analysts has reduced the Greenback's average growth estimates to a mere 4% this year. Me, I go further. The dollar will fall in 2015 against major currencies by 3 or 4% in the second half after the Fed finally does raise interest rates. This will reverse the rent-seeking inflow of global of cash to the US$ and the USA because trade and profits will be hurt by an expensive currency.

2. The best performing market in 2014 will not repeat the exploit. Make an Exodus from Egypt, which in the past 18 months became the place to invest. The Sisi regime attracted money fleeing other Middle Eastern areas where ISIS threatens stability. Sisi is now The Nile denial to ISIS. We tried Egypt, but an Arab hand acquaintance, questioned a mere few months before the Cairene karoom, replied: “Are you mashugga?” So I tossed my crystal ball into the sea at Wood's Hole. Big mistake. The worst developed country market (not counting Russia) was Portugal where there will be a reversal in 2015.

3. Europe is getting desperate, actually a good thing. The failure of half-hearted quantitative easing may open the way for a serious bond-buying exercise and even the launch of multilateral euro-denominated bonds to finance infrastructure and inflation, in return for nominal national reforms. A push to a common bond market and other reforms is long overdue.

4. The age of aggregation has not ended yet. There will be more mergers in the pharmaceutical sector. There will be additional acquisitions in energy. There will also be more takeovers in telecommunications. If this is not enough to keep investment banker bonuses up, there will also be underwriting, for new share issues, secondaries, bonds, and leading-edge lending, particularly to those most in need of the ready: emerging markets.

5. The mysterious miasma over Asian economies at this time, as we still have not reached the Chinese New Year, prevents me from forecasting the future in Japan, China, and India. After the Year of the Pig has grunted forward, I will cast my astro-charts anew and they may become clearer.

6. However, even if China barely grows (its December purchasing manager index is barely in the black at 50.1%) I am certain that another 10 million or so Chinese will enter the middle class, whatever that means in China. Welcome fellow bourgeois! Oink oink. However the top oligarchs there and in Russia will become less vulgarly ostentatious to avoid calling attention to their misdeeds. I mean, who really needs 154 Swiss watches or 42 uninhabited apartments?

7. A high dollar makes for better business for Canada and Mexico, first responders to US demand.

8. There will be political crises and regime change in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Colombia. The latter country, according to my favorite Colombia-born elf, Frida, becomes our top pick for good regime change. Regime change in the other lands  may go wrong. In Britain, the son of a foreign-born Marxist is not leading the masses leftward with a red flag but with a ballot paper. That is an improvement but the UK polls are still pretty tentative, the Paddy Power plc odds are not set, and my crystal ball is cloudy.

9. On South Africa I say: Cry, the Beloved Country. I am allowed to quote others.

10. In fulfillment of the Zionist dream, Israel in 2015 has become a normal country with gangsters and whores replacing zealots. Its people can vote for their pocketbooks over their ideals, for leftist populist price-cutters opposed to pro-capitalist modernizer land-snatchers. Israeli socialism is dead on Kibbutzim but alive and well in supermarket checkout lines.

11. Compared to the malignant rise of the European right-wing, hating foreigner immigrants, Muslims, and, sometimes even Jews, Israeli populism appears benign. You cannot be prejudiced against foreigner refugees in Israel because almost every Israeli is of immigrant stock. The same is true of the USA but American triumphalism has a short historic memory. To avoid 1930s-style nasties, serious economic moves to boost job levels are needed all over both regions.

12. More people will die of Ebola but a preventive vaccination is coming. Meanwhile in developed countries, a treatment based on blood from survivors will become standard operating procedure.

13. There will be no crashes of airplanes owned by Malaysian carriers. Other countries' airlines may still crash, however.

14. However more computers will be hacked than ever before.

15. Vladimir Putin will cling to power by behaving better. I hope. Everyone hopes.

More from a few places where people are also working this week: Canada, Israel, Germany, Chile, Pakistan, Australia, and the USA. Among those bored by eating and drinking are some of our reporters who like me cannot resist filing, so we have news from Frida Ghitis from Latin America and Martin Ferara from Canada on the UK. And from me on Pakistan.

• Royal Bank of Scotland common stock began the New Year on a bad footing, plummeting on concern that its reserves are inadequate to pay higher than anticipated US fines for selling toxic mortgages to funds. The bite may hit $7.5 bn but RBS only set aside $3 bn. All this is good for continued payouts from our RBS and NatWest (NWPRC) preferred shares because it means they cannot be privatized as the UK coalition would like.

• While Pimco Total Return Fund still is underperforming under new managers installed in Sept., it is underperforming less now than under the nomadic Bill Gross who walked out then. With over $162 bn under management, the new boys, Cott Mather, Mark Kiesel, and Mihir Worah, managed to close the year up 4.7%, below more than half the similar funds out there. But they easily beat the Gross gain in 2013 which was minus 1.9%, and below the return of 2/3 of its peers. We care because Allianz, AZSEY, which owns the US Pimco management company, entered our portfolio right after Gross left.

• The Chilean Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal against conditions imposed by Chilean environmental watchdogs on Barrick Gold ABX over the Pascua Lama mine which straddles the Andes across the border between Chile and Argentina. This is actually good news for bond-owners like us, because it halts spending on the new huge mine, so our bonds are safer. It also helps keep down the gold price, another play your editor likes.

• Frida Ghitis, an oppressed Latina journalist we employ, writes on Ecopetrol, EC:

I've picked up more with trepidation (it is an oil stock), mainly for the longer term. Oil prices will rise again. Colombia is a good steward to its oil company, unlike Brazil. And peace between the government and the rebels will boost EC. Meanwhile its p/e ratio is 6 and its dividend is 13%, easing my concerns.

Vivian adds: The dividend may be cut.

• Despite the anti-trust attack on alleged control of too much Israeli offshore gas by Delek Group DGRLY (and Noble Energy of the US, for which Pres. Obama has interceded with PM Netanyahu), its high bond dating was reiterated by the local arm of Standard & Poor's, Midroog. Whether Netanyahu will intervene with the over-zealous regulator depends on how he sees his political advantage, something the politician does better than anything else.

We know Netanyahu's strengths and weakness from when he was ambassador to the UN where my now-retired husband was NY Times bureau chief.

• Agrium, the fertilizer firm, has linked up its new Vanscoy (Saskatchewan) mine which will begin producing a further 1 mn tonnes this year, bringing AGU's total to 2.1 mn. (Tonnes are metric tons.) Canada's AGU was bought because it produces all three major fertilizers and has a global retail business besides the North American farm belt. But with the potash cartel suffering from glut and impotence (because the ex-Soviet over-producers are desperate for hard currency), AGU is taking advantage of opportunity to grow in its homeland.

Drug Dealing

• I hope you all noticed how well Benitec Biotec, BTEBY, has been behaving. Your gutsy editor wrote in support of the ddRNA drug developer despite its having been dissed by Dr RSS, the medico who first tipped it to me and others.

• Oops. Martin Ferera says I misstated our gains with Reckitt Benckiser RGBLY from its spinoff of opioid replacement maker Indivior in my table yesterday. INVVY ADR shares will be issued next week at a ratio of 1:5 UK shares, he writes, so we we will get 1 new INVVY for every 25 RBGLY ADRs which are equal to 5 ordinary UK shares. It sounded too good to be true, as I noted yesterday. The table has been corrected. Global glory is fleeting.

Fund notes

• Eaton Vance Tax Managed Global Equity Income Fund, EXG, lived up to its name by paying out another 0.65 cents for Dec. you will get this month but pay taxes on for 2014. The yield works out to 8% and 92% counts are return of capital, meaning there is no US tax payable on it. The yield is shrinking a bit however, as the 5-yr average payout was 8.24%.

• When I finally hit the sales at the Westfield Mall in Stratford I wound up buying a dress made not in China but in Pakistan. During the sales, the store dressing rooms were closed and your editor and a younger thinner Pakistani lady (without any headgear), advised each other on the dresses we tried by pulling them over our heads at a public mirror in the store. We both banished our husbands from helping.

In Britain they pronounce mall to rhyme with hell, why I waited till new year's day to seek bargains.

This buy, despite the awkward try-on, was only 30% off (when Chinese goods sold by the big British stores were being flogged at half price). This bodes well for our XDB MSCI Deutsche Bank-MSCI Pakistan Investment Fund, HK:3106, which I bought after the two prime ministers met at Modi's inauguration. The political mood may shift as the latest Taliban horror murder of schoolchildren will end the IIS Karachi spooks' love affair with Afghan Islamists. It is heavily invested in schmattes (Yiddish: the rag trade.) I will wear my new dress in the US where it should be unique rather than around Mudchute Manor. My Radclliffe classmate, a stockbroker named Ms Ali, advised us on our purchase.