Dear Readers, Over the past month, we have virtually visited a dozen annual outlooks from banks and asset managers. The quintessence is clear: In the coming year, the forecasters expect a massive economic recovery.

Dear Readers, Disappointments over slow vaccine deliveries and, above all, fears of hedge fund bankruptcies had put pressure on the stock markets at the end of last week. As announced, Oliver Schlick, who as managing director of Secaro GmbH distils investment recommendations from the calculations of the capital market seismograph, analysed how the individual variables of the seismograph reacted to this. The question was: Should the turbulence of the last few days be taken seriously or not?

Dear Readers, According to the ifo Business Cycle Clock, the German economy is moving back towards recession territory (Chart 1 below). The ifo Business Climate fell again in January, and business expectations in industry also declined again after a recovery in December. As a result, the ifo economic traffic light jumped back to "red" (chart 2). However, in view of the renewed loosening of the economy, this comes as no surprise. For the private-wealth stock market indicator, this is not (yet) a disaster. Only a threefold decline would be tantamount to a sell signal. What is important is that no one would have expected a sustained negative trend at the moment. In the past two weeks, we have attended a large number of online conferences...

Dear Readers, For more than two years now, we have been regularly informing you about developments on the capital market seismograph. Our aim is to help you better assess opportunities and risks on the stock market. At the same time, we use it to derive short-term changes in the equity ratio in the private wealth stock market indicator.

The editors of private wealth have collected 15 questions and presented them to the Lerbach Competence Group - a network of private bankers, family officers and asset managers. The questions about the next German Chancellor, Italy's debt problem, Europe's future, the German labour market, autonomous cars and the Olympics were answered in past issues of this forecast series, as were the questions about the price development of oil, gold, Bitcoin and the exchange rate of the euro in relation to the US dollar? In conclusion, the professionals share their assessments of the US election and BREXIT. 13 What final outcome do you expect for the BREXIT at the end of 2020 (probability)? Lerbach Competence Circle Hard BREXITE47 % negotiated solution...