An 8-9 week consolidation pattern formed after the 2011 S&P downgrade that marked a steady bull market in the weekly chart for SPY. ​

Most probable scenario: There will be some dips and waves, and in the next several weeks will be marked by choppy waters, but there will probably be no significant event that will occur in March that will send the stock market into a crash and most likely Iran will become a new market for the US and the UK to do business with in a steady continuation of the Hillary Clinton era bull market.
In addition, I recently saw a Bloomberg video in which the CEO of Morgan Stanley was interviewed at Davos, and I was a little surprised when he said that he didn't think oil would go below $50. I suppose he might've missed the memo from 2012 when the OPEC nations decided to phase out oil in favour of solar energy and when the Saudi Arabia PM made the announcement that Saudi Arabia will be the solar energy producer of the world. This dip in oil has been 4 years in the making. But then again, I'm fairly certain bankers don't have a tendency to rely on fundamentals nor macroanalysis and instead, have a preference to rely heavily on algos and stochastic charts and oscillators, which IMHO often do not have enough information to base a direction of the movement in the stock market.
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So, in summary, we are nowhere near a stock market crash, oil is going to dip further as OPEC nations have already made a transition into solar energy, and called for the end of oil age; China's growth isn't slowing down as much as they are in a state of transition towards the 4th Industrial Revolution, and will potentially become the largest economy in the world and America will finally elect its first female President. It's about time.

​By Sierra Choi

(Disclaimer: This post is intended for educational purposes only and not intended as stock market advice or a commentary about the nature of American politics)

David Plouffe, former campaign manager for the Obama administration is now an active lobbyist for Uber and driverless cars on Capitol Hill, and responsible for President Obama's new proposed budget of $4 billion to spend on the next 10 years to help companies in research and development of driverless car technology. ​

Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in 1975, when America had less economic inequality than today and during a time when public university education was free. ​

Udacity, an online vocational school that teaches students to work in technology companies as developers in driverless technology, iOS and Android applications and machine learning. ​

The original startup founders, Richard and Maurice McDonald who founded McDonald's in 1955, when there existed less economic inequality than today. ​

What David O. Sacks postulates is that the heyday of Silicon Valley as a new frontier of startup founders from the 70s and 80s has been replaced by corporate giants and startups based around a network entirely composing of Stanford. Steve Jobs couldn't create Apple today under the conditions of this growing economic inequality and Sergey and Larry couldn't create another Google under the same conditions.

Let us not forget either that despite Y-Combinator's bluechip status, that approximately 80% of its wealth is based on exactly one startup- AirBnB, a startup that almost didn't get chosen into Y-Combinator. As Holly Wood writes, 99% of startups fail, and 99.5% of startups at Y-Combinator have failed; so perhaps instead of simply admiring the wealth creation of one startup- we should analyse why 99.5% have failed at wealth creation? Perhaps centering the startup world around the myopic, incestuous world of Stanford isn't such a great idea after all.

In history, it is usually the middle classes that produce iconic artists. It is also the middle class today that launch the most amount of small businesses. In areas where there are less pockets of economic inequality, there are more small businesses. Venture capitalists are the "benefactors" of today's society, and certainly they are the ones who fund the founders of our era, but it isn't the 1% that is creating the startups nor people in poverty who create them; instead the majority of wealth generation comes from people who have solidly grown up in middle class neighbourhoods where there was less economic inequality.
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Paul Graham also makes a remark upon poverty and how that topic should hold precedence over the topic of economic inquality, the latter which he views as a natural occuring phenomenon. However, Mr. Graham had an opportunity to do just that- make a difference in poverty via one of his Y-combinator startups, Homejoy, in which a significant portion of the cleaners were found to be homeless people. Here, Mr. Graham could've made a difference in combating poverty, and given these homeless people an opportunity for education and advancement, but instead, what happened was that they were exploited as cheap labour, and forced into the status of independent contractors.

Homeless shelters in America, a disturbingly growing trend. ​

The Experimenter is a film about the social scientist and psychologist, Stanley Milgram who conducted interesting experiments into the nature of obedience and authority. The film also touches upon the experiments of Solomon Asche, who conducted the conformity experiments.

The conformity experiments, which were published as "The effect of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgements" is a fascinating look at the social psychology and the effect of group mentality.
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In summary: Professor Solomon Asche took 6 subjects (with one only being the true test subject, while the others were inserted into the room) and asked to relay the correct answer to a set of visual questions (eg, which is the longest line?) and the subjects gave their answer in serial succession, with the true test subject put into 5th position.

Typically, I've noticed that major volatility in the markets occur before the announcement of the news, therefore suggesting that major players already know the impending outcome of such movement. Two key events in 2015 that have affected the volatility of the global stock markets have been China's adjustment and devaluation of its currency in August and the US's retaliation by the Federal Reserve by raising interest rates in December. However, what is interesting is that in the Asian-Pacific markets, the Japanese Nikkei has not been significantly affected by the interest rate hikes despite being no.1 in the holder of US debt, next to China.
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This could potentially show that Japan is a growing powerhouse, and moving into the no.1 position of superpower nation whose descent had only been halted by the geological attacks of both the tsunami and earthquake in March of 2011 that had temporarily suspended all its manufacturing and industrial activities. Thus far, Japan has been 15 years ahead in nanotech and AI from the rest of the world and is the number one producer of biofuels, green energy and humanoid androids, the latter which have already infilitrated their commercial markets- from android teachers to android hotel receptionists and maids to android family companions, Japan has dominated every aspect of AI, and just recently SoftBank made the announcement to partner with the flailing IBM to help the US commercialise its less-than-stellar Watson supercomputer into the US market after Japanese scientists and engineers had invested time to make adjustments to Watson last February. ​
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The doom-and-gloom projections of the news media are starting again, so I thought this would be an opportune time to update my previous stock market projections.

I am still bullish on the stock market. Sure, words and phrases have been thrown about 6.59% drop in the NASDAQ this week, reaching 5000, Equities tumble, Will the stock market make you lose your job or other such headlines in the news. But, let's face it, no one buys the top, everyone buys the bottom for maximum ROI, and we are at that point near bottom.
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Thus far, the SPY has been following a parallel pattern to 2011, and this week, is nearing the end formation of a half arc, in potentially, a final correction before resuming the uptrend.

​To be honest, I extrapolated that the half arc would be finished two weeks ago, but because of the shorter consolidation period before the formation of the very strong bullish indicator in October, there had been more perplexing consolidation in the formation of the half arc. Good news though, it's nearly finished. This is where we can all potentially breathe and think, where could the potential entry point be for this ensuing uptrend if it holds the support level? My projection for SPY will be that it will reach 242.04 by November 2017.

​Also the EURUSD has been consolidating in a snake-like pattern, and it looks to be on the verge of a potential breakout. Oftentimes, the EURUSD has been compared an analogous precursor to the movement of the S&P, although not exact. I like to look at the EURUSD for comparison, not necessarily a prognosticator of the SPY to verify a strong movement either way. However, currently it doesn't seem likely that the EURUSD will be plummeting anytime soon. In fact, the EURUSD seems to be nearing the end of its own consolidation pattern. 
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Another favourite stock of mine is Apple (AAPL). Why not, I grew up idolising Steve Jobs, and the companies he have built have been tremendously inspirational to many people around the world. I still recall during his death when everyone put flowers and cards outside every Apple store location in the world.
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​Steve Jobs didn't form a Gates Foundation non-profit to inject his influence in the African and pharmaceutical and biomedical sectors, but he had been a vegan for most of his life who hated traditional medicine, drank green juices and made inspirational speeches about following one's inner instincts. How can one not admire a man who had found his biological sister simply because he was drawn to reading her novels, without realising that she had been his sister all along, even if he did have a bit of temper? Perhaps in our current generation, the only person who comes close to Steve Jobs is the original ousted founder of Etsy, Rob Kalin.

But in regards to Apple, the company, no, it isn't going anywhere. Apple has long-term vision and has self-sufficient been for a long time, thanks to the trio that had been Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, and Jonny Ive. My Apple projections for the New Year is that it will reach 157.47-171.17 by August 2019, and that is a conservative estimate. Apple is currently at 96.45.

Chipotle has finished phase 1 of its European expansion and now entering the second phase. This is good news because now everyone is dumping their Chipotle stocks. Chipotle is currently at its support level. I surmise in the next couple of weeks, we will see it if it will begin consolidation at this level or slightly below. 
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Mind you, I'm not a US stock broker, so this post is for education purposes only and not intended as stock advice. However, I think instead of reading the news, and looking at numbers all day long without context, that sometimes, it's good to simply look at the long-term picture. A lot of times, I found that certain patterns emerge before it even makes the news and visual analysis + macro analysis is better at discerning that big picture than looking at serial numbers that don't really convey much information aside from % points day in year out.

2016? It's going to be a great year for stocks. Unless of course, Uber declares bankruptcy. Then we are in deep trouble because Uber's valuation is currently higher than 80% of the S&P. So here's a shout out to Uber: Don't F*ck Up! 
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By Sierra Choi

(Disclaimer: This post is intended for educational purposes only and not intended as stock advice)