Year in review: 5 predictions NWO.AI made in 2020 and how they are faring
Hey! What a wild ride 2020 has been. Thanks for being a subscriber to NWO.AI's newsletter. Hopefully, our signals have helped you understand what is currently transpiring across social, political, and economic spheres.
2020 has been a year like no other - COVID-19 has upended entire industries, while accelerating a transition into a world that is increasingly driven by cultural narratives and online discourse. At NWO, we've had front row seats to observing thousands of mega and micro shifts shaping the world this year. Here are 5 big predictions made by NWO.AI, and how they turned out:
🔮 #1
Prediction timeline: June 2020
Newsletter: Locust swarms of “biblical” proportions threaten food and cotton crops
How did we do? From January to August, NWO detected several inflection points in signals related to food security in East Africa triggered by locust farms. We wrote about the ripple effects of the issue and the impact it would have on global food security, at a time when mainstream media had hardly begun to surface the issue. This year has already seen the worst East Africa invasion in 70 years. FAO recently requested $40M USD for the anti-locust fight as the situation turns grave in East Africa. It warned that farmers whose livelihoods have been impacted require further support, and national capacities in monitoring and responding to desert locusts still need to be strengthened. As forecasted in our newsletter, the second wave of swarms is now feared imminent.
🔮 #2
Prediction timeline: July 2020
Newsletter: Thank you for smoking: how the pandemic is upending Big Tobacco
How did we do? In July, NWO's signals indicated a huge decline in interest in e-cigarettes and vaping during the pandemic. 2 months after we released our piece on the tobacco industry, Juul Labs Inc. announced a drop in its valuation to about $10 billion, in marked contrast to $38 billion two years ago when tobacco giant Altria Group Inc. MO 0.02% took a 35% stake. The stock has declined 20% this past year.
🔮 #3
Prediction timeline: August 2020
Newsletter: 6 signals that are predicting a very bullish Bitcoin narrative
How did we do? In June 2020, NWO.AI's engine predicted that Bitcoin would surpass $20k by year-end. At that point, Bitcoin was hovering around $11,000. If you're like me and had the majority of your portfolio invested in BTC, you'd be holding on for dear life. As of today, Bitcoin has broken through the $29k resistance to create an all-time-high, nearly tripling in value since our prediction. Today, Bitcoin's market cap is upward of $500B. We also mentioned Microstrategy's (NASDAQ:MSTR) bold decision to convert their reserve currency into Bitcoin and expressed our long interest. Since then, $MSTR is up 180%.
🔮 #4
Prediction timeline: October 2020
Newsletter: Lord of the Rings solution to 9/11": How online narratives are shaping Palantir's IPO
How did we do? In October, NWO laid down the various narratives creating the bullish and bearish case for Palantir's growth. NWO's signals indicated a positive outlook for Palantir's IPO, given the momentum in its demand drivers. Palantir's stock is up 150% since the time we wrote the post, making it one of the most incredible growth stories for any tech IPO that happened in 2020.
🔮 #5
Prediction timeline: November 2020
Newsletter: NWO.AI’s Forecast for the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election
How did we do? In May 2020, we published a daily tracker for the US Presidential Election based on an algorithm that took into account NWO's market-tested metric, Impact Score, Sentiment as well as contextual signals surrounding the two presidential candidates. While the race turned out to be much tighter than we expected, we're happy to see that the election prediction engine at least sided with the eventual winner.
While we've had a high hit-rate with our predictions this year, our goal for 2021 is to increase the frequency of our newsletters and to continue pulling out quality predictions with longer time horizons. We'll also make it a point to feature some of the work we're doing with several of our clients and the value we're generating for them.
As always, thank you for reading. The best is yet to come and we predict a fantastic 2021 for you.