2019-20, Global & Regional Total Markets, Annual Growth Rates, Percentage

The Business Research Company (TBRC) has further slashed its market forecasts for 2020. It foresees global markets shrinking by 2% in 2020 with China, the USA and Japan seeing declines in excess of 3%. The key reason for the very negative forecasts are that a) many countries are experiencing economic shock from coronavirus b) the huge impact of the rapid decline of the oil price on the economy in the short term c) the fact that few countries are likely to be able to fully recover or return to normal until late 2020, and even those that do will face a global market in a depressed state.

“Unchartered waters is the way to describe things. In a normal downturn companies lose a share of their earnings. Here whole sectors are seeing their revenues cut to a fraction of their previous levels. No organisation can sustain that for long.” Commented Oliver Guirdham from TRBC.

By region, the model foresees the pain being shared fairly evenly this year, with the most important financial regions, Asia Pacific, North America and Western Europe dropping around 2%, while the Middle East and Africa’s focus on commodities leads them to be the hardest hit at around 4%.

In terms of specific countries, the model foresees China being amongst the hardest hit, despite its relatively strong response to the virus. This is due to reduced demand for manufactured goods in coronavirus hit countries. Major western European countries, the US, Japan and South Korea are also likely see declines.

One of the main reasons for the negative outlook for oil. The low oil price reflects both low demand, oversupply and the failure of the OPEC cartel to control pricing, and is unlikely to be resolved quickly. Low oil prices and relatively low volumes due to slowing trade will push consumption levels in many countries into the negative.

The model predicts a reasonably buoyant fight back in 2021, with market size growing 4%. The recovery is expected to be faster than in 2009, as the downturn is less to do with underlying problems in the global economy and finance system than a one off, ‘Black Swan’ event. For that reason the model forecasts average growth in the period to be more than 5% per annum for the overall period to 2030, despite the short-term downturn in 2020.

The Global Market Model is the world’s most comprehensive database of integrated market information available. The ten year forecasts in the Global Market Model are updated in real time to reflect the latest market realities, a huge advantage over static, report-based platforms.

The model is based on the consumption of goods and services in monetary terms (nominal growth), and therefor differ from GDP forecasts published by many leading institutions such as the world bank and IMF.