Here we are in 2018, and you know what that means: another edition of Fletch Predicts!
I always do sports, and I was on a roll for a while. I predicted basketball and baseball right in 2016, and then I nailed the 2017 Superbowl – three in a row! Things were really looking up, but then I crashed back to earth, and haven’t hit on anything since. But that never deterred me – let’s get to it for 2018.
Starting with the Superbowl – there are a few teams that look strong: you have the Patriots, who are always there. The Eagles are surprising, and they may have an old NY Giant vibe, when a backup quarterback named Jeff Hostetler led them to a Superbowl win against the Bills in 1989. Can Nick Foles do the same for Phili?
But I’m going with an unconventional pick. I like the Minnesota Vikings to become the first team to play the Superbowl on their home field. They will play the Pittsburgh Steelers in a rematch of the first Superbowl a young Fletch watched start to finish! And this time, the Vikings will win!
Hockey – to me, that’s the hardest sport to predict, because it all depends on momentum and the hot goaltender. Right now, the Tampa Bay Lightning look very strong. Let’s go with them.
Basketball… I like the Houston Rockets to make a big leap, and grab the title. They will play the Celtics in the finals. LeBron finally gets to rest in late spring.
Baseball – all NY Yankees, all the time. They already had a modern day Murder’s Row brewing with Aaron Judge and company, and adding Giancarlo Stanton to the mix may just set a record for home runs in a season. It should be fun if you’re a Yankees fan, and, of course, for you Yankee haters, there’s more to hate!
Now that sports are done, let’s go into the economy: As you know, H.R.1, The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, recently passed, and while the full effects on everyone won’t be known for a while, I like it for businesses, and I do see a steady economy for the next year. The business climate is quite good, and confidence is high, so that always helps. 2018 should be a good year for most industries and companies. And Section 179 will be there all year, sitting pretty at $1,000,000, thanks to a nice bump from the above-mentioned bill.
I’m not sure what to make of the Bitcoin phenomena, and I can’t pretend to even fully understand it, but it and other Cryptocurrencies deserve watching. There are plenty of tools like Gunbot that can come handy while trading cryptocurrencies. This is on my “need to know” list for 2018. Put it on yours too.
Last year, I thought Virtual Reality would make big strides, and gaming companies like Microsoft and Sony proved that prediction accurate by embracing that technology in a big way. I also thought 3D printing would be more mainstream, but it hasn’t quite caught on as much yet. But it will – it’s inevitable.
So there you have it – some predictions for 2018. I hope you had a great New Year, and are ready to hit the ground running!