Predicting the future can be a fraught exercise at any time. It can be especially so in uncertain times, and there is no shortage of uncertainty heading into 2022. But a group of panelists said exchange traded funds (ETFs) and cryptocurrency adoption will continue to grow this year, during a panel discussion on Jan. 4, 2022, convened by Investopedia and ETFTrends.com.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The markets saw an unexpectedly wild ride in 2021. For 2022, experts suggest a fresh take and a move away from large-cap stocks.
- A risk-on environment should ensure that cryptocurrency adoption will continue throughout global markets.
- Panelists expect that exchange traded funds (ETFs) will continue to multiply in 2022.
Their assessments of 2022 come at a particularly unpredictable time in the markets. At the end of 2020, asset prices had skyrocketed, and the S&P 500 had racked up gains of more than 16% in a year during which the pandemic had ground the U.S. economy to a halt. Then, investment strategists said that prices were “stretched” and that there was a “good possibility” of a pullback in 2021, reminding investors that “share prices don’t go up forever.”1
But the stretched prices did not pull back or fall. Instead, the S&P 500 rose by almost 27% in 2021.2 The coming year presents an even more confusing landscape. Inflation is on the rise. New COVID variants have emerged. And the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates in the coming year.
