The smart money says President Joe Biden will quit his 2024 reelection campaign before November, according to one top JPMorgan strategist Monday.
The head of the market and investment strategy at JPMorgan’s asset management division, Michael Cembalest, made a few bold predictions for the upcoming year.
Top among them: The 81-year-old Biden will drop out of the Democratic presidential primary race “sometime between Super Tuesday and the November election, citing health concerns.”
“Biden has a low approval rating for a President with ~10% job creation since his inauguration, although that
figure is the by-product of his inauguration coinciding with the rollout of COVID vaccines and a reopening US
economy,” Cembalest predicted in his newsletter.
Also among his 10 bold predictions for 2024: Americans will resoundingly reject driverless cars in the New Year.
Investors beware.
Cembalest wrote —
In the few places where full Level 5 autonomous cars are being tested in real world conditions (San Francisco, Austin), they have blocked ambulances on their way to the hospital, hampered other emergency responders, caused accidents, increased congestion and run over pedestrians, one instance of which reportedly resulted in the resignation of Cruise’s CEO. Waymo has added technology to reportedly allow firefighters to take control of its vehicles if they stop moving.
LiDAR (autonomous vehicle technology) stocks have collapsed by 85% from their peak, and I don’t think rebound is imminent. I believe a possible backlash is coming from citizens who believe, as in the case of the despised urban scooter plague38, that convenience for some results in dangers and inconvenience for others.
Tesla is experiencing problems even at Level 2, which requires driver oversight. The NHTSA investigated a series of crashes involving Tesla autopilot and found that its methods of [ensuring] driver compliance are inadequate and can lead to “foreseeable misuse”. In December, Tesla issued a recall of 2 million vehicles to update the software to require greater driver compliance.
Cembalast said his “bold predictions” list was an homage to the late Market Strategist Byron Wien, who wrote top 10 New Year’s predictions for investors for over 30 years at various financial institutions.
Wien passed away recently in 2023 at the age of 90.
The Horn editorial team