Prepare for a five-year property and stockmarket boom

In June 2014 I wrote an article in this magazine (moneyweek.com/503173/ boom-times-are-here-again) that made several forecasts. I claimed we were in the early stages of a cyclical economic expansion, which, following a short mid-cycle recession, would take us into a major boom in the 2020s. I forecast that this mid-cycle recession would occur at the end of the 2010s, but that the economy would quickly shrug it off and spring forward into the new decade. I said the boom would be global, leading to more wealth creation in this period than in any other in human history. So confident was I in this prediction that I declared that the FTSE 100, then still below the level it traded at the start of 2000, would go above 12,000 by the time the boom was over. And I said that the peak of the cycle would arrive around 2026.

Seven years on, the world has thrown some incredible events at my predictions. So, have I changed my views in light of all that has gone on? No. Because nothing has happened in the last seven years that has altered the underlying economic structure. Events, though significant, take place on the surface. But it takes much more to stop the tectonic forces that drive our economies through cycles of boom and bust.

A 200-year pattern

In my earlier article I laid out the full economic cycle that has operated for over 200 years in the