Trying to predict the stock market has been a lot like the McDonald's commercial with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird from 1993, Morgan Stanley says

"Off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall, nothing but net."
That's how Michael Jordan concluded the iconic 1993 McDonald's commercial, "The Showdown," alongside fellow basketball legend Larry Bird, competing for a Big Mac and Fresh fries.
The basketball's wild, roundabout journey to reach the hoop in that commercial was just how Morgan Stanley's top US market-watcher, Michael Wilson, described getting the stock market right in the last year.

After all, a confluence of factors like US-China trade uncertainty, global economic slowdown fears, and concerns around the Federal Reserve's interest-rate hiking path have altogether injected volatility into markets around the world for months.

"Calling the market's direction this past year reminds us of one of the greatest commercials of all time - 1993's The Showdown - where Michael Jordan and Larry Bird compete to make a series of successively harder shots through a basketball hoop," Wilson, the firm's chief US equity strategist and chief investment officer, told clients in a report on Monday. "Their final shot attempt is 'off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall, nothing but net.

"After making a series of accurate calls in 2018, we realize it's only going to get harder in 2019. As such, we aren't calling 'swish' at this point and we'll be happy if we can hit the rim."

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