Year of the dragon offers opportunity, says HSBC

The global economic outlook for the year of the dragon is bleak, but some asset classes still offer decent investment opportunities, according to HSBC.

While most countries have lower consensus growth forecasts for 2012, the US, Japan and India are all expected to grow faster by 2.1%, 2% and 7.5% respectively, as opposed to 1.7%, -0.6% and 7.2% in 2011.

The eurozone is already in recession and its growth forecast for this year is negative, according to Philip Poole, global head of macro and investment strategy team at HSBC. “It is not a problem that is not going away, it is a problem that...