| Is Goldman Sachs right or - hopefully - wrong about the stock market's immediate future? That was the question on everyone's mind on Wall Street after the esteemed investment bank recently issued a pretty bleak report. More on that in a moment... First, however, the election. Now that Donald Trump has been declared the winner and next president, markets are up sharply. But Wall Street insiders say surging stocks on Wednesday are due more to the decisiveness of the election outcome than Trump's policy proposals, as markets had been bracing for a delayed outcome and days or even weeks of uncertainty. Of course, Trump's proposed policies - and the likelihood of a Republican congress to enact them - are also expected to be good for companies' bottom lines, as corporate tax cuts are suddenly on the table. Yet the sizeable tariffs Trump has promised to impose on imports are expected to bring a resurgence of inflation. And other tax cuts he is talking about would likely drive budget deficits higher, which could send bond yields soaring. First, however, we have tomorrow's Federal Reserve decision on interest rates. Futures markets are all but certain that the Fed will cut its target rate by another quarter percentage point. That should further stimulate growth, though it too could drive prices higher once again. With dramatically new fiscal policies now possible, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues will have to perform a careful balancing act to keep the economy humming and inflation quiescent. As for Goldman Sachs, its investment strategy team is predicting that the market will produce average returns of just 3% a year over the next decade, as measured by the S&P 500. To put that into perspective, the S&P has produced an average annual return of about 10.3% since its 1957 inception. If you extend the index backward to 1930 (which market analysts often do), the average is even better, around 11%. And it's up 23% this year with two months to go. See the data for yourself... | 
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