It would, of course, be madness to assume that one day’s trading can enlighten us in any way on the outlook for 2016 as a whole. But the stock market is being plagued by unanswered questions and buffeted by powerful, global trends. Here are five I expect to be following especially closely as the year progresses.

Iran and Saudi Arabia

The increasingly angry dispute pitting Iran against Saudi Arabia has emerged as one of the early Black Swans of 2016: it is the sort of event that could have been predicted but by and large wasn’t. It could turn out to be a major event, or could subside almost as quickly as it flared up. The real danger from this latest bust-up is that it will delay any resolution to the Syrian quagmire.

Company profits

Corporate profits in the West could be at a turning point. For years, they outperformed, feeding into a simplistic narrative that “capital was seizing all the gains of growth” – but 2015 was actually a grim year for corporate America in particular. It may well be that the US and other Western economies are past peak profitability, at least when it comes to this economic cycle.

US Presidential election

The US elections will cast a gloomy shadow over the world economy. Donald Trump, a nasty populist who is no friend of free trade or of genuine, free market capitalism, continues to do dangerously well in the Republican party’s nomination context. At the very least, Trump could cling on for a while longer, rattling investors in the process; or he could win the nomination and help give Hillary Clinton the keys to the White House.

Brexit

The Brexit debate will also spook the markets. Yet while investors, economists and firms are right to be concerned by Trump, too many are acting irrationally when it comes to the EU referendum question. Axel Weber, the chairman of UBS, the Swiss bank, was far more sensible last year when he argued that “the UK would get a very favourable deal with the EU to maintain a large part of market access to the EU” in the event of a Brexit.

Pay in the UK

Wages and salaries will be the key question for the British economy. The Fed finally bit the bullet last year and hiked US interest rates; but the Bank of England may easily decide to do nothing all year. If salaries shoot up, the Bank will hike rates; if pay rises start to look vanishingly small again, it will keep rates on hold.

The mayor suggested women keep “at arm’s length” from strangers, travel in groups, and to ask bystanders for help. “It is important to prevent such incidents from ever happening again,” Reker said, the Independent reported Wednesday. Reker’s comments appear to ignore the fact that victims, often traveling in groups, were systematically targeted by gangs. “I don’t think much of the how-to-behave tips for women such as arm’s length. It is not women who are responsible, but the perpetrators,” German Justice Minister Heiko Mass responded Wednesday on Twitter.

Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, told Breitbart News on Wednesday that “Europe is doomed” because there is “a break between the people and the EU elites.” “People are going to rise up or they’re going to succumb” said Geller, WND’s Woman of the Year. Cologne’s police department has received more than 100 criminal complaints since last Friday. Similar attacks happened in Duesseldorf, Hamburg and Stuttgart, CNN reported Wednesday.

Bild accused German media seven days ago of ignoring stories that make Chancellor Angela Merkel look bad. Merkel ushered in 1.1 million migrants from the Middle East and North Africa in 2015. The aftermath of the New Year’s Eve attacks convinced a reporter for Huffington Post Deutschland that a cover-up was attempted. “The media’s handling of this issue is a slap in the face for every victim,” Anabel Schunke said Monday, WND reported.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Fifth Edition (DSM-5), which the American Psychiatric Association uses for psychiatric diagnosis, defines “oppositional defiant disorder” as a “recurrent pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient, and hostile behavior toward authority figures” which typically begins at a young age but can survive into adulthood.

“Adults with Oppositional Defiant Disorder feel misunderstood and disliked, hemmed in and pushed around,” according to Russell Barkley, PhD. “Some feel like mavericks or rebels.” In other words, an Obama-supporting psychologist could potentially diagnose conservatives and libertarians with “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” due to their criticism of authority, particularly the federal government, and then report them to the FBI as too “mentally unfit” to purchase a gun.

But even scarier, the newest version of the DSM-5 is so broad that almost every form of human behavior could be considered some type of mental illness. In fact, over the past 50 years, the number of mental illnesses defined by sequential editions of the DSM have grown from 130 to over 350.

Rouhani and Xi Jinping are also due to discuss cooperation over international and regional issues. President Rouhani met his Chinese counterpart in New York in September, where the two chief executives discussed commonalities in bilateral relations as well as international and regional issues.

"Tehran and Beijing have consolidated their cooperation at the highest level and can further broaden this trend through their cooperation in a bid to bring more welfare for their nations," the Chinese president said at the New York meeting. President Rouhani, in return, underlined China's important role in the success of the nuclear talks between Tehran and Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members - the US, Britain, France, Russia and China - plus Germany).

"No power can influence the good relations between Tehran and Beijing," he said.

The defiant move to publicize Iran's missile program seemed certain to irk the United States as it plans to dismantle nearly all sanctions on Iran under a breakthrough nuclear agreement. Iran's boasting about its missile capabilities are a challenge for US President Barack Obama's administration as the United States and European Union plan to dismantle nearly all international sanctions against Tehran under the nuclear deal reached in July.

The Iranian missiles under development boast much improved accuracy over the current generation, which experts say is likely to improve their effectiveness with conventional warheads. The Revolutionary Guards' second-in-command, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, said last Friday that Iran's depots and underground facilities are so full that they do not know how to store their new missiles.

Trump has become a symbol of strength for a country that has become afraid to speak the truth under seven years of Obama political correctness. People like Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz scare central planners because they inspire the people to be courageous, motivating ‘We the People’ to roll up our sleeves and be a part of realistic solutions for modern issues.

Trump is riding a wave of frustration fueled by Americans who are tired of the mainstream media, the political correctness and the incessant leftist agenda that seeks to centralize and expand government in every way possible.

One of the billionaire central planners who is afraid of Trump and Cruz is George Soros. George Soros helped fund the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, which ultimately led to violent destruction of property. Soros doesn’t believe in private property. He instigates violence, stirs up chaos and calls on government expansion to solve the problems he funds. He doesn’t believe in a country with borders and laws and has even supported open-borders policies in Europe which has led to a migrant crisis.

Post second world war, America saw the opportunity to transform a war torn continent. It wanted Europe to be complementary to American policy, viewing American federalism as an ideal political model. It wanted to assimilate Europe and implemented various covert operations to undermine staunch resistance to federalist ideas, especially by the British Labour government. The opportunity was a puppet run super-state filled with attendant yes men for trade and the manipulation of strategic global markets and, just as importantly a defensive buffer zone against its new foe – the Reds from Russia and China.

Diplomatic historians have unearthed evidence of US backed covert operations designed to undermine communist influences in Europe. US officials worked on a plan in 1950 to lead to a United States of Europe. It is here we see the emergence of the Bilderberg Group and The Action Committee for a United States of Europe. Winston Churchill was one of the five presidents of the Council of Europe, a disparate organisation urging rapid European unification. Interestingly, these particular documents were not found in the archives in America or Britain, but in Brussels, the de facto capital of the European Union.

The reason the TTIP negotiations are so secretive is that the Americans recommended, as stated previously, “suppressing debate until which point adoption was inescapable”.

The reason for the American initiated and secretive Bilderberg Group, defined as an ultra-select bunch of elite lobbyists made up of politicians, US corporate chiefs, EU officials, captains of industry, heads of intelligence agencies and European royals – is that all major business/finance lobbyists for the TTIP will be under the same roof. It is not hard for the informed to understand what the real agenda is.

What you are witnessing is a corporate coups d’état of Europe by America… as planned.

The combination of division in Europe and dwindling American global leadership has left the transatlantic alliance “weaker, and less relevant, than at any point since the Marshall Plan”, said Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group, the leading risk consultancy.

The shakiness of the US-EU relationship – exemplified by Britain’s decision to rush to embrace China in 2015 while ignoring deep misgivings in Washington – was indicative of how a relationship that provided the cornerstone of global security for the last 75 years was now being dangerously “hollowed out”.

Announcing his closely watched annual risk list on Monday, Mr Bremmer warned that the geopolitical outlook was gloomier and more turbulent than at any time since he began publishing his predictions 15 years ago. He added that Europe - already weakened by ideological divisions over whether the continent should turn inwards or look outwards - would continue to bear the brunt of the blowback from deepening conflagration in the Middle East.

With six failed states across the broader region - Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria, and Yemen – Mr Bremmer said the crisis would only deepen thanks to the “Ban Ki-moonisation” of US foreign policy: that is, full of empty aspirations with few coherent policies to back them up.

The continued rise of Isil, China’s expanding footprint, pressure on Saudi Arabia, political instability in Brazil and Turkey and the rise of “technologists” – both hackers and more politically active corporate entities from Silicon Valley – complete the risk list.

The country’s budget deficit for 2015 ballooned to some 15% of GDP as oil revenue collapsed. For 2016, the deficit is expected to come in at a still elevated 13% of economic output. The red ink has forced the Saudis to tap the SAMA reserve war chest as well the debt market. In a testament to how dire the situation has become, Riyadh also moved to cut subsidies on everything from fuel to electricity to water in order to buy some budget breathing room. The welfare state overhaul was necessary because the Saudis aren’t keen on i) dropping the riyal peg, or ii) rolling back the defense spending.

As if the situation needed to get still more precarious, Riyadh went out and sparked a sectarian showdown over the weekend by executing a prominent Shiite cleric. The Sheikh’s death triggered protests in Iran (among other countries) and before you knew it, the Saudi embassy in Tehran was on fire.

That prompted Riyadh to cut diplomatic ties with the Iranians and comments by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Ahmad Al-Jubeir seem to suggest that the kingdom may be on the verge of taking more steps to intervene militarily in the region in an effort to rollback Iran’s growing influence and stop the Shiite crescent from waxing.

Of course war is costly and is generally accompanied by quite a bit of uncertainty. And if there’s anything the Saudis absolutely do not need right now, it’s more expenses and more geopolitical ambiguity. One has to believe that something is about to snap here.

This was done as the Saudis continue to drop American bombs on Shia in Yemen (boosting Al Qaeda there) and to hire jihadis to help ISIS and Al-Qaeda kill Shia in Syria. It is no mystery why the Saudis are such brothers in arms with the Bin Ladenites, sharing both their hyper-sectarian aims and their gruesome methods. The Wahhabist Saudis and the Salafist terrorists are both “Takfiris”: theocratic, fundamentalist Sunnis who justify sectarian persecution and bloodshed on the grounds that their victims are not true Muslims, but apostates.

Both the Saudis and ISIS regularly behead people for apostasy. The Saudis just do it in white robes and with swords, while ISIS does it in black pajamas and with knives. Saudi Arabia (the older, bigger oil rich extremist theocracy between the two) has been aptly characterized as “An ISIS That Has Made It.” The Saudis are so sensitive about this obvious comparison, they threaten to sue anyone who makes it.

The severing of diplomacy is often a prelude to full war. If a direct war between the Saudis and Iran were to break out, the blood-drenched chaos now afflicting the Middle East would widen even further. It would also pull each country’s allies even deeper into conflict, possibly leading to full-on direct war between Israel and Hezbollah, Turkey and Syria, even NATO and Russia. We in America must demand that our government stop sending terror toys to Takfiris before the Saudis and their fellow travelers in ISIS and Al Qaeda precipitate a world war in which we could all lose our heads.