After 2020 was lost to COVID-19 and 2021 merely scratched the surface of recovery, 2022 held great promise as travel restrictions were slowly lifted and mask mandates ceased almost entirely. The expectations for the year were simple: stability and revival. Hopes were high for a more predictable world, but ended up coming to pass as we face another year of disruption and uncertainty.
Between the Russian-Ukrainian war, supply chain disruptions, record-breaking inflation, and extreme market volatility, dreams of normalcy quickly vanished into thin air. People, companies, and governments yet again scrambled to make sense of it all, understand the full impact of unstable global markets, and make decisions despite uncertainties everywhere.
As we move into 2023, market volatility is only expected to worsen. To combat this unpredictability, our State of Market Intelligence benchmark report found that 98% of respondents resort to using consumer-grade tools to make decisions. The ability to swiftly pinpoint trends and effectively analyze them is a core function of market intelligence efforts on all corporate levels, from strategy, to business development, to IR, all the way to consulting.
Ultimately, companies need a way to stay smarter, more agile, and continuously informed about their industries and the business world at large. AlphaSense proves to be just that – an award-winning research platform that allows users to gain a unique perspective and help them respond better to new information impacting their businesses, markets, and lives.
Below, we used our platform to comb through thousands of corporate call transcripts, interviews from our expert call library, research documents, and more (all located within our vast content universe) to identify the top 10 key trends to keep an eye on for 2023.
10 Trends to Watch in 2023
Climbing Interest Rates
Interest rates are just the price of money, and money got more expensive in 2022. Central banks around the world engaged in aggressive rate hikes during the year, as chronicled by the International Monetary Fund. Though the effect of the hikes as a policy transmission mechanism varies substantially, the prevalence of floating-rate borrowing varies significantly from country to country.
“High inflation, rising interest rates and a slowing economy, combined with ongoing geopolitical turmoil, have created an extremely difficult environment for investors to navigate.”
– Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone Inc., Chairman, CEO and Co-founder, October 2022 Earnings Call
“The metaverse certainly isn’t an application that’s really blown up yet. That as a theory and as a platform for opportunity for all sorts of things, whether that’s gaming or another thing, I think is undeniable. At the moment there just isn’t that application that means that people are jumping into that environment. Personally, I think it’s still quite early and people should be cautious on the metaverse.”
– Activision, Former Commercial Director, UK and Ireland, November 2022