Five years ago, Omar Aguilar never thought he'd see the U.S. as the leader of global economic growth.
"When you think back five years ago, I never thought that the U.S. was going to provide that leadership in terms of global growth – mostly because our demographic," said Aguilar, senior vice president and chief investment officer of equities at Charles Schwab Investment Management. "You always think about emerging markets driving a lot of that, particularly China."
But, that's exactly what he's seeing today and what he expects to continue to see in 2015.
"I think the U.S. economy continues to provide leadership in terms of stability for the rest of the world," he said. "When you look at the rest of the world, Europe and Japan are fighting deflation. They're basically still in the process of how they can provide more stimulus programs so they can support the economy and stabilize their economy."
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the market has adjusted well to the end of bond buying by the Federal Reserve and is currently experiencing a strong dollar, growing job rate and stabilizing economy.
During a conference call Friday morning, Aguilar shared some of the key trends he saw in 2014 and some of the trends he expects for next year.
"We saw already a very poor growth component going into 2014 globally," Aguilar said. "I think emerging markets have been a very disappointing asset class in the last year and a half. I think going into next year, we will be very happy if we can see at least 3% global GDP growth."
Global Decoupling
Earlier this year, as tensions grew in the world with Russia and Ukraine, Aguilar said this concept of "global decoupling" started, in other words a decoupling of the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world.
