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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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I like this kind of show or if you prefer, this kind of weather forecast - when you have a storm today, it's far easier to predict the rain than sunshine for tomorrow. Or vice versa, during the summer hot it's a piece of cake to sell the news about the global warming. I remember that till the end of 1999 when the stock markets in America and Europe were "bullish", many economists predicted that the market would remain in the same good shape in 2000. When the sun is shining it was easy to sell good news. When the stocks plunged in March 2000 the economists' mood suddenly changed. "Bulls" in a night turned to be "bears", the optimism gave a way to the pessimism. It's a general rule that most economists and experts around the world predict continuation of the trends that already exist. Only few dare to contradict the general opinion.

What we have today as news to be sold to the public on the real estate market in Canada? Good news? Bad news? It depends. In January when the housing starts in Canada went sharply up, most experts began to speak about the record levels, bright prospective etc. In February the tide changed from sharply up to a sharply down (12.3% from 205,100 to 179,800 seasonally adjusted housing starts) and these experts began to speak about the slowdown of the housing activity. We have all reasons to believe that if March turns to be "bullish" these experts again will begin to speak about record activity etc. In reality in March the weather was cold with many days of snowstorms, in other words we had "ideal" conditions for construction activity.

We began with weather and it seems that nobody is taking into account the simple fact that in January the temperatures in the major urban centers of Canada were much higher than it should be in this month of the year. Some say that this was the warmer January for the last 30 years. Coupled with the low interest rates this at least partly explains the unusually active period on the construction front. February instead turned to be cold, not a real Canadian winter but nevertheless, the temperatures were below the point of freezing for the most of the period. So the activity went down too, following the cycle of nature.

One more curious thing about the experts' forecasts is that they always try to extrapolate the present trends to the future and to present the facts in such a way that today data is only a part of general trends whenever the course is up or down. It's always easier to present the economic activity as a succession of long periods, like a marathon instead of sprints and rests. You have to look for major factors instead of pointing out the minor causes, which in turn can influence the general picture.

So don't look too seriously at the far-reaching forecasts. They just paint the picture as the experts want to see it, not the way it should be in reality. There are so many factors that can influence the market one year from now, not to mention the political events (remember 9/11). So don't be surprised if today "bears" turn to be "bulls" again tomorrow or vice versa.

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