David Woo

David Woo is the Head of Global Interest Rates, Foreign Exchange, Emerging Market Fixed Income & Economics Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he researches the world financial markets. He is considered one of the leading macro investment strategists today – he is a regular guest on CNBC and Bloomberg TV and was voted as one of the twelve smartest people on Wall Street in 2013 by Business Insider. Woo is known for his contrarian calls on the United States elections, 2016, currency wars, the 2015-16 devaluation of the renminbi, Bitcoin, and the future of the Euro.

In September 2016, Woo said "markets were failing to adequately price in the probability of a Trump win" and predicted that "if Trump won, it would bring about a stronger dollar and higher rates thanks to fiscal stimulus".

In February 2015, Woo predicted that the world was heading into a currency war due to "diminished stigma" and the fact that "inaction automatically entails loss". "If everyone's playing this game you have no choice but to play it, because otherwise you get left behind," he said. Woo called currency war a "zero sum game".

As early as April 2015, Woo argued that the renminbi was set to fall because "China cannot allow for looser capital flows while maintaining its monetary policy targets, which include limiting the yuan's moves against the US dollar. After the August 2015 renminbi devaluation, Woo predicted the renminbi could decline further by as much as 10% against the dollar in 2016. Woo also argued that this would have global repercussions, including a "shallower Fed cycle."

In June 2015, Woo called the Chinese equity rally the "world’s largest bubble since dot-com boom of the late 1990s" and predicted that Chinese shares "may drop as much as 30%", and creating a "knock-on effect on the whole world economy."

In December 2013, Woo argued that Bitcoin "can become a major means of payment for e-commerce and may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers", an opinion that Joe Weisenthal said "represents a top-fligh kappat mind at a major financial institution assessing it in a serious way, and coming to the conclusion that it could be the real deal." However, Woo put the upper bound of Bitcoin’s fair value at $1300, stating that "Bitcoin is highly volatile, the result of speculation activities, and that's hindering its general acceptance as a form of payment."

In July 2012, in a cost-benefit analysis of whether individual members of the Eurozone should stay with the euro, David Woo and Athanasios Vamvakidis argued that “Italy and Ireland emerge as the countries with the greatest incentive to exit.” They concluded that a much weaker euro was necessary to reduce the incentive of any country to exit.

In March 2013, Woo argued that "rising U.S. crude oil and natural gas production will likely lift the American greenback against major currencies" by shrinking the US current account deficit, boosting investment and reducing the correlation between the dollar and oil prices.