Unfortunately, the North Korean situation continues to distort the markets.

The BBC reported that North Korea says a plan that could see it fire four missiles near the US territory of Guam will be ready in a matter of days. State media said Hwasong-12 rockets would pass over Japan and land in the sea about 17 miles (30km) from Guam, if the plan was approved by Kim Jong-un. It denounced Donald Trump's warnings of “fire and fury” and said the US leader was “bereft of reason.

The U.S. has warned the North its actions could mean the “end of its regime.”

As an investor and taking into account all what has been “said” so far, I would prefer to become, to say it mildly, seriously cautious about the situation.

Anyway, world stocks/equities overnight fell for a third day in a row and investors moved again into the Swiss franc, Japanese yen, U.S. dollars and gold, albeit not in a dramatic way.

Now, on a completely other subject, Kenneth Rogoff who is an American economist and, yes, chess Grandmaster, and is also the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University just told the BBC that a sudden rise in interest rates poses the greatest threat to the global economy.

Besides all that food for thought, a couple of days ago a new Goldman Sachs report, published a new economic research paper titled “The Lags of Monetary Policy: Waiting for Godot” wherein the Goldman economists Jan Hatzius and Sven Jari Stehn gave us as investors their “really interesting” Global Economic Forecasts,.

Their conclusions read: “One key practical implication is that we should not expect the lagged effect of a higher funds rate to restrain U.S. growth, unless the Fed brings about a meaningful tightening of financial conditions.

So far, there is no sign of this; in fact, the recent easing in our FCI (Financial Conditions Index) to the most expansionary level since 2014 should translate into a continued positive growth impulse, if maintained.

Conversely, the recent tightening in financial conditions in the Euro area, which many investors don’t seem to care about, suggests that ECB policy is somewhat less supportive for growth than implied by its very low policy rate.”

Anyway, all this becomes interesting, as these top economists of Goldman Sachs Research say they expect real GDP for the U.S. to grow by 2.1 percent this year, by 2.2 percent in 2018 and by 1.7 percent in 2019 while for the Euro area they expect real GDP to grow by 1.9 percent this year, and by 1.4 percent in 2018 and 2019.

They also expect core CPI inflation for the U.S. (core PCE that matters to the Fed) to be at 1.5 percent in 2017, at 1.8 percent in 2018 and at 2.1 percent in 2019 while for the Euro area they expect core CPI inflation to be at 1.0 percent in 2017, at 1.1 percent in 2018 and at 1.3 percent in 2019.

They expect policy rates for the U.S. to be at 1.4 percent in 2017, at 2.4 percent in 2018 and at 3.4 percent in 2019 while for the Euro area they expect policy rates to remain at 0.0 percent in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Of course, nothing is written stone, but as an investor it could be not such a bad idea to keep these projections in mind as some kind of a background when long-term investment decisions have to be taken, which doesn’t apply, of course, for short-term trading operations.

Etienne "Hans" Parisis is a bank economist who has advised investors on financial markets and international investments.