Hong Kong feng shui master Raymond Lo predicted that, this year, the general economic atmosphere is entering a bearish cycle and the pace of growth will slow down significantly.

This is because the Rat year signifies the Fire in the embryo stage, after the Pig year which represented the termination of Fire, he said. His forecast also took into consideration that 2019, 2020 and 2021 all belong to the Water cycle, and that the Fire element will not return until the Year of the Snake in 2025.