The Futility of Forecasting

I just finished reading this week's issue of Barron's. The cover article for this week was a midyear roundtable where Barron's interviewed 11 different market experts to get their forecast for the rest of the year.

I have alot of respect for these people and admire their work. As I was reading the article I quickly realized how many different views and opinions there are regarding the economy and investment opportunities. There is not a shortage of forecasts and predictions today. The problem is they are all different. If you pay attention to the financial media today you will see and hear opinions all across the spectrum ranging from doom-and-gloom pessimism to unbridled optimism. You will find many very intelligent people with many very different forecasts.

So who do you believe? Answer: No one. Instead, you study the market itself. To be successful, you must ignore the noise and focus on the big picture. It is easy to get distracted and overwhelmed with the amount of information and wide range of predictions today. It takes discipline to stay focused and not get distracted by the irrelevant (but often interesting) information.

So how do you make intelligent investment decisions? You study the markets to uncover the important and relevant information that will help you identify and exploit sustainable investment trends. I am referring to a careful and thorough analysis of price action, highs and lows, advances and declines, price patterns, moving averages, and trend lines.

Bottom Line: Take action based on what the market is saying...but, not based on what the expert of the week is forecasting.

Don't want to do the work yourself? That's fine. My firm can do it for you. Contact us to see how we might be able to help you.