It’s Difficult to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future
First week back and it seems everyone is saturating the news, Twitter/X and their newsletters with 2024 outlooks and predictons together with admissions that nearly everyone got 2023 very wrong.
The key thoughts for me are:
- Absolutely NO-ONE, no matter what their knowledge and experience can really predict with any degree of accuracy what’s going to happen over the year ahead.
- Even if they could there’s an even lower probability that anyone is able to predict what the impact of these events might end up being.
- What’s really useful in reading and analysing these predictions is the thinking behind them and factors that people are considering. Nearly always there’s something you hadn’t considered or hadn’t weighted highly enough.
- Be prepared for the unexpected and try and embrace the inherent uncertainty of the world we live in.
The last three years are surely a reminder that absolutely anything can happen and that the response to events can end up being way beyond what reasoned, thoughtful people could imagine.
Anything is possible, and the unexpected is inevitable. Proceed accordingly. – Jason Zweig
Nasdaq
Return for the last two years of the Nasdaq = 0.26% (02/01/2022 to 02/01/2024)
Down 35%
Up 55%
