The first thing I do when I wake up is turn on BNN to see how the futures are shaping up. Given how bad the market has been over the the last two weeks, this has been a painful process. Still glassy eyed this morning, I was pleased to see the Dow futures up 250 points. As I went to turn the channel to the weather station, I heard some fund manager say, “I think things are about to get worse and this correction is only half over”. The fund manager, whom I’ll call the “dynamite juggler”, just became another member of the articulate incompetent club. Another so called expert who makes grandiose claims with no substance or rational.
As I arrived at my desk, my first phone call was from a journalist at Reuters. Barry, would you like to participate in our quarterly poll? What do you think the S&P 500 will close at on December 31, 2012? My answer was no and I don’t know. Guess what the market will close at next year? I can’t even guess what I will have for lunch today.
I’m not in the guessing business. I’m in the make your best call using the fundamental tools that you have available to you business. Nobody knows what is going to happen next in the stock market. To make a bold prediction with no accountability is dangerous, especially when you have hundreds of thousands of people listening and acting on your advice. I believe I know what works in investing over the long run, in the short run, it’s anybody’s guess. Saying I don’t know will probably not make for a captivating T.V. spot, but I’d rather be boring then be held captive to some made up prediction.
