I am not breaking new ground when I say that most people are bad at forecasting financial markets. But just how bad they are has been the focus of an analysis by a group of researchers from Washington University. And their results have significant implications for portfolios.
'The Livingston Survey is the oldest continuous survey of economists' expectations. It summarizes the forecasts of economists from industry, government, banking, and academia.'
Reminds me of Philip Tetlock's 'Superforecasters', in which he showed that smart - but not brilliant - nobodies, who have their ego in check, perform better than the 'experts' (i.e. the talking heads on tv).
For this article/study, the smart nobodies would be the CFO's, who at least read (their own) balance sheets, an activity that for many investment analysts has become quite exotic as they preferred to focus on narrative.
Joachim, have you come across research for predicting longer term forecasts e.g. 10-20 years.
A lot of asset managers use these longer term forecasts for return, vol and correlation but i'm not sure how many actually keep track of how accurate their forecasts are.
In addition, how would you construct a long term portfolio if long term forecasts are inaccurate?
On assumption we are equally bad at predicting fund manager outperformance in advance would you advocate equal weighting equity managers here also?
As a general rule, yes
'The Livingston Survey is the oldest continuous survey of economists' expectations. It summarizes the forecasts of economists from industry, government, banking, and academia.'
https://www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-data/real-time-data-research/livingston-survey
O dear...
Reminds me of Philip Tetlock's 'Superforecasters', in which he showed that smart - but not brilliant - nobodies, who have their ego in check, perform better than the 'experts' (i.e. the talking heads on tv).
For this article/study, the smart nobodies would be the CFO's, who at least read (their own) balance sheets, an activity that for many investment analysts has become quite exotic as they preferred to focus on narrative.
Joachim, have you come across research for predicting longer term forecasts e.g. 10-20 years.
A lot of asset managers use these longer term forecasts for return, vol and correlation but i'm not sure how many actually keep track of how accurate their forecasts are.
In addition, how would you construct a long term portfolio if long term forecasts are inaccurate?