Each day the media focuses on a new prediction. Their audience is continually searching for new predictions. What will happen next? What is the new hot asset class? Where is the best place to put my money?
Everyone wants to have the best investments, only making money and avoiding all losses. This futile exercise will only add anxiety to your life. No one can consistently predict the future.
When someone is right on a prediction it is a matter of luck and not skill or knowledge.
Free markets are unpredictable.
Free markets left to their own devices set prices better than any individual or committee. They incorporate all of the knowable and predictable information in the present, as well as knowable information about the future.
Think of all the changes that have taken place over the last twenty years. Who of you would have acted on the prediction of the cell phone phenomenon, or the driverless car, or artificial intelligence(think Alexa….), or any change to our society.
The free markets drive innovations, they drive change. Unfortunately, most of us are resistant to change. How would you finish…. if it looks too good to be true it probably……… ? But sometimes new things are true. Free markets drive that change, even if it looks too good to be true.
Just because there was a cause and effect in the past does not mean it will repeat in the future.
Only unknowable future news and information can change prices going forward.
Rather than attempting to predict the future use your time and resources to improve your skills, either career or life. Your investments are best allocated by owning equities, globally diversify and rebalance. Follow these three simple rules and you will succeed in reaching your long term goals.
The free markets as a whole will continue to move forward. However no one can consistently predict what will happen next in any particular sector.
In fact, there are sectors that we have never heard of……. yet. But the free markets will find them.