Strategists, some of whom are smart, are issuing precise predictions for where the market will be in 12 months and they look authoritative.In fact, many Wall Street strategists are flagrantly inaccurate. They are about as reliable as a weather forecaster who always calls for balmy sunshine in a city where it rains or snows a lot. It is true that they are right about the market’s direction more often than they are wrong.
— The gap between the median forecast and the market return was 4.31 percentage points, an error of almost 45 percent. They show that stocks outperform bonds over extended periods, but that stocks are far more volatile than bonds. Holding both stocks and bonds makes sense because they tend to buffer one another.
Instead, Booth says, forget the forecasts — and, for the purpose of investing, forget about the current news, too. He doesn’t recommend picking individual stocks or bonds.