Thursday, January 19, 2017

Often Wrong but Never in Doubt

Two Wall Street Journals in one: from last Friday's web page, the Trump rally has peaked vs. the Trump rally continues. (Clicking through shows that the optimistic projection is actually from Marketwatch.)

Despite millions (billions?) of dollars spent on computer models and hiring the best mathematics PhD's from CalTech and MIT, the investment banks, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and Economics departments still can't tell us where the financial markets are going today, tomorrow, or next year.

Maybe they should think outside the box and hire climate scientists, who can tell us with unfailing accuracy when the polar ice caps will melt and what the global temperatures will be in a hundred years (about tomorrow they're not so sure). And they can do this with only a fraction of the funds allocated to financial software.

Spend $millions and get a lot of I'm-not-sures or run an Excel spreadsheet that tells you where mankind is going? Your choice.

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