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Business Week Forecasts

Well, the new Business Week is out. Its the special year in preview forecast edition. I am participating in it again this year.

You may be wondering why someone who believes that "Forecast is Folly" and has exhorted you to "Be Neither a Bull nor a Bear" ended up as the outlier -- I was low man on the totem pole in terms of both US Equity expectations and recommended U.S. Equity exposure -- in the survey of 75 strategists, economists and analysts.

I plan on addressing this extensively in the New Year. If you are a regular reader of this site, you should be well aware of what my concerns are. I will lay out the full Bear case (in painful details) the first week of the year, along with the corresponding counter arguments. From these you may draw your own conclusions.

Meanwhile, here's something for my fellow data freaks out there. I massaged all of the market call data (ever so painfully) into an Excel Spreadsheet -- BusinessWeek 2006 Forecasts.xls.

I'd love to see what y'all can do generating studies and charts from the data. As an example, have a look at what Tim Iacono of TheMessThatGreenspanMade pulled together from it. I'll take the most informative and intriguing charts and post them in this space after the holidays.

One emailer asked me "how much confidence do I have" in my market call. Given the philosophical expectations I approach all trading postions with -- a specific attitude that I Expect to Be Wrong -- my answer may not surprise you: Not very much.

However, I do have more confidence in my own call (with all expectations that I may be wrong) then that of the very Bullish herd.

Sources:
The BusinessWeek Market Survey: Where to Invest
December 26, 2005
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_52/b3965416.htm

The BusinessWeek Market Survey (PDF)
Businessweek market survey 2006.pdf

2006 INVESTMENT OUTLOOK
Downloadable Spreadsheet
BusinessWeek 2006.xls

The Folly of Forecasting
RealMoney.com Contributor
6/7/2005 1:05 PM EDT
http://www.thestreet.com/_tscana/comment/barryritholtz/10226887.html

Bull or Bear? Neither
RealMoney.com Contributor
4/26/2005 7:20 AM EDT
http://www.thestreet.com/_rms/comment/barryritholtz/10219637.html

Expect to Be Wrong
RealMoney.com Contributor
4/5/2005 7:15 AM EDT
http://www.thestreet.com/comment/barryritholtz/10215965.html

Thursday, December 22, 2005 | 08:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments

That, my friend, is a bold call on your part. Gotta respect that - you'll either look fantastic or be totally wrong - whereas most of the middling crowd will be somewhat right or wrong. But of course, that is why the mutual fund business is what it is...

Someone should do the same for the major hedge funds - if they were willing to talk.

Also interesting: 42% of the people are bullish on technology (no doubt based on the idea that corporate balance sheet are going to cause spending in that area).

Posted by: Damian | Dec 22, 2005 9:56:57 AM