Trying to Predict the Market's Next Big Move
Trying to Predict the Market's Next Big Move
What Opening a Time Capsule From the Internet Bubble Shows Us
The impact of stock market predictions was different 50 years ago...
I've told this story before, but just one more time: As a young reporter at the now-defunct Boca Raton News, I was sent out to the Boca Raton Hotel and Club to cover the keynote speech at a convention by the late Pierre Rinfret. He was an economist who had been advisors to presidents, so he had cachet.
This was in 1974, and Rinfret's message was as clear as mud, but a big headline in those days: "The U.S. has a 50% chance of a depression worse than the 1920s."
I knew the lede of my story when I heard it!
Back then, before social media, careers were made by being quoted on making the right market call...
All it took was one good prediction, and everything else was forgotten.
Spencer Jakab, editor of the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street, had a great piece about this last week. His focus was Michael Burry of The Big Short fame, whose subsequent predictions have snared headlines, but went on to be wrong.