2017 Stock Market Forecasts: What Wall Street Won’t Tell You

Investors beware.
Every year in December, Barron’s publishes 2017 stock market forecasts from a group of Wall Street’s most prominent analysts. Every year the mainstream financial media makes a big fuss over them.
This year’s version came out Dec. 17, with a consensus 2017 stock market prediction for a gain of 5.2% in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
But anyone who trusts these stock market predictions enough to base investment decisions on them is almost always disappointed.
You see, despite the polished reputations of these Wall Street stars, their stock market forecasts tend to be off. And not by a little…
Why Wall Street’s 2017 Stock Market Forecasts Are So Dangerous
Statistician Salil Mehta has studied these stock market forecasts for years. And he’s found these supposedly ‘expert’ predictions to be less accurate than random guessing.
Mehta, who once served as director of research and analytics for the U. S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program and for the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, points out that over the past 17 years, the Wall Street experts have predicted a decline just 8% of the time individually. (The consensus forecast has an even worse track record: zero percent.)

This post was published at Examiner on December 22, 2016.