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The rule in this case is that macro forecasts rarely lead to exceptional performance. For me, the exceptionalness of the success stories proves the general truth of that assertion.

For the “I don’t know” school, on the other hand, the word – especially when dealing with the macro-future – is “guarded.”  Its adherents generally believe you can’t know the future; you don’t have to know the future; and the proper goal is to do the best possible job of investing in the absence of that knowledge.

“It’s frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what’s going on.” -Amos Tversky

It’s hard to factor in a large number of considerations and especially to understand how a large number of things will interact (correlation is always the real stumper).

The bottom line for me is that forecasts can’t be right often enough to be worthwhile.