Does the past predict the future? If you work in the regulated financial industry, you can only answer that question two ways. Your acceptable answers are:
No Not necessarily When I used to write commodity and hedge fund marketing materials, I typed the official phrase, ‘Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results’ so often, I finally gave it a hotkey on my computer.
That’s not to say the past is irrelevant. It can tell us a lot.
If you can identify a pattern in economic cycles or market activity and have enough observations to make your observation statistically significant, it raises your odds of success.
The fact that most people do this badly doesn’t mean it can’t be done at all. Talent exists; it’s just hard to find.
That’s why John Mauldin’s Strategic Investment Conference is such a boon. Last week, he gathered some of the world’s most brilliant investment thinkers in one place and let them speak their minds.
Better yet, he turned the experts loose on each other by grouping them in panels. Those discussions were pure gold. (You can hear them for yourself with the SIC Virtual Pass.)
I heard some things I didn’t especially like, but there is no true bliss in ignorance, no matter what the folk wisdom says. Today, I’ll tell you about one of speakers and what I learned from him.
This post was published at Mauldin Economics on MAY 30, 2017.
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