Sunday, October 23, 2011

Stock Market Predictions, Revisisted

Yep, it's confirmed. They're flipping coins! =)
In my last post, I saw a prediction that the stock market was poised to extend a rally. So I took the opposite view and predicted that they'd be wrong and that stocks were poised to go down. I'll readily admit, I have no idea what the stock market will do from week to week--I just don't believe that the "experts" do either. But even if they flip coins, they're likely to be correct half the time.

So how did my predictions do? The S&P 500 was at 1224.58 when I posted, and today, one week later, has closed at 1238.25. Alas, the "experts" seemed to have been right this week--with an increase of 13.67. But seriously, a 1% wiggle in price isn't really something to get excited about. *shrug*

But... consider this! NASDAQ closed a week ago at 2667.85 and today is at 2637.46, which is down 30.39 points! Considering that in the article, they hung their hats on companies like Apple (the largest influence on NASDAQ), IBM (not part of NASDAQ, but was down for the week anyhow), and Microsoft (one of the largest influences on NASDAQ)--in fact, every one of those tech companies that they picked out by name--were down, I think my belief of doing the opposite of what experts and "everyone" recommend still has merit. ;o)

They might have hit a forest (S&P 500), but they missed another forest (NASDAQ), and they missed all of the trees I checked in the forest that they did hit!