How valuable are stock market predictions?
Part, if not all, fun and excitement of the stock market is the art of predicting how stocks will turn out tomorrow, next week, next year, ten years from now. Fifty. It is an inexact science and has few if any rules that work 100 percent. Why? The answer is simple, it is tied in with the gambling streak in all of us. Those who go further with their predictions and actually put their money down on speculations are gamblers big time. They know this, but they believe with all their hearts, they know best. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t.
The stock market gamblers who strike it rich from time to time do have a few tricks up their sleeves that at least 75 percent of the time, work for them. How do they do it? They learn from the professionals who have good track records and they never, no not ever, believe that they know best. They rely on the tried and true, and they gamble with money they can afford to lose. If at the end of the year they come out ahead and if their gambling purse, money stashed away for the sole purpose of investing and playing money games, Wall Street style, is fuller than it started out to be, they have won, although they have lost a few dollars too.
Who are the professionals they learn from, and what do their mentors say about stock market predicting? Mentors, where following the stock market is concerned, are those companies who have good records and who are well respected members of the investment predictors club. (It is important to note here that they have no connection with the genuine liars clubs. Those are more literary in content and they do not deal in tangible assets such as stocks, bonds, and money market funds.)
The *Market Forecast* is one site that deals with this type of forecasting for future favors from the stock market. They claim they are out to “dehorn the bull and declaw the bear” and make those who buy into what they are selling, more knowledgeable about how to gamble wisely. Whether or not they are on the right track, investors who want to learn how to analyze the market and make their own predictions, would do well to give them half an hour of so of their online reading time.
Fool. com, home of the Motley Fools who have been making hilarious predictions and statements concerning the ways and means of getting rich, or at least making a little spending cash and having a rip-roaring time while doing it, are not to be discounted. Even though their style of alerting the public about Wall Street trends, the best places to put that extra cash where it most likely will at least double, if not quadruple, has been around for several years, they do believe they are on to something big. Others must also believe, else why would the funny guys who make their livelihood out of making fun out of the prestigious market protocols, be so successful?
What exactly do they say about the art of predicting? In particular, much. Mark Koppenheffer, in an article Beware of These Five Dangerous Stocks, does not hedge. In this article – it can be read from their web page – he does not just make statements, he backs them up. He names companies, and in doing so, gives reasons for his assumptions. In this way, predictions that an honest soul can make about how to gauge future trends in the market, will evolve through self education. These educated guesses, even when told by fools, often make good sense, as well as cents. And yes, they smell good too.