A very long time ago, I tagged this blog as ‘forecast free.’ In part, because the whole prediction game is exhausting. Some two weeks ago Spencer Jakab in the WSJ noted the avalanche of coverage of a filing by Michael Burry’s Scion Capital. Jakab writes:

There have been 264 print-media mentions of Burry in the past month alone, according to Factiva, spurred by Scion’s latest securities filings.*

Burry is by all accounts one of the star investors of the GFC. However his public predictions since than have been off the mark. The point of this isn’t to pick this record apart. The point is to ignore it altogether. Barry Ritholtz writing at the Big Picture writes:

I always want to tread lightly when trashing someone else’s forecasts — it’s not that I am on the other side of the trade, or disagree with any single position, or this or that prediction. It’s the entire idea that you as an investor should care about anyone else’s forecasts.

It pays to remember that people in the media are always talking their book. Whether it be to influence the price of a security, or simply to keep their name in the limelight. With so much better content out there, you can safely ignore the forecasting media frenzy. You will feel all the better for it.

---

*There have likely been more since then.