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Astrology: Individual Financial Fate Easier to Predict Than Stock Market

An individual consistently predicting the precise timing of ups and downs of various financial markets could undoubtedly become the richest person on the planet.

Thus far, nobody has managed to regularly identify the exact timing of the financial markets’ peaks and valleys.

Fantastic claims abound on Wall Street, but “The history of financial forecasts is long. and it is pathetic. Twenty-two chief market strategists at major banks predict the S&P 500’s annual performance at the start of every year. The average difference between their forecast and what the market actually does is 14.7 percentage points per year. If, instead, you blindly assume the S&P 500 goes up by its historic average every year, the error is lower – 14.1 percentage points. The history of predicting recessions and interest rates and economic growth is just as bad.”

An aside, The Hulbert Financial Digest is a gold mine of information to check financial professionals’ 10, 15, and 20-year (and more) documented track records.

In 2010 I published this blog post regarding a financial market crash.

It appears I’ve missed the mark on that prediction, since the traditional markets have not crashed as of today, 11-28-2018. I did say “…as late as 2018,” but in about a month that window will be closed. Perhaps I got the general idea correct, but my timing is early.

As for seeing in the astrology and numerology charts of scores of individuals’ collective timing suggesting financial loss during that 2016—2018 period, it may, in part, relate to crypto-currency speculation.

An August 20, 2018 Motley Fool article illustrates the crypto-currency financial collapse: “…this year has turned virtual currencies on their heads. Following a continuation of the rally during the first week of January that took the aggregate market cap to as high as $835 billion, digital currencies have since lost more than three-quarters of their value.” That’s more than a 75% decrease and $600 billon in losses.

“Following the explosion in cryptocurrency popularity during 2017, almost 1,000 different cryptocurrencies have already died so far in 2018. In fact, some financial experts see only a couple dozen digital tokens surviving the coming changes to the market in the coming years.”

There have always been and will always be boom and bust cycles. People tend to forget about past downturns, almost everyone gets on board for the good-time boom, and then the bubble bursts.

My findings show that individual fate is much easier to predict than collective, universal fate, such as the overall direction of the stock market.

Case in point: in August 2014 I said this about super-star billionaire hedge fund manager, Edward Lampert.

“I recall reading about hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, featured in Forbes magazine several years    ago. I was impressed with his successful track record; his fund was worth more than $15 billion in 2006.

“As I always do with interesting people, I looked into his charts back then. The collection of disturbing, long-term time cycles in his not-too-distant future made me think at that time, ‘Those patterns don’t in any way equate to the type of success he’s enjoying right now.’

“Since 2006, Eddie Lampert’s $15 billion fund has declined in value more than 60%. Although it’s unfortunate, his fall from grace was foreseeable, from my perspective. Considering he remains a self-made billionaire, perhaps ‘fall from grace’ isn’t an appropriate description of his plight.

 “In 2006, people were calling him the next Warren Buffet, but no longer. Eddie Lampert will probably maintain his billionaire status, but his collective timing tells me his 2006 peak won’t be revisited, at least where he ranked relative to his peers in the industry and those on the Forbes 400 list of the worlds wealthiest people.”

An October 2018 New York Times article said this about Mr. Lampert: “With the bankruptcy this week of Sears Holdings, which he has run as chief executive and chairman since 2013, Mr. Lampert, now 56, was back on the nation’s front pages. The coverage has been as damning as it was once fawning.

“Thanks to his early successes, Mr. Lampert is still very, very rich; his fortune today is estimated at $1.1 billion, according to the latest Forbes survey…he no longer makes the cut for Forbes’s 400 richest Americans. His net worth has plunged by $3 billion since peaking at $4.5 billion in 2007…”

I’m happy for Edward Lampart that he is still a billionaire, and I dislike highlighting people’s troubles, but it was necessary in this case to illustrate my view that it’s much easier to predict individual financial fate than financial market ups and downs.

Copyright © 2018 Scott Petullo

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