Peter Lynch - Making macro predictions is hard

 

“There are 60,000 economists in the US, many of them employed full-time trying to forecast recessions and interest rates and if they could do it successfully twice in a row, they’d all be millionaires by now. As far as I know most of them are still gainfully employed which ought to tell us something” --- Peter Lynch

Let's say it less elegantly, it is hard to make money using macro forecasts. Whether large econometric models, discretionary approaches, rules of thumb, aggregating forecasts, or use some form a market extrapolation, it is hard to make a forecast of a recession and then determine what investments to buy. The recession forecasts have been pushed into 2024 but that does not explain the strong performance of 2023 through the last eight months. 

We move between good news is bad news to bad news is good news environments which creates huge market uncertainty. We need to follow the trends in the macro environment but need to be care with any forecasts.