From Albert Edwards, in his latest Global Strategy note - the first since he and James Montier at SocGen were again voted top global strategy team in the 2008 Thomson Extel awards:
Two clear behavioural biases in this industry mean that 99% of the forecasts produced by sell-side economists, strategists and analysts are totally and utterly useless. First, a human desire to be liked reinforces a deep industry bias towards bullishness. Recession (for example) is seldom forecast. A deep recession is unthinkable. Second, forecasts typically revert to some mean, or seldom stray too far from the current spot rate. What a waste of time. We see a y-shaped global recession. We are going down before looping backwards.
More on this at FT Alphaville later on Thursday…
