09/30/2026
If a market pundit really knew what was about to happen next, why on earth would they be telling you about it?
Remember Back to the Future Part II? When Biff gets his hands on the sports almanac from the future, he doesn't go on cable news to share his predictions. He uses the almanac to bet on every game and becomes obscenely wealthy.
That's what someone with genuine foresight actually does. They trade on the information rather than broadcasting it to people like us watching cable news.
TV pundits, by contrast, have every incentive to sound like they know something — whether they do or don't. They're paid for audience attention capture and confidence rather than accuracy.
When they're wrong, which is most of the time, they suffer no consequence beyond coming back the following week with a new prediction as they seek further audience capture.
If you think that TV pundits have foresight, Philip Tetlock, who wrote the book Superforecasting, said their prediction quality is roughly equivalent to "dart-throwing chimpanzees."
Thus, what looks like educated analysis on TV (which I don't doubt is educated) is really just guessing designed for entertainment.
Once you realize what the end product is, you might allow yourself to watch purely for entertainment purposes rather than a search for insight.
