It reminded me of an irreverantly funny book I once read entitled "Where Are The Customers' Yachts?" (I forget the name of the author).
Set in the 1920's, if I remember correctly, the book provides all sorts of anecdotes about the follies and the foibles of "investing professionals" (i.e., stockbrokers and investment bankers).
What made it such an amusing read is that those same follies and foibles still exist today, only in magnitfied form brought about by advancements in technology.
The book made the insightful observation that forecasting is, in great part, a waste of time and that making investment decisions on forecasts of "professionals" is no better than buying the market because "one of the clerks, leaning nonchalantly against the wall watching the ticker tape machine, and with a tootpick dangling out the side of his mouth, declaring casually that "it looks like we might have a little rally after lunch"."
Besides acting on the basis of "forecasts", I have always observed with a degree of bemusement that the other overwhelmingly dominant investment motivation among individual investors is HOPE.
The strategy of INVESTING by HOPE is pervasive on HotCopper, but that's a subject for another time, lest I get swamped with all manner of indignant protest.
It never ceases to amaze me that probably 99% of people are trying to "create wealth" by playing the squiggles on a chart via the Greater Fool Theory, i,e, hoping - there's that word again - that someone will take their stock off them at a higher price than at which they bought it.
As you say, investor2009: "Instead of trying to guess the future – or listening to those who are guessing themselves - investors should be concentrating on the things that actually matter in investing - finding great quality businesses, buying them at attractive prices and holding them for the long term..."
And as Warren Buffet says: "The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient"
