1/6/15

Libelled by Barry Ritholtz (@ritholtz)?


Market Forecasts to Ignore in 2015 by Barry Ritholtz

January 5, 2015 

There have been so many erroneous calls for a stock-market crash that it's hard to choose which deserves special mention. But I am going to give you two that merit attention: The first comes from Chapman University professor Terry Burnham, who predicted Dow 5,000 before Dow 20,000.


Barry Ritholtz


During the years he [Terry Burnham] has repeated this forecast, the market has gained about 40 percent. Read Barry Ritholtz's full article:

My Response: 

Mr. Ritholtz's math is either wrong or deceptive. 




I published the Dow 5,000 article after the market closed on July 11, 2013. Read my Dow 5000 full article:

The historical levels of the Dow can be found in many places. Perhaps the easiest is google finance. Click on the "Dow Jones" below the graph, the select 'historical prices' on the upper left. 

Value of the Dow when I made the Dow 5,000 prediction (close on July 11, 2013): 15,460
Value of the Dow when Barry Ritzhold wrote his article (close on January 2, 2015): 17,833

% change in Dow since I made my Dow 5,000 prediction [Current level - old level)/ old level]

= (17,833 - 15,460)/15,460 = 15.4%

So the Dow had risen 15.4% between my prediction and Mr. Ritholz's article (before yesterday's 331 point decline). 

Barry Ritholtz writes, "During the years he has repeated this forecast, the market has gained about 40 percent.

Is this libel to write 40 percent when the actual figure is 15.4%? I don't think so because Mr. Ritholtz's statement is technically true in that the cumulative return over 2013 and 2014 is about 40%. It is also true that, "During the century he [Terry Burnham] has repeated this forecast the market has gained about 40 million percent."  

I want to point out two positives about Mr. Ritholtz's article. First, he spelled my name correctly. 


Spelled Correctly "Terry Burnham"
Second, Mr Ritholtz does point out that my prediction is neither wrong nor right because it is specifically formulated as Dow 5,000 before Dow 20,000. At Dow 20,000 I will not make any excuses. I will be wrong. Conversely, if I am right, I will be sorry that we live in a world with so many macroeconomic policy mistakes. 

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Postscript. The Dow did exceed 20,000 in January 2017. Here are my excuses:  Dow 20,000 post

Here are a few other related posts. I have been bullish on US stocks for a year and a half. 

Chicken Little Buys US Stocks (July 2016)

Chicken Little Predicts the Trump Rally (November 9, 2016)

The Raging Chicken Little Bull (January 2017).








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