An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
It is one of the challenges of the scientific approach to investment that we humans tend to examine the world in very short term chunks, hours, days maybe, sometimes as much as a week or so. Investment on the other hand is a slow, long winded activity which rewards those with patience. To quote an old investment adage, it is time in the market that pays, not timing the market. Here, Jim Parker, Vice President at Dimensional Fund Advisers, draws parallels with how we are often better at checking on the weather than we are on seeing how the climate changes over decades, and how like the climate it is the long term change that matters to our future security.
by John Stirling
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.