Kevin Duffy on macro forecasting

We should be grateful the Buffett faithful reject macro forecasting.  This is just one of many tools in our toolbox.  Like all tools in the investing game, it works best when others fail to see its worth.

~ Kevin Duffy, "In Defense of Macro Forecasting," The Coffee Can Portfolio, September 18, 2022

Ron Baron on the futility of macro predictions

Every time everyone tries to predict macro they're almost always wrong...  It's easy to get out of inflation, it's impossible to get out of deflation.  So we never predict anything about the economy or about the stock market.

~ Ron Baron, CNBC interview, 0:20 mark, August 25, 2022

What Laszlo Birinyi worries about (aka, nothing)

What I worry about is what the market worries about. Right now the market, if you look at the breadth, if you look at the volume you saw the last couple of weeks, you look at these things, the market doesn't seem to be terribly concerned.

I've always argued, and you've heard me say this many times [Maria Bartiromo], that the negative case is always more articulate, it's always more intelligent, it's always more compelling because it looks at the now. The market, meanwhile, looks ahead. So, we don't know what the market is looking for and I could come up with all kinds of potential disasters but looking at the market, the market doesn't seem to be saying anything is going to happen.

~Laszlo Birinyi, president, Birinyi Associates, CNBC, July 6, 2011

Tim Geithner on our proximity to another big financial crisis

It will come again. There will be another storm. But it's not going to come for a while.

It's not going to be possible for people to capture risk with perfect foresight and knowledge.

~Tim Geithner, US Treasury Secretary, in a speech given at the Time Warner Center screening of the new film, "Too Big To Fail", May 18, 2011

Bill Miller on the Fed's ability to avoid hyperinflation II

Well you never know [if you're headed for a big, surprise shock], the markets, everything is uncertain. But, you have history to go on, you have theory to go on, you have enormous slack in the economy, what you've got, you know, is the unemployment rate is still 8.8%, you're a long way away from wages, which are 70% of corporate costs. You'd certainly need to be closer to capacity utilization in the 80s instead of in the 70s [percent] where we are right now, you'd need unemployment down probably 5-6 [percent] before you're going to have any type of a cost-push in things.

~Bill Miller, chairman and CIO, Legg Mason Capital Management, CNBC's Squawk Box, April 6, 2011

Kevin Duffy on legendary investor John Templeton and the futility of macro forecasting

I encourage everyone to read anything by John Templeton, whose track record spans over half a century. Templeton was the eternal optimist, but also had great contrarian instincts. For example, he pulled the plug on Japan in the late 1980s (early) after being a long-time bull. He bought after the Asian crisis of the late 1990s. He actually shorted tech stocks in 2000. Etc., etc.

As an investor, you have to have multiple arrows in the quiver and know which one(s) to pull out. “The futility of timing,” “the futility of macro forecasting,” and “don’t fight the Fed” are all rationales currently held in wide esteem. And there is still far too much optimism, despite what appears to be the onset of a serious deleveraging. People who dismiss macro forecasting – like Warren Buffett – are currently rock stars… perhaps a sign that we should be using this arrow right now.

~ Kevin Duffy, Bearing Asset Management, May 23, 2008