Archives of “Statistical forecasting” tag

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Coronavirus fears unlikely to turn the Fed into doves

  
Analysis, Economy
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The view from TD is that forecasting the extent of coronavirus contagion to the global economy or ‘risk’ is difficult.

But:
  • “we don’t expect the Fed to go more dovish simply because the market has become more nervous”
  • yield on the 10 yr is significantly lower since the start of the year
  •  “We don’t think the Fed is going to be a catalyst for a continued move lower in Treasury yields” 
However, the Fed will keep an eye on developments re the virus, on market sentiment and potential cascade for risk-off.
They’ll also keep an eye on what this guy wants, right?
The view from TD is that forecasting the extent of coronavirus contagion to the global economy or 'risk' is difficult.

OECD sees global economy slipping towards weakest growth in a decade

  
Analysis, Economy
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OECD cuts forecasts to the global economy, warns of entrenched uncertainty

Global
  • 2019 global GDP growth at 2.9% (previously 3.2%)
  • 2020 global GDP growth at 3.0% (previously 3.4%)
  • 2019 US GDP growth at 2.4% (previously 2.8%)
  • 2020 US GDP growth at 2.0% (previously 2.3%)
  • 2019 China GDP growth at 6.1% (previously 6.2%)
  • 2020 China GDP growth at 5.7% (previously 6.0%)
  • 2019 Eurozone GDP growth at 1.1% (previously 1.2%)
  • 2020 Eurozone GDP growth at 1.0% (previously 1.4%)
  • 2019 Japan GDP growth at 1.0% (previously 0.7%)
  • 2020 Japan GDP growth at 0.6% (unchanged)
  • 2019 UK GDP growth at 1.0% (previously 1.2%)
  • 2020 UK GDP growth at 0.9% (previously 1.0%)
Those are quite the amount of downgrades relative to its May forecast.
OECD says that trade tensions are the main cause for a more fragile and uncertain outlook to the global economy. Noting that intensifying trade conflicts and governments not doing enough to prevent damage will hurt global growth momentum going into next year.
The 2.9% forecast for global growth this year is the weakest projection since the financial crisis, almost a decade ago.
OECD

Timeless Trend Trading Wisdom

  
  Education
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In the 1954 work ‘New Blueprints for Gains in Stocks and Grains’ William Dunnigan stated:

“We think that “forecasting” should be thought of in the light of measuring the direction of today’s trend and then turning to the Law of Inertia (momentum) for assurance that probabilities favor the continuation of that trend for an unknown period of time into the future. This is trend following, and it does not require us to don the garment of the mystic and look into the crystal balls of the future…Let us believe that it is possible to profit through economic changes by following today’s trend, as it is revealed statistically day-by-day, week-by-week, or month-by-month. In doing this we should entertain no preconceived notions as to whether business is going to boom or bust, or whether the Dow-Jones Industrial Average is going to 500 or 50. We will merely chart our course and steer our ship in the direction of the prevailing wind. When the economic weather changes, we will change our course with it and will not try to forecast the future time or place at which the wind will change.”

Friedman, Fortune Tellers (Book Review )

  
  Education
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I just finished reading Walter A. Friedman’s Fortune Tellers: The Story of America’s First Economic Forecasters (Princeton University Press, 2014), which I highly recommend. Readers will probably be familiar with some of the main characters, but in a depersonalized form—for instance, Babson action/reaction lines and Moody’s Investors Service. Other characters, such as Herbert Hoover and Irving Fisher, are rescued from the one-sided simplifications of history—failed president during the Great Depression, false prophet who claimed just prior to the 1929 crash that the stock market had reached “a permanently high plateau.”

Friedman accomplishes two main tasks in this book. First, he brings his characters to life, recounting their personal, intellectual, and entrepreneurial successes and travails, their pet social and political ideas (more…)

Fascinating Insights From Nobel Prize-Winner Robert Shiller

  
Analysis, Education
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On why so many experts missed the 2008 financial crisis: “Experts have always missed big events like this. If you look at the record of statistical forecasting models, they tend to get to the recession when it’s starting to come. A casual observer might start to worry about it. Forecasting it years out, they don’t get; in particular, if you look at the Great Depression of the 1930s, nobody forecasted that. Zero. Nobody. Now there were, of course, some guys who were saying the stock market is overpriced and it would come down, but if you look at what they said, did that mean a depression is coming? A decade-long depression? That was never said.”

On short-term thinking: “I think that there’s too much faith in analysis of short-term data. You see some pattern, and you can do a statistical test and prove that will prove that it is significant or passes the smell test to a statistician. But the problem is, the world is always changing. It’s not a stable thing. The underlying human parameters may be stable, but you can see that there is institutional and cultural evolution, and it’s not something that you can quantify.”

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