In January 2015, I wrote about the 2015 Sector Predictions made by the highest profile investment strategists on Wall Street. Here is a chart of their collective predictions as published in Barron’s on December 15, 2015. (A ‘+’ is a pick and a ‘-’ a pan. For 2015, they predicted information technology (+8) would be the top performer and utilities (-7) the worst).
Now let’s see how these strategists did collectively with their 2015 predictions.
The chart below shows the actual sector performance for 2015 (the red bars) along with what the strategists predicted collectively.
The experts again missed more of their sector picks than they got right!
Of the sectors they liked, they were only right on technology (+8). Energy (+2) was a total disaster and both financials (+6) and industrials (+3) trailed the S&P 500.
Of the sectors they didn’t like, consumer discretionary (0), healthcare (-1) and consumer staples (-3) were top-performers.
Since Barron’s began surveying these high profile strategists in 2007, there continues to be no solid evidence that any single strategist or collective can consistently make winning sector calls.
I maintain my assertion that if reputable fund companies and investment managers kept track of their annual predictions and shared them publicly, they would lose credibility and a lot of customers.
In the near future, I will review forecast various economist and strategists made about interests and other interesting things so we can see how well they’ve done.
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