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New Memo from Howard Marks: The Illusion of Knowledge

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Jacob Wolinsky
Published on
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I’ve been expressing my disregard for forecasts for almost as long as I’ve been writing my memos, starting with The Value of Predictions, or Where’d All This Rain Come From in February 1993. Over the years since then, I’ve explained at length why I’m not interested in forecasts – a few of my favorite quotes echoing my disdain head the sections below – but I’ve never devoted a memo to explaining why making helpful macro forecasts is so difficult. So here it is.

Food for Thought

There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.

– John Kenneth Galbraith

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Jacob Wolinsky is the ex-Founder of Valuewalk.com (founded 2011, sold 2023). He is founder of HedgeFundAlpha (formerly ValueWalk Premium), a hedge fund focused intelligence service for institutional investors. Prior to founding Valuewalk, Jacob covered small caps, worked recruiting members for a large hedge fund community and freelance financial journalism. Jacob lives with his wife and five kids in Passaic Park NJ. - Email: jacob(at)hedgefundalpha.com. For confidential inquires email me for my Signal ID. Other methods of secure communication are also available. FD: Most of my portfolio is in I mostly purchase broad-based ETFs, mutual funds or individual bonds - I do this for performance reasons and to avoid any potential conflict of interest or occasional receipt of insider information. I will disclose if I have a stake in any company, but in general I have few stocks and I avoid any trading especially around topics I am covering.