You're Kidding

The Cult of Peter Schiff - Is It Deserved?

There was a guy named Joe Grandville, I believe, who was a big investment Guru in the '70s. He did really, really well...for awhile, then started being wrong...and bingo, lost his Guru crown.

He was just one of many who have come and gone, who will be followed by many more. They appear to be prescient and attract droves of followers, but alas, it turns out that they are "soothsayers" but for a limited time only, and not always. Bummer.

Why is it that they always fade out? Well, obviously, because they weren't really Gurus at all. They were just lucky for awhile.

There are even some around today, and if you were to get into a time machine and jump into the future, you would find them there. They would have predicted, for example, say... the bottom of the Great Recession in late 2008 (or 2009, or 2010, or...whenever it was.) There they are...the Gurus..and they were right!

Except they weren't. They were lucky. How they saw the future happened to be somewhat correct. You think this correlation means something?

Well, lets say it does. The question now becomes how do I find a Guru before
we all discover he was right, which will too late to take advantage of his "predictions." There are lots of Gurus around making their prognostacations; but which one is going to be right? If you think about this for awhile, you'll realize you can't ever know. How can you possibly know ahead of time which "Guru" will be right in the future, unless... you are a Guru, too! In that case you don't need one, do you? Just listen to yourself. But you know you're not a Guru. So, its impossible to pick one out ahead of time, unless you are lucky, of course.

So after their "predictions" come true, we know who they are, but not before. Bummer.

The problem is, if we then follow what they say, are they going to be right again? Jo Grandville was "right" for awhile, and then he wasn't. Peter Schiff was right, it seems, for awhile, if you give him a lot of leeway time wise, and now recently has been wrong again. But in there for awhile he just knew that future...didn't he?

Well, I've got great news for all. Here's a way to find a Guru who can pick the direction of the DOW 10 times in a row! So he's got to be right on the 11th, too, right?

Get a thousand people in a big room (or web site, maybe) to pick whether the Dow will be up or down tomorrow. The next day we will find that about half will be right. Keep only those in the group who were correct. Then repeat for nine more days. One or two people will be left who will have been correct for ten days in a row!

This is what pure chance gives us: people who stand out and appear to "know something" and methods which appear to "predict." But its all just a coincidence. And you have to have a strong desire for the truth in order to be objective enough to see past you're own rose colored glasses, which gives us a view of reality that really says far more about us in this present moment - our desires, our agendas, our beliefs, etc., than it ever will say about the future.