Prediction thread from the start of 2023 - a shining example of how bad people are at predicting the future

https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/zxbjuf/what_are_your_predictions_for_2023/

The overwhelming sentiment was more pain in 2023, with the market starting to recover in late 2023. The sentiment for Q1 was pretty much unanimously negative. From what I can see, pretty much ZERO people predicted a strong rally in Q1/Q2. People who predicted any kind of positive gains in 2023 were downvoted (sort by controversial).

Today, after 6 months, SPY is up +16% and QQQ is up a staggering +40%.

I hope this helps to demonstrate how difficult it is to predict the market (and yet people do it with such confidence every day, just look at the prediction thread). Take everything you read on this sub with a massive grain of salt. NOBODY knows what the market will do next. The people who get hurt the most in the market are the ones who believe they do.

Investing is one of those strange things where the more research you do and the more trades you make, the worse you tend to do. Women tend to outperform men simply because they are more likely to just buy and hold. In fact, in one study the demographic that performed the best was those who had passed away, since they were unable to make any trades. The sooner that you realize how difficult it is to time the market successfully, the better your performance will be.

As always, I recommend a DCA strategy into market ETF's and hold long term.

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