Sunday, January 17, 2010

Never Make Predictions--Especially About the Future

There's an old Yiddish phrase, Mann tracht, Gott lauch:  "Man plans, God laughs."

I am always reminded that what will unfold is, so much more often than not, very different from what we had anticipated.  This holds true for everything from politics to social trends to markets and money.

Even a visionary like Steve Jobs will find himself surprised, albeit pleasantly, with how business develops.  From a recent Newsweek article:

The lesson we've learned since then is that even the people who created the iPhone could not have imagined what people would do with the device. Much of the fun of iPhone involves software apps that didn't exist when the iPhone was introduced. Those apps don't come from Apple—they were written by thousands of developers who found inspiration in a new computing platform.

For the entire article, click here.

I bring this up to remind us all--especially me!--to keep a sense of proportion and humility as we hear and read in this new year confident claims about what MUST occur in the economy and markets.

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