Ignore the forecasts. Fix the process.

It’s that time of year again when the financial media dutifully rolls out its predictions for the coming twelve months. Where will the Sensex be by December? Which sectors will outperform? What will happen to interest rates? I’ve watched this ritual for over three decades, and I’ve never found much use for it. The predictions are forgotten by February, and if anyone bothered to check them against reality by year-end, the results would be embarrassing for all involved. The problem isn’t that forecasters are incompetent. Some of them are quite clever. The problem is that the things worth predicting are inherently unpredictable, and the things that are predictable aren’t worth much. Nobody foresaw the pandemic that reshaped our lives in 2020. Few anticipated the speed of the recovery. Policy shifts, regulatory changes and the rise-and-fall of market favourites arrive on their own schedule, never the fore