Brad Feld Quotes

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

There's one thing I've learned about entrepreneurs' business plans. Every one is wrong.

Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions.

Using a forecasting company is like going to a fortune-teller. If you believe the company and the color does not sell, who do you blame? The forecasters? No, you blame yourself.

Every day I make predictions that don't come anywhere close to the mark.

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

My predictions are notably inaccurate.

Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections.

We want to get 80%-85% of predictions right, not 100%. Or else we calibrated our estimates in the wrong way.

There are domains in which expertise is not possible. Stock picking is a good example. And in long-term political strategic forecasting, it's been shown that experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey.

We really can't forecast all that well, and yet we pretend that we can, but we really can't.

Whenever you try to pick market tops and bottoms, you are making a prediction. Guessing what stock is going to outperform the market is forecasting, as is selling a stock for no apparent reason. Indeed, nearly all capital decisions made by most people are unconscious predictions.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

Before prognostication, a disclaimer: I have never been able to pick a winner. Not that it has ever stopped me from trying to. Well, it has stopped me from buying stock, but let's not talk about that.

[Explaining a failed policy:] Our crystal ball was very muddy.

Economists have predicted seven of the last two recessions.

We did not cover ourselves with glory. We predicted the day before the war broke out that it was not going to break out.

My view was that if you're going to make a mistake in your predictions, make sure you make them the right way. Don't put yourself into a situation where, in fact, you say you're going to do something, and then all of a sudden you can't.

Forecasting is a maddening occupation. It is always fascinating and exciting and rewarding. yet it is also regularly exasperating and infuriating, occasionally even deranging.

The Treasury has enough trouble with forecasts even when they are trying to get them right.

Today, if someone showed me a five-year plan, I'd toss out the pages detailing Years Three, Four and Five as pure fantasy Anyone who thinks he or she can evaluate business conditions five years from now, flunks.

The quest for certainty in forecasting outcomes can be the enemy of progress.

People often say that it is easier to predict the way things are going to be 10 to 20 years in the future than to predict how it is going to be 3 years from now.

In the financial markets I find it easy to predict what will happen and very difficult to predict when it will happen. I think that things were clear during the bubble as to what would happen eventually.

We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good.