‘Tis the season when many market gurus and financial sites start to make market predictions for the upcoming new year. My prediction for those predictions: They will mostly (if not all) be wrong. What a surprise! It boggles my mind why the media remains interested in these tired, old stories. They make for good headlines and chatter, but in the end, they don’t really mean anything, and I doubt they are meant to mean anything other than to attract self-interest.

If one were to go back in time and review many of the market predictions, they would be horrified (or vilified) at the results. Most have been way off the mark. But they grab headlines, which is all there are meant to do. I mean, if Nostradamus was unable to predict the market crashes of the last century, then who in the world could predict where the market would be in 2012? They are fun to read (I guess, unless you have nothing better to do with your time), but scary if you take them too seriously. I believe taking any prediction with a grain of salt is the best way to go.

The best prediction is one you can make for yourself: I predict I will save more money, invest less conservatively, and finish the year debt-free! Now that is a prediction I would bet big on.