Does the Stock Market accurately predict the Economy?

Media reports usually try to interpret the latest market results by telling us what they mean about the economy or something else. In other words, the market is said to be an information processing machine, and we need only to know how to interpret what it says. Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital disagrees. In his latest memo, he says the market might be able to interpret economic information in the long term, but not necessarily over shorter periods. He says the market frequently is wrong, and you can profit by realizing when it is wrong.

People of all different levels of ability act together to set the price. They vary all over the lot in terms of knowledge, experience, insight and emotionalism. The market doesn’t give the ones who are superior in these regards any more influence than the others, especially in the short run. My bottom line on this subject is that the market price merely reflects the average insight of the market participants.

That’s point number one.

If anything, I think it’s emotion that’s synergistic. It builds into herd behavior or mass hysteria. When 10,000 people panic, the emotion seems to snowball. People influence each other, and their emotions compound, so that the overall level of panic in the market can be higher than the panic of any participant in isolation. That’s something I’ll return to later.