💎 On the difficulty of making predictions (even by experts)

In separate work, from 2000 to 2010 German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer compiled annual dollar-euro exchange rate predictions made by twenty-two of the most prestigious international banks — Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and others. Each year, every bank predicted the end-of-year exchange rate. Gigerenzer’s simple conclusion about those projections, from some of the worlds most prominent specialists: “Forecasts of dollar-euro exchange rates are worthless.” In six of the ten years, the true exchange rate fell outside the entire range of all twenty-two bank forecasts.

Excerpt from: Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein