Monthly Archives: July 2019

Asset management, Behavioral finance, Commodity price, Economics, Hedging, Market research, Market trends, Oil market, Risk management, Trading, Trend following

Failure of price forecasting: the unit of account conundrum

In addition to the better understood challenges of market analysis, like access to timely and accurate data, there is another – rather massive, but usually completely ignored – problem that renders forecasting largely an exercise in futility.

Over the years I’ve written quite a bit on the unreliable nature of price forecasts based on the analysis of market supply and demand . Most recently, in “Market fundamentals, forecasting and the groupthink effect,” I discussed the problem of data quality as well as the very real problem of groupthink among leading analysts, providing an example of a staggeringly wrong oil price forecast they produced. Some of the very same experts later produced this gem: Continue reading →

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Attaining mastery, Children, Mystery, Psychology

To attain mastery… a surprising discovery

Many years ago, quite by accident, I noticed something amazing about the human brain. Although I’ve read many books on psychology and how the brain works, I never came across anything that prepared me for what I encountered. I believe this discovery can help anyone greatly improve their skills at whichever pursuit they wish to master. I’ve followed my accidental discovery with a ‘home-cooked’ science experiment that beautifully confirmed the original finding. This insight could help parents, teachers and coaches in the way they cultivate young talent. It should also be an encouragement to such talent: whatever your skill level at this moment, you ain’t seen nothing yet – mastery may be fully within your grasp, even if you can’t quite fathom it at present. Here it goes… Continue reading →

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Commodity price, Commodity risk, Complexity, Economics, Expertise, Hedging, Market psychology, Market research, Market trends, Oil market, Risk management, Trend following

Market fundamentals, forecasting and the groupthink effect

Last month I had the privilege of meeting with Jaran Rystad of Rystad Energy to discuss strategic cooperation between our companies. On the occasion, he gave me a rather detailed presentation of his firm’s energy intelligence database. I must say, in my 20+ years trading in commodities markets this is by far the most impressive product of its kind I’ve ever seen. Even from the software engineering point of view, I was very impressed. For full disclosure, nobody asked nor encouraged me to write this. Much as you’d recommend a restaurant where you ate well or a doctor you respect, I wholeheartedly recommend Rystad Energy as a provider of energy market intelligence as a matter of giving credit where credit is due.

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Monaco, June 2019 – with Jarand Rystad

However, even with top notch data on economic supply and demand fundamentals, divining the future remains difficult and unlikely. John von Neumann rightly said that forecasting was “the most complex, interactive, and highly nonlinear problem that had ever been conceived of.” Continue reading →

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