Michael Sandretto of Harvard and Sudhir Milkrishnamurthi of MIT completed a massive study of the one-year forecasts of the 1,000 most widely followed companies. Their staggering conclusion was that the error rates each year were remarkably consistent and that the average annual error of the analysts was 31.3 percent over a five-year period. Financial forecasting appears to be a science that makes astrology look respectable.
