Investing legend and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) CEO Warren Buffett has built a reputation on rejecting many of the conventions that dominate Wall Street, and one of his most pointed observations concerns the practice of market forecasting. “We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good,” he wrote in a 1992 letter, summarizing his long-standing skepticism toward predictions about short-term movements in stocks or the broader economy.
The statement appears in one of Buffett’s widely read annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, where he has often urged caution against relying on expert forecasts. His comment is not a critique of any single institution or analyst, but a broader commentary on the inherent unpredictability of markets. Buffett has repeatedly emphasized that short-term price movements are influenced by countless variables, many of them unknowable or impossible to quantify. As a result, he views forecasting as a practice that offers an illusion of precision rather than meaningful insight.
