2025 Wall Street Crystal Ball Scorecard (So Far): Why Forecasting Is Not A Strategy As we are now only two weeks to the end of 2025 and many Wall Street analysts have started to put forward a new year 2026 predictions, it’s a good time to look at how these popular financial professionals have performed up to now. Where we stand (so far): The dataset I’m scoring To keep this objective, I used a single, clean prediction type: 2025 year-end S&P 500 targets. A Bloomberg-sourced table (compiled and published by Fundstrat on Dec 10, 2024) included 23 strategist targets, ranging from 4,450 to 7,100. Scoring method: absolute % error vs 6,827.41 (Dec 12 level). (Yes, the final “grade” can still change by Dec 31—but the main conclusion is already visible.) The tallies: how accurate were they? Closest calls (so far) Biggest misses (so far) The more important point: forecasts didn’t just miss—they moved Even if a target ends up “close,” the path matters—because most investors don’t hold steady when headlines get loud. Example: In April 2025, multiple firms cut targets sharply amid tariff/trade-war turmoil: Later, some targets re-inflated. For example, Oppenheimer raised back to 7,100 by late July 2025 after previously cutting to 5,950. What to do with this? What we can see are as follows: What we really need: a systematic strategy A systematic sound and intuitive strategy that our investments should adhere to year in and year out. MyPlanIQ has provided both Strategic and Tactical Strategies for decades (see Asset Allocation Strategy White Paper). For example, the following is the outline of a Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA) Of course, you can also allocate part of your investments to a tactical asset allocation portfolio that could avoid large drawdown or loss by dynamically changing stock and bond allocations based on prevailing market and economy conditions.