Where Are We Headed?
Here's a quick look at our upcoming Winter 2023/24 print issue, The Annual Issue with Forecasting, which is live now
The 93-year-old oracle of Omaha seems to find stocks a bit pricey.
Should we care? Probably. Virtually every investor knows Warren Buffett earned that nickname by amassing more than $100 billion and shunning ostentation. His every move is scrutinized and often emulated.
And what he’s been doing lately is shedding equities. His firm, Berkshire Hathaway, reduced its stock holdings by $28.7 billion in the first three quarters of 2023, according to Newsweek.
It’s been a steady stream of bearish moves, as shown by that magazine’s tally of his divestitures. Buffett’s company sold $10.4 billion of stock in the first quarter. It sold nearly $13 billion of shares and bought less than $5 billion in the second quarter, and it sold $5.3 billion in the third quarter.
Does that mean recession’s ahead in 2024? We’ll let you be the judge. But Luckbox is here to help with the resources you’ll find in this annual forecasting issue.
Our effort in these pages to bring clarity to the science of forecasting includes a mashup of two of our favorite movements: Factfulness and Superforecasting.
Factfulness aims to dispel commonly held misconceptions, and its founders have uncovered them everywhere. Getting rid of them can be the first step toward making accurate forecasts.
The Superforecasters begin by basing predictions on accurate information and move on from there. They’re part of a scientific approach to prognostication that began with the Good Judgment Project at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, our study of forecasting in this issue also hinges on artificial intelligence. Humans and AI are working together to improve all kinds of forecasting. Some call it a “hybrid” model.
That hybrid inclination is already making itself felt in medicine, where the speed and thoroughness of AI are helping doctors make more precise decisions more quickly.
Evidence of this emerged as this issue went to press. In a groundbreaking research collaboration among four universities, scientists announced they had developed an AI model called life2vec, trained on the “life sequences” data of 6 million people, that demonstrated extraordinary accuracy at predicting events in people’s lives, including an individual’s risk of contracting specific diseases and a precise estimate of one’s time of death.
No AI partners were necessary, however, to help humans develop a lot of the forecasting you’ll find in this issue.
There’s the annual grab bag of predictions by Luckbox editors Jeff Joseph and Garrett Baldwin. Don’t expect all their forecasts to come true.
But you can expect accuracy elsewhere in this issue. You’ll see forecasting has its place in fitness training, poker playing and (of course) investing.
Yet it’s not all about forecasting. Another annual feature rounding out this issue, The Gift Guide, offers potential presents for the brain, body and base. Alliteration aside, the ideas lean heavily toward the best in board games and spirits.
Two ways to send comments, criticisms and suggestions to Luckbox.
Email: feedback@luckboxmagazine.com
Visit: luckboxmagazine.com/survey. A new survey every issue.
The Winter 2023/24 issue of Luckbox is now live. Click here to read.
