Jason Zweig

It crashed again between 2007 and 2009.

It crashed in 2020.

It crashed in 2022.

And 401k money was pouring in throughout all of those episodes.

So markets go up.

The stock market goes up when corporate earnings go up.

And how much money companies earn is not a function of how much money is going into 401k plans.

They just, there's no cause and effect relationship there.

Exactly.

I would say to people, be careful out there.

And one of the exercises that I love to have people do is at the beginning of the year,

Make a set of predictions.

What do you think is going to happen?

Instead of asking somebody at the Wall Street Journal what he thinks is going to happen, what do you think is going to happen?

What do you think the S&P 500 is going to return in 2026?

What do you think the best performing major asset will be?

Predict where all of those variables, the inflation rate, interest rates, predict where they'll all be at the end of the year.

And then at the end of the year, look up the actual answers and look up what you predicted.

And I have a prediction that the predictions you actually made will look very little like the actual results.

Yeah, and the lesson from that is, in my view, most people should stop trying to predict.