The difference between an Economist and an Investor

The economist looks at the forest and glances at the trees. The investor looks at the trees and glances at the forest.

Furthermore, the more prevalent practice in economic forecast is to look at the recent past and project forward almost in a straight line.

The practice should be to look at the recent past, temper that within historic and overall trends and provide a weighted judgment of different possibilities.

The lesson here is that if a investor relies on economic forecast to invest, he will likely miss out on opportunity.