Contrasting forecasting with prophesying
Past performance is not indicative of future results. This disclaimer is used by financial companies when they reference the performance of products such as mutual funds. But this disclaimer is a bit of an odd contradiction, because the past is all that we have to work with. If the companies that comprise the mutual fund have had consistently positive quarterly results for the last eight quarters straight, does that guarantee that they will also have a positive set of results for the next eight quarters and that their public valuation will continue to rise? Probability could be on the side of that being the case, but that might not be the whole story. And, before we get too wishful in thinking that Elastic ML’s ability to forecast is our key to making a fortune in the stock market, we should be realistic about one key caveat—there are always uncontrollable factors.
The reason financial companies use the preceding disclaimer...