The past three decades have been a period of relatively moderate inflation in the United States with the annual increase in the consumer price index averaging around 2.3%. Yet the impact of even this amount of inflation has been to reduce the purchasing power of an uninvested dollar by around half.

The result 47% accuracy - slightly worse than the flip of the coin. Another study 48%. No skills can be found.

I am glad that Vanguard wrote this brief paper.

The Seductive Nature of Fat Tail Distributions

Imagine it is early January 2010 and you are reading a review of the financial markets.