Yes, for example Michael Lynch. He wrote a surprisingly modest column here about his predictions. The problem with Lynch, as he freely concedes, is that he absolutely didn’t predict other price movements.
Paul Krugman made the point recently that the only stock market forecasters who correctly predicted a market drop were those who always predicted falling markets. This is known as the ‘stopped watch’ approach to forecasting: constantly make one prediction and eventually the market will move in that direction. Especially for oil prices, which are highly variable, this works wonders to the point where the great Adam Sieminski often joked that you should predict the price or the date, but not both...
For the past several years, I have been suggesting that, without major improvements in the geopolitical situation, long-term oil prices should be about $60 a barrel. For this, I was derided by a number of observers, including the late Christophe de Margeri, CEO of Total, and I have been persistent the lowest of the ‘major’ forecasters, as seen in the DOE survey published earlier this year.
For years people have been noting that the entirety of the anemic growth in world oil production has been coming from these high-cost tight oil deposits and tar sands in North America, with all the companies involved going into massive debt resembling a financial bubble because the world economy could not support prices that high. It was no surprise to many that that would fall apart messily.
Did anyone predict the sharp drop in oil prices?
Yes, for example Michael Lynch. He wrote a surprisingly modest column here about his predictions. The problem with Lynch, as he freely concedes, is that he absolutely didn’t predict other price movements.
For years people have been noting that the entirety of the anemic growth in world oil production has been coming from these high-cost tight oil deposits and tar sands in North America, with all the companies involved going into massive debt resembling a financial bubble because the world economy could not support prices that high. It was no surprise to many that that would fall apart messily.