@ochotona… it appears you chose to respond to my reply to Smartpolitics and not to the reply I had made to your post…
My reply to your post concerning Meb Faber dealt with the fact that he is a quant. Quants are great at bringing their talents to the table to help thrash through the uncertainties present in hard data scenarios within the bounds of numerical parameters.
A major reason quants have proven ineffective and error prone when it comes to predicting the stock market is because buy and sell decisions are made by people. And people make emotionally-driven decisions, their decisions are not mathematically predictable.
Some folks seem to feel that because you can make graphs and charts using historical data tracking human decisions that they can use the same techniques in forecasting human behavior.
Historical data has proven that premise invalid.