Fred Langan, host of Newsworld Business News. Predictions in January are a lot like New Year's Day resolutions: easy to make, hard to get right.

This year many of the financial experts who make a living musing on the future price of everything from stocks to the dollar are fudging things, since so many of them were so wrong last year.

"Hard to remember a year where forecasters were more wrong than in 2008," said Dan Richards, a consultant to the financial industry.

"While there were a few outliers who saw the problems developing, no mainstream forecasters came close to predicting the magnitude of the real estate and financial instrument bubble and the impact of its collapse."

A few people did get things right, including Danielle Park of Venable Park, a small investment advisory firm. More than once on CBC News Business, Park, who wrote the investing book Juggling Dynamite, advised against the passive technique of "buy and hold," which is based on the belief that in the long run the market will always give a good rate of return.

"Right now we don't have buys on any sectors," she said in January 2008. "You can't seek refuge in any sector. It's all going down."

A year ago many forecasts were upbeat, with caveats about the possibility of subprime mortgage problems in the United States. BusinessWeek magazine carried a piece on Dec. 31, 2007, that stated: "Once everyone has capitulated, the contrarians figure, there's no one left to bail out, and stocks have nowhere to go but up."

The prediction got better, or worse, depending on your point of view. "You might consider buying beaten-up banking stocks, which offer attractive yields at current prices."

Really? Citibank was trading at $30 US when that was printed. It has since cut its dividend and a year later is at $5.60. It has been even lower. Some U.S. banks, such as Washington Mutual, went into receivership.

A wall of doom

This year almost everyone in the financial prediction biz is building a wall of doom. The recession is nasty and is going to get nastier.

'It [the recession] is affecting sectors around the world and there is nowhere to hide.'—Sherry Cooper, Bank of Montreal

"It is global. It is affecting sectors around the world and there is nowhere to hide," said Sherry Cooper, the Bank of Montreal's global economic strategist.

In the second week of January last year, the CIBC and its chief economist Jeff Rubin predicted oil was going to $150 US a barrel.

He also said the main index of the Toronto Stock Exchange was going to 16,200. Oops.

To be fair to Rubin, the oil price did get to $147 by July. But the reality is it lost $100 by the end of 2008. And Toronto's S&P/TSX composite index did peak above 15,154 in June — before closing down 35 per cent on the year at 8,830.

Jeff Rubin is optimistic about the stock market this year, predicting the TSX will end 2009 at 11,000. It closed on Monday, Jan. 12, at 8793.

"The bad news is that we are in a recession, and a fairly deep one at that. The good news is that the stock market has already discounted a depression," said Rubin.

Rubin's sidekick at the CIBC, senior economist Avery Shenfeld, is cautious. He said it could take up to three years for the TSX to reach the high it set last year.

"History suggests we're talking years, not quarters, to get your money back from the peak," Shenfeld said on CBC News Business. "Given the scale of the retreat, we're looking at a three- to five-year horizon."

And oil prices? "For the here and now, oil is not going anywhere in a hurry," said Shenfeld, but he said in the long run oil could be back at $100.

Think zinc is boring?

Predictions aren't just about stock markets and oil. There are interest rates, currencies and what will happen to the other commodities, from nickel to zinc, that drive Canada's economy.

Think zinc is boring? Tell that to the 1,400 people laid off at Teck Cominco Ltd., Canada's biggest zinc miner. Zinc is used to galvanize steel and make it rust-proof for use in car bodies. No car sales, no zinc mining. That means more job losses.

"Even in a mild recession the unemployment rate usually rises about two per cent," Shenfeld said. "We're looking at an eight per cent unemployment rate [in 2009] and it could get there in a hurry." (He said that about 36 hours before Canada's latest unemployment numbers spiked to 6.6 per cent.)

'2009 is the one year where it's almost impossible to find consensus.'—Dan Richards, consultant

Then there's the Canadian dollar. A year ago, the loonie was trading at par. None of the big Canadian banks predicted it was going back to 75 cents US.

This year, the smart money seems to be on the Canadian dollar heading back to par with the U.S. dollar. But then the smart money was almost always wrong last year.

Maybe the prediction that counts the most is stocks, because of the devastating effect the drop in markets had on RRSP values and the assets in private and public pension funds.

"2009 is the one year where it's almost impossible to find consensus," Richards said. "There are those who say we'll bottom in the second quarter [and] those who say it will take until the end of 2010 to work through the economic woes."

Perhaps there should be a New Year's resolution to do away with predictions. Many of them have been so wrong.

Fred Langan is host of CBC News Business.