Wall Street’s forecast for 2022 is for a 4% gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index. But what does that really mean? Should you care? The answer is “not so much.” Wealth management is not predicated on predicting the stock market’s performance over the next year. 

No one can reliably predict stock prices year after year and Wall Street’s no exception, according to this chart by independent economist Fritz Meyer. If the consensus forecasts by top strategists on Wall Street had been accurate since 2006, the red dots would all fall on the black line representing the S&P 500.