hey...but goldman sacks probably made some money off of whacker if he bought oil futures yesterday because of their "analysis"...just like they cashed in big time this summer on their fear-mongering $200/barrel estimate earlier this summer.

I have a grad degree in Biology and undergrad degrees in econ and bio, and I can tell you for a fact the economy and commodity prices are just as complicated as the human body and the entire universe...no medical doctor ever tells you you have an illness with 100% certainty, even if they have tons of tests that indicate a certain illness--because there is such a massive array of interrelated factors contributing to a disease, all of which are constantly changing...oil prices are no different--an analyst's prediction is simply an educated guess on a matter way too large for anyone or anything or even a supercomputer to comprehend, and even if a "consensus" of analysts "agree" oil will go up again, the fact of the matter is people and politics and weather can change in 5 seconds, completely throwing out any economic predictions made off of data by a bunch of analysts sitting in a cubicle in NYC or London. Things change over time, including analyst predictions.

As pilots I would hope we all understand the fact that you don't go out making decisions based 100% on what someone says is true at this moment in time. We don't just go heading out on a long flight in bad weather in the winter with one wx report printed at departure time and then never get updated wx or runway conditions or never check fuel en route or check alternate wx conditions, we all know thats foolish....same thing with analysts and commodities prices.