ALFRED COWLES 3RD 3I7 less of the subsequent action of the market, on the assumption that, under such conditions, the investor would withdraw all of his funds rom stocks. On the other hand, if the forecast is 100 per cent bullish and the market drops 10 per cent in the ensuing week, the score is 10 per cent. If the forecast is doubtful when the market drops 10 per cent, the score is -5 per cent. The compounding of all these weekl scores for the period covered gives a cumulative record for each fore- caster. This permits comparisons which reveal relative success and average performance. While it may be thought that accurate week-to- week forecasting is a hopeless ideal, it should be emphasized that our analysis of weekly results also measures accurately the efficiency of long swing forecast A figure representing the average of all possible forecasting result for the period was arrived at by compounding one-half of every weekly percentage change in the level of the stock market. The final scores given below for the 24 forecasters were computed by dividing the actual performance of each by the average of all possible results re- ferred to above, and subtracting 100 TABLE III RESULTS OF STOCK MARKET FORECASTS Forecaster Weel Per cent +72.4 +31.5 123456789012 +28,3 +24.2 +.0 38357033 0.G 1.3 2.1 3.6 6.0 13. 6.7 14. 6,9 15 12.5 16. 13.5 17 17,2 18. 21.5 19 29.4 33.0 0128 35.3 41.5 45.3 49.1 The records show that only one-third of the list met with any suc- cess. In order to derive a significant average of the performance of the