One of my favorite television shows right now is The Blacklist on NBC. The main character in this spy thriller, Raymond Reddington, is prone to deliver thought-provoking monologues that have many applications outside of the fictional drama. One of the more recent episodes focused on the concept of trying to predict or count on a specific outcome in the future.

You see, if you were a betting man, you would understand that now trumps later every time.

The future is a sucker’s bet– a maybe, a contingency, a “What if?”

The only thing that is real is the present.

-Raymond Reddington, The Blacklist, NBC

These lines immediately came to mind when I started reading the 2016 market predictions from some of the major banks. Goldman Sachs is forecasting that the market will finish next year near the flat line, while Bank of America is striking a slightly more optimistic tone with a conservative 4-5% gain.

These banks employ legions of bright minds with incalculable modeling power to come out with these forecasts. Yet at the end of the day, I would venture to guess there is probably a small clan of stodgy economists and market watchers who put together these “firm views”. It may ultimately be more of a gut feeling rather than a true analysis of the exponential variables involved.

I think it’s important to remember that the stock market doesn’t care what your price target is.

Particularly in a year that is going to see the first real impact of fiscal tightening in nearly a decade. Don’t forget that we are also going to be electing a new president next year as well. Those are just the major events we KNOW are coming. Add in the countless rounds of corporate earnings, economic data releases, government policy, social trends, and other unforeseeable events and the picture becomes quite murky. These components are what make up the “wall of worry” that stocks are so famous for scaling.