Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

Buffett’s remark is a skeptical jab at the predictive certainty often claimed in markets and economics. Forecasts, he suggests, are better read as psychological or institutional artifacts—revealing the forecaster’s incentives, biases, temperament, and need to appear authoritative—than as reliable windows onto what will happen. The line aligns with his long-standing emphasis on humility about macro prediction, focusing instead on business fundamentals, valuation, and a margin of safety. It also warns audiences to treat confident projections as narratives that can comfort or persuade, rather than as evidence, and to judge decisions by process and probabilities rather than by alluring point forecasts.