Dow 20,000

A few minutes ago I glanced up at the TV and there was Ralph Acampora on CNBC, predicting where the market would go. He said that stocks were going to go down for a spell. Maybe he's right. He has a 50-50 chance.

I hadn't seen Ralph in 10 years. Last time I saw him, we were sitting in an empty hall at the Sheraton Imperial. At the time, Acampora was a star technical analyst for Prudential Securities. This was May 1999, and I was the business editor of the N&O. I asked him: Where do you think stocks are headed.

Here is what he told me: "For me, I'm maybe talking 20,000 in five years, something like that - 2006 maybe."

As we all know, that didn't happen. When we talked, the Dow was at 10,559. By the next January, it had risen to 11,723. Acampora looked prescient. Then the dot.com meltdown occured. And 9/11. By early October 2002, the Dow was down to 7,286, or more than 30 percent below where it was when I interviewed Acampora. He's not looking so good.

Then it started climbing back up, peaking at 14,164 in October 2007. Acampora is starting to look prescient again. Then the subprime mortgages start going belly up, taking the banking system down, and the Dow craters, losing half its value by last winter. Again, Acampora's 20,000 looks like a mirage.

Since then, the Dow has gone up, gone down, gone sideways. It is now 8,322. I have no idea where it's going, but one thing is for sure.

When I watch CNBC and hear analysts make predictions, I am reminded of what screenwriter William Goldman once wrote about Hollywood: "Nobody knows anything." What he meant was that none of the smart guys in Hollywood who lunch over beet salad at Spago in Beverly Hills had any real basis for knowing how well a movie would fare commercially.

I think that's true when it comes to making predictions about the stock market.

Acampora is now teaching future market analysts in New York how to read the tea leaves, when not making bold predictions on CNBC.

He actually comes off looking better than James Glassman and Kevin Hassett, who jointly authored the 1999 book: "Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. It is available for 96 cents (used) on Amazon.com.