I'm not going to comment on Mr. Roger's recent pronouncements, or his prior forecasts. Doing so is really not useful.

What I've learned in the last 15 years of trading the markets (mostly stocks & options) is this:

Everyone has a forecast. Some people make short-term (1 to 30) day forecasts, some people make intermediate forecasts (1 month to 12 months) and some people like to try their hands at really peering deeply into the crystal ball (1 to 10+ years out).

IMO, most of this is pointless. As the late, great Yogi Berra once said: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

What has worked far better for me is to develop a plan. Play lots of "what if?" games with your trades/positions.

For example:

Corn goes up 10%. What will you do?

Corn goes up 25%. What will you do?

Corn goes up 50%. What will you do?

Corn goes down 25%. What will you do?


Most people, when they hold positions in the market, won't be able to answer these questions right off the bat. They'll have to think about it, take time to analyze what is happening, ask other people, etc.

I found that not having developed a plan ahead of time causes me to hesitate, and often, fail at a trade. I learned this through expensive tuition. Oh, the time I've wasted trying to predict where a stock/option/future position would go. Oh, the time I've wasted trying to "evaluate" what to do when a trade has gone wrong. Time wasted, money lost (either through losses allowed to run, or failing to take a profit), etc.

In the last, oh, six years, when I'm setting up a position in a trade, I decide, based on what the price movement & volume is, what I will do.

A cheap stock that I bought pretty low with room to run goes up 10% on good volume? I'll buy more.
A stock that I just bought turns around and craps on me, going down 10%? I sell it. I don't ask why. More on that in a moment.

The nut of the markets is this, I've learned: People like to use technology, trading systems, charting, special indicators, analysis of price movements, etc to try to predict what the price is going to do in the short/medium/long term timeframes. Most all of this work should be accompanied by some chicken bones, incense and $50 to summon the spirits. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But it usually doesn't give you a good trading plan - how to take profits, how to manage your risk, how to contain your losses.

There's only two no-BS indicators in any market: price and volume. Price is obvious - did the security/option/future move up or down, and how much?

Volume is a measure of how many people were backing the move - and volume can wear two faces, and be showing you wild enthusiasm or flat-out panic. One rule of thumb to remember is that price moves downwards about 3X as fast as it moves up - because downside volume on dashed expectations or some exogenous event will cause people to sell more quickly than they'll buy on good news (or a lack of bad news). When you see big volume (either up or down), it's telling you that the price movement of your stock/option/future has attracted attention, and you need to know what to do with that.

This leads me to my loss-containment system: I don't like losses any more than the next guy. So, when I see a trade where I got in long not only fail to go up on me, but it starts heading downhill (and sometimes fast), I make it a point to sell when it's down 10%. I don't care if there's a chance it might go up again. Even moreso, I don't care why it went down. I really don't. There's so much market "analysis" that tries to tie all manner of things to price movements. Most of these people might as well shove a bone through their nose, put on a grass skirt and hang out a shingle as a witch doctor.

I'd love to be interviewed by CNBC or Bloomberg about price movements, because I have a line all laid out for them when they ask "You said that XYZ would sell off 50% last May, and here we are with XYZ down 40% from the high. What did you see that alerted you to this movement?"

"Well, Becky, last April, my left buttcheek started itching something fierce. I know from past experience that when my left buttcheek itches, the price of stocks is gonna go down, and when my right buttcheek itches, they's gonna go up. My left buttcheek is still itching, just not as bad as last April to May, so I think we might see the selling volume decrease in the next couple of weeks."

Prognostication is fun, but ultimately useless. All prices are going to move up or down - sometimes by as much as 50%. If you wait long enough, you'll see prices do very strange and scary things. It's inevitable, but you don't  and won't know when these prices will be seen.

The important thing is "What are YOU going to do before prices get there, and what will you do when they get there?"
 
Have a plan.