Are the markets mindless?

I read with interest Stephen Bland's anti New Year message over on The Motley Fool. I agree wholeheartedly that prediction is usually futile in the markets, in the sense that it is futile predicting on 1 January 2013 that the FTSE will have reached a particular value by 31 December 2013. But on one important point I disagree:



Stephen asserts that there is no point believing in "The January