Rishi Khiroya and Lydia Henning

If you asked people what skill they would most love to have, you might receive answers like 'to fly', 'to be invisible' or even 'predicting the future'. If you asked people who worked in financial markets in particular, 'accurately predicting the future' would probably be top of the list. From economic trends to political shifts, market participants have a stake in anticipating what comes next. We use data collected from the Bank’s Market Participants Survey (MaPS) to see how market predictions have tended to compare with what subsequently unfolds over the period of high uncertainty and volatility that has been observed in the wake of the pandemic – and how predictive accuracy has varied depending on the time horizon in question.