By Gerald Tay (Guest Contributor)

“If I have noticed anything over these 60 years on Wall Street, it is that people do not succeed in forecasting what’s going to happen to the stock market.” – Benjamin Graham (Warren Buffett’s teacher)

As happens every year, property firms – including property agents, mortgage lenders, property ‘gurus’, and property analysts – have released their end-of-year predictions for where prices will go in 2014. Many pundits expect prices to rise slightly this year, but not by much.

These ‘expert’ forecasters seemed to possess the ‘I know-it-all’ investment mentality and offer to share their prophecies with the public.

Human fascination with the future can be traced back to prehistoric times. People have always wanted to predict the future for psychological reasons (to reduce their fear and anxiety about the unknown). The human desire to foresee the future has been exploited by some for profit, fame, ...