Traders, generally speaking, need to know what that story is telling us about the short-term prospects for a market. In contrast, investors are more concerned by the longer-term implications of that story. Regardless whether one is looking at stocks, commodities, currencies, Gold or any other tradable instrument, that market story for any time horizon has three different outcomes.
Prices can go up, go down or remain unchanged.
My job as an investor and trader and, most importantly, as an analyst who writes this letter for a wide and diverse audience ranging from novice investors to tested and seasoned professionals, is to use my knowledge, experience and intuition to accurately interpret the facts impacting upon a market. From this analysis I can then make hopefully accurate basic conclusions about the trend of prices as well as hopefully useful specific recommendations for the traders and investors who read these letters. This task of correctly interpreting markets and forecasting price direction is never easy, and as I get older and wiser, ironically this job gets harder. I understand better not what I know, but rather, what I don't know. And that knowledge about one's limitations is a very humbling and daunting realization.