Euro-Dollar 2010 forecast

One colleague of mine followed euro dollar rates during a whole year to cross check how good are the predictions provided by big economic analysts. He focused on Merrill Lynch predictions, and his conclusion was that they miserably failed.

I'm trying to reproduce the same experiment here, in a much more easy way. What is the starting point?

• By the beginning of the year, most of the analysts (JPMorgan, ML, Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley) published their economic outlooks, including euro-dollar exchange predictions.
• All of them agreed on saying that dollar-euro exchange will be around $1.35 by the end of 2010.
• By Jan 2010, euro was around $1,42.
• Starting in May and June, most of those analysts, have been refreshing their forecast to say that euro will slump to around $1.15 (2 cents up or down, depending on the analyst).

Well, so far, in just 5-6 months since their initial predictions, they have re-assessed what they say, and the new value is 15% lower... 20% if you consider the exchange rate by Jan 2010.

OK.... So far, we cannot say this is a brilliant job, nor they deserve their salaries, just based on how accurate their economic predictions are. In fact, if I would dare to ask my boss to re-consider my goal indicators by a 15%, I will certainly fall under robust values, and I will not get any bonus by the end of the year.

Let's wait until the end of the year, and check how well they performed... My (random) bet is that euro will be $1,20!