Meet the winner of the Q2 2025 “Right!” said FRED Challenge

The winner of the Q2 2025 “Right!” said FRED Challenge, Josh Jamner, is an investment strategist who has worked in both buy- and sell-side research roles over the course of his 16-year (and counting) career on Wall Street. Josh is known as jjamner on GJ Open and lives in New York City. In this interview, he discusses his interest in and approaches to forecasting, and how the Liberation Day tariff announcements (and their aftermath) affected his forecasting for this challenge.

GJO: To start, could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

Of course. I was raised in Connecticut about an hour outside of New York City, attended Colby College in Maine, where I was a Government major and Economics minor, and moved to New York City to pursue a career in finance after college. I have been here ever since. Outside of work, I enjoy skiing, hiking, reading (preferably near a beach, lake, or pool), cooking, and spending time with my wife and second grader.

GJO: How did you first become interested in forecasting, and what led you to GJ Open?

I joined GJ Open in 2019 on the recommendation of my two colleagues at ClearBridge Investments (my employer for the past eight years), but I was familiar with Good Judgment before that, having read Superforecasting and a few related books such as Thinking, Fast and Slow, Expectations Investing, and a personal (albeit tangentially related) favorite, Soccernomics. Prior to joining GJ Open, I had been tracking forecasts and calculating Brier scores in a spreadsheet for a year or two. When I saw how easy the platform was to use, plus the opportunity to see the forecasts of others and the group consensus, I switched over and my old spreadsheet hasn’t been touched since.

GJO: What has your experience on the platform been like so far?

My experience has been quite positive; otherwise, I wouldn’t have continued participating all these years! I find it helpful both professionally and personally. On the personal side, it is fun to try to anticipate the future and how situations may evolve, especially in areas where I have little subject matter knowledge. I like the challenge of forecasting and strive to push myself to improve my thinking, and participating in GJ Open is one avenue to do so.

Professionally, seeing how my own views differ from consensus is quite useful. But perhaps even more useful (to me) is seeing how consensus evolves in response to new information and comparing that to how my own views shift over time. I find it valuable to compare the distribution of odds for a given forecast (and how that distribution changes over time) between myself, consensus, online betting markets, financial markets using options data, and anything else I can find.

GJO: Could you walk us through your approach to the “Right!” said FRED Challenge? What do you think helped you reach the top of the leaderboard?

I think there was a bit of randomness or luck in reaching the very top of the leaderboard, although I have been near the top before (5th in Q3 2024). The Q2 2025 challenge came during a tumultuous period for economic data and financial markets sparked by the Liberation Day tariff announcements early in the quarter. In some cases, I felt comfortable leaving prior forecasts unchanged in the weeks following, while in others it made sense to shift the distribution to imply fatter tails, and in yet others my views evolved such that more of a directional shift was the outcome. Over the course of May and June, conditions continued to evolve fairly dramatically such that I found myself making larger-than-normal updates to my forecasts.

Ultimately, I think a lack of anchoring and a willingness to frequently update my thinking—and at times turn around and update my thinking again a few weeks later in a 180-degree opposite direction—was crucial. While I didn’t place at the top of any single question within the challenge, I was in the top 25 for all 13 and the top 15 for 9 questions, so consistency played a large role as well.

GJO: Are there particular types of forecasting questions you enjoy most?

I tend to focus on economic and financial market questions given my profession, but I do enjoy forecasting sports even though I am empirically quite bad at it. I don’t gamble on sports for many reasons, and seeing my “sports Brier” on GJ Open is one of them! I also enjoy forecasting things that are seemingly impossible to forecast. The challenge is fun, and thinking through a framework or approach to build a forecast upon is intellectually stimulating.

GJO: What advice would you give to beginner forecasters on GJ Open?

First, read a few books or papers on forecasting if you haven’t already. Any of the ones I mentioned is a good place to start. Second, build participating on GJ Open into your routine; for example, I have a recurring calendar reminder to check and update my forecasts every Friday morning. Sometimes I end up updating my forecasts at a different time, and sometimes I miss a week entirely, but in general I think having a periodic update such that it becomes a habit or part of your routine helps a lot.

In terms of actually participating on GJ Open, I would suggest focusing on an area where the individual has some sort of experience or subject-matter expertise or perceived edge, along with a sample of broader topics. While it takes a bit of time to build up enough forecasts to evaluate the results, I found I wasn’t quite as good in some areas as I might have thought (sports), while in others (currencies) I knew my weaknesses to begin with. And that works both ways: you might find out you actually are pretty good in an area you didn’t expect.

GJO: Is there anything else you’d like to share with other forecasters on GJ Open?

I would like to thank everyone involved with GJ Open. I very much appreciate being able to participate, and I know a lot goes on behind the scenes to keep things operating smoothly!

See the latest forecasting challenges on GJ Open and try your hand at forecasting!

Meet the winner of the Q3 2024 “Right!” said FRED Challenge

The winner of the Q3 2024 “Right!” said FRED Challenge, Julio Vieiro, is a retired geologist with two decades’ experience in the oil industry as well as an investor, photographer, and painter. Known on GJ Open as JAVL, in this interview he discusses his interest in forecasting, his diverse hobbies, and his tips for fellow forecasters. He lives in Argentina.

GJO: Could you please tell us about yourself and your background?

Hi. I was born and live in Argentina. Professionally, I’m a geologist, and I have also studied biology and engineering. I worked almost two decades in the oil industry, and I’m currently retired. Additionally, I’ve been a photographer and painter for many years. Nowadays I dedicate my ever-scarce time to personal investments in the stock market, artistic activities, and a two-year program to become a professional sommelier. I enjoy mountains, the outdoors, sports, reading, and barbecues with my partner, my two adult children, and close friends. I’m interested in diverse topics.

GJO: How did you first become interested in forecasting? What brought you to GJ Open specifically?

During my professional development, I was always involved in the forecasting of technical parameters such as hydrocarbon saturation, mineralized thickness, porosity, pressure, etc. In this context, I was often curious why many highly trained professionals had an unconscious tendency to “fall in love” with their own ideas or models, or to expect results mainly according to their desires or what they thought someone expected, wrongly allocating resources or expectations. Frequently, people were more accurate evaluating their peers’ projects than their own.

In my case, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow was very revealing. It allowed me to give shape to the intuition that humans have evolved not to develop accurate objective explanations of reality but to generate quick, plausible explanations in order to effectively operate in our original environment, which is not the current one. The way I see it, many times our minds tend to take shortcuts that seem reasonable and/or comforting instead of doing the hard work of looking for evidence. This characteristic would not always help us understand complex situations, especially if we are emotionally involved.

Regarding GJ Open, during the pandemic I read Philip Tetlock’s Superforecasting and found it captivating. I decided to join GJ Open as a fun challenge to test in a non-subjective way my abilities to predict results of complex situations.

GJO: You had some tough competition in the Q3 2024 “Right!” said FRED Challenge. In your opinion, what helped you top the leaderboard?

I’m sure there’s always a dose of luck, some randomness. On the other hand, I try to pay attention to economic data. There is a great availability of information and projections, and it’s difficult to weigh which variables are really relevant and which have little or no impact. I also try to understand the probabilities of future events that could change the observed trends.

GJO: What types of forecasting questions do you enjoy the most? What topics would you like to see more of on the platform in 2025?

I’m more interested in some topics, such as economics, technology, space, sports. I tend to focus on what I enjoy most and what I’m interested in learning about. Evaluating the possible results helps understanding and stimulates the search for information. I prefer questions with data available, not just opinions. I also prefer questions where possible outcomes are expressed in ranges with multiple probabilities rather than yes/no or single probability answers.

I would like to have more questions related to the Latin American reality. In particular, my country is currently going through a complex and interesting economic and political process with still uncertain results.

GJO: What tips could you offer beginner forecasters on GJ Open?

I’m not sure what the best advice is, and I suppose there are many things that could be said. In any case, what I try to do is understand the question very well, not give an opinion on things that I am totally unaware of, look for reliable information and sources of data with frequent updates, and discriminate the relevant factors among the multiple ones that could influence a result.

What I find most important, however, is to find the point at which doubt or uncertainty makes us start to feel uncomfortable with the probabilities we assign. In my experience, people tend to feel too confident or secure. In many of these cases, something important could be missing. On the contrary, I often tend to overextend the alternatives to ensure I don’t err. I try, then, to force myself to rethink the problem in a different way or, more thoroughly, look for more information, or review what I have, to adjust the answer until I feel unsure. It’s not usually easy. Logically, at some point there are cases that are mathematically defined or where the probabilities seem to me less than 1/1000. Another exercise that I find useful is to assign a higher likelihood to those outcomes that don’t match the one that I prefer.

GJO: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

It seems to me that the exercise of making forecasts accustoms us to confronting our ideas with reality and trains us to make decisions with probabilistic logic, which I consider very important for both professional and personal life. It is also a very fun activity, a game where one competes against others and against oneself. Many thanks to Good Judgment for the enjoyment.

See the latest forecasting challenges on GJ Open and try your hand at forecasting!