The article, “JPMorgan and the broking fetish for conviction calls” by Dan Davies, questions the investment industry's obsession with analysts making strong, confident market predictions.
The author argues that investors often place too much value on “conviction calls”—bold recommendations presented with great certainty—when financial markets are inherently difficult to predict. He uses JPMorgan’s recent oil research as an example: the analysts acknowledge that they cannot establish a reliable baseline view of the future, something Davies suggests should be recognized as intellectual honesty rather than mocked as weakness.
Davies also criticizes the tendency of investment professionals to confuse confidence with expertise. Historical examples, including investment “conviction lists” and fashionable alternative-data strategies, show how investors can become convinced by information that merely reinforces what they already believe. Having privileged or supposedly unique information can even create an unjustified feeling of superiority.
The broader message is that good investment research should recognize uncertainty rather than hide it. Analysts who openly admit what they do not know may actually be demonstrating better judgment than those who confidently make predictions that later prove wrong. As the article concludes, Yeats was right that conviction matters—but perhaps investment bankers possess too little of the kind of doubt that makes conviction meaningful.