PrintForecast Contrarian View

For the past two weeks, subscribers to PrintForecast Contrarian View were provided with a review of two dissimilar forecasts created by our proprietary forecasting models. Using the broadest measure of the number of commercial printers from the U.S. Department of Commerce, one forecast shows today’s approximately 35,000 establishments declining to 28,000 by 2011; the other shows the number of establishments remaining about the same. Forecasting models come in a variety of flavors. Some are very conservative and minimize historical changes and develop an average forecast. Other models, however, place significant emphasis on the most recent trends. The two models we used for this exercise