What are some strategies to really get a feel for a certain Market and be able to predict the future of to the best of your knowledge?  

On another side how many people predicted this downturn in 2016.

The Fed's plan has not changed but the market does not like the plan.I will never be able to predict the macroeconomic future but there is one certainty:  We have a CREDIT driven economy...borrow and buy and interest rates have a huge impact.

Don't try and predict the market or interest rates.

In other words, most Investors don't anticipate the down turn because they believe they can't predict the future.

But again not predicting it but there is the thought process that ( and or good reason) that these are loans that once taken are good until you sell the property etc.. the bank is not going to advertise this fact. you need to read it in the docs and I bet most of the MLO's at the credit unions don't even know what the docs say.. :)

More looking into duplexes up to four-plexes and the sort, the information I've understood on commercial can be a little less predictable

But I predict it will follow the same path as biconnect.

To my knowledge, it's primarily a single-annual indicator meaning the cash flow is annualized and only for one year, whereas IRR takes values over several years (5-10 on average in my experience).I use CoC all the time, rarely ever use IRR because it can be hard to predict income multiple years out but I recently met someone who is religious about NPV & IRR.

Our lives are simply not long enough to let timelines of cycles, of which we can not predict, to be the driving force in our investment decisions.