Discounted cash flow analysis

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Many courses on investment teach about using discounted cash flow analysis. That means you have to estimate the future cash flow of the company for the next five to ten years. If a company makes a million this year, and you think that it will increase the earnings by 10% every year, you can use the Excel spreadsheet to compute the future earnings. The investment courses teach you to use a formula to discount the future value to present value. That means you have to decide on a buying price today. This price is the share price that you will pay for a share of the business. At first when I started to learn investing, I like this discounted cash flow analysis. It seems so cool to use Excel spreadsheet to compute the future earnings. Later on, I find that this method is complete nonsense. Nobody can predict the future earnings. I rather base my buying decision on the bigger economic situations, and the cash flow of the businesses for the past few years. The money in the bank is real money. Any future earning is still an unknown.