Tag: Robert Prechter

"Silent Crash": Why the Real Value of the Dow Jones Industrials Matters

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Priced in real value, the Dow has collapsed 84% since 1999

By Elliott Wave International

Stock market investors who glance at their screens see the dollar value of the Dow Industrials.

Another way -- the way Elliott Wave International (EWI) prefers -- is real value, in terms of the things you can actually buy with your Dow shares, such as real money (gold) or a basket of commodities.

Clearly, one could ask: "Why is the Dow priced in real value important? I buy things with dollars."

Let's look briefly at the nominal (dollar valued) Dow vs. the real Dow. Then we can address why the Dow measured in real value matters.

On July 16, the nominal Dow reached an all-time closing high of 17,138.20.

"The value of the real Dow is not even close. Indeed, you may be in for a shock. The Dow priced in real money-gold-topped in 1999 and has collapsed 84% since then ... . Had the U.S. maintained honest money, the Dow would be priced at 266 today ... ."

The Elliott Wave Theorist, June 2014

Robert Prechter, founder and president of EWI, calls the collapse in the real value the "Silent Crash." Continue reading ""Silent Crash": Why the Real Value of the Dow Jones Industrials Matters" →

The Stock Market with Elliott Wave Labels from 1693 to Present Day Reveals a Bear Market Formation Since 2000

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By: Elliott Wave International

The following article was adapted from Robert Prechter's June 2014 issue of The Elliott Wave Theorist, one of the longest-running investment letters in the business, continuously published monthly since 1979.

Figure 1 shows the stock market's waves from 1693 to the present. The circled Roman numerals denote waves of Grand Supercycle degree, the largest complete waves for which stock market data exist.

Wave I (circled) ended in 1720 at the peak of the South Sea Bubble in England. Wave II (circled) took the form of a zigzag, labeled (a)-(b)-(c); it ended in 1784. Third waves are usually extended, meaning they are longer than wave one and have clear subdivisions. This is exactly how wave III (circled) developed. It ended in 2000.

Wave III (circled) subdivides into five waves. Wave (I) ended in 1835, wave (II) in 1859, wave (III) in 1929, wave (IV) in 1932 and wave (V) in 2000.

Wave (V) subdivides into five waves, as illustrated in Figure 2. Wave I ended in 1937, wave II in 1942, wave III in 1966, wave IV in 1974 or 1982, and wave V in 2000. Continue reading "The Stock Market with Elliott Wave Labels from 1693 to Present Day Reveals a Bear Market Formation Since 2000" →

Inside Look: Check out this Unprecedented Bear Market Formation Since 2000

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Think the current conditions in the stock market are normal? Think again. Here are 3 characteristics you should expect to see in wave b.

By Elliott Wave International

Editor's Note: Below you will find a sneak peek from the just-published issue of Robert Prechter's Theorist. It provides you an opportunity to see some of the research, analysis and forecasts that Elliott Wave International's subscribers are enjoying inside their latest issue.

Figure 4 (below) is a diagram from Chapter 2 of Elliott Wave Principle. It displays a typical progression of prices and psychology in a bear market. We can apply this picture to the stock market since 2000. The real-life pattern is a bit more complex than this picture, because wave a itself was a flat correction, which ended in 2009. The dashed line in Figure 4 represents what the market has been doing since then: rallying to a new high in a b-wave. The entire formation has been tracing out an "expanded flat" correction (see text, p.47) of Supercycle degree.

Per Figure 4, among the characteristics we should expect to see in wave b are: "Technically weak," "Aggressive euphoria and denial" and "Fundamentals weaken subtly." The volume contraction in the stock market has now lasted over five years, which is extreme technical weakness, albeit only in that indicator. The 30+ charts we have shown of market sentiment reveal historically high levels of optimism regarding stocks. No doubt bulls would dismiss the idea that investors today exhibit "aggressive euphoria and denial." But look at Figure 5. Continue reading "Inside Look: Check out this Unprecedented Bear Market Formation Since 2000" →

Good Reason for Doom and Gloom

Posted on by The INO.com Team

By Doug French, Contributing Editor

Predicting the future, like getting old, ain’t for sissies. Questioning the bull market is even more treacherous.

Howard Gold, writing for MarketWatch, makes fun of seers who made what he calls “the four worst predictions to gain traction over the past few years.”

Gold says the last six years have been a disaster for those who stayed out of the stock market. He claims there’s a bull market in doom and gloom, referring to a column by his colleague Chuck Jaffe, who points out, “The fortune-tellers … know that the more outrageous the prediction, the more attention they get. They can highlight any forecasts they get right, knowing that their misfires are forgotten quickly. Thus, calamity and catastrophe sells. Right now, it’s a bull market for bearish forecasts.”

If such a bull market in doom were really happening, the market wouldn’t be hitting all-time highs. Besides, no one ever went broke being out of the market.

But more importantly, there is a very good reason people respond to gloomy forecasts. Behavioral economics pioneer and 2002 Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman explains in his bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow that when people compare losses and gains, they weigh losses more heavily. There’s an evolutionary reason for this: “Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce,” Kahneman explains. Continue reading "Good Reason for Doom and Gloom" →

The Government's Disastrous Reign over U.S. Money

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By Elliott Wave International

Very few people know that the United States did not create a monetary unit pegged to "buy" some amount of metal, as if the dollar were some kind of money independent of metal.

In 1792, Congress passed the U.S. Coinage Act, which defined a dollar as a coin containing 371.25 grains of silver and 44.75 grains of alloy. Congress did not say a dollar was worth that amount of metal; it was that amount of metal. A dollar, then, was a unit of weight, like a gram, ounce or pound. Since the alloy portion of the coin was nearly worthless, a dollar was essentially defined as 371.25 grains -- equal to 24.057 grams, or 0.7734 Troy oz. -- of pure silver. (15.43 grains = 1 gram, and 480 grains = 1 Troy ounce.)

In a nutshell, a dollar was equal to a bit more than 3/4 of an ounce of silver; or, in reverse, an ounce of silver was equal to $1.293.

The same act declared that a new coin, called an Eagle, would consist of 247.5 grains of gold and 22.5 grains of alloy. It valued this coin by law at ten dollars, meaning 3712.5 grains of silver. Continue reading "The Government's Disastrous Reign over U.S. Money" →