Friday, December 31, 2010

Keep Ahead of the Herd in 2011

Keep Ahead of the Herd in 2011
Learn to Survive and Thrive with Knowledge of Socionomics and the Elliott Wave Principle
December 31, 2010

By Elliott Wave International

Have you ever noticed that much of the time, the forecasts for what’s going to happen next are quite often just more of what happened last? There’s no real insight, just “expect more of the same.”

That’s not how we view the world here at Elliott Wave International, where instead we study patterns of positive and negative mood to predict changes in the stock market, current events and other trends.

Pop culture trends are more than just "interesting" -- analysis of social mood trends is part and parcel of Elliott Wave International's technical approach, helping us anticipate changes that most people never see coming.

Prechter's groundbreaking paper, "Pop Culture and the Stock Market," first published in 1985, lays out the foundation for his contrarian analysis:

1) Popular art, fashion and mores are a reflection of the dominant public mood.

2) Because the stock market changes direction in step with these expressions of mood, it is probably another coincident register of the dominant public mood and changes in it
.
3) Because a substantial change in mood in a positive or negative direction foreshadows the character of what are generally considered to be historically important events, mood changes must be considered as possibly, if not probably, being the basic cause of ensuing events.

Both a study of the stock market and a study of trends in popular attitudes support the conclusion that the movement of aggregate stock prices is a direct recording of mood and mood change within the investment community, and by extension, within the society at large.

It is clear that extremes in popular cultural trends coincide with extremes in stock prices, since they peak and trough coincidentally in their reflection of the popular mood.

The stock market is the best place to study mood change because it is the only field of mass behavior where specific, detailed, and voluminous numerical data exists. It was only with such data that R.N. Elliott was able to discover the Wave Principle, which reveals that mass mood changes are natural, rhythmic and precise.

The stock market is literally a drawing of how the scales of mass mood are tipping. A decline indicates an increasing 'negative' mood on balance, and an advance indicates an increasing 'positive' mood on balance.

The positive and negative events and trends of any given year paint a picture of society's mood as a whole. Haven’t we seen enough conventional forecasting fail miserably (remember the 2007-2009 debacle?) to consider an alternative method?

This new year, resolve to look at the world in a different light, and learn to anticipate changes that will keep you ahead of the herd with an understanding of socionomics and the Elliott Wave Principle.

As we enter 2011, we are happy to offer Prechter's "Popular Culture and the Stock Market" essay for FREE with your Club EWI sign-up. There is no obligation.

When you join Club EWI to access the "Pop Culture" essay, you can also access dozens of other free resources to help you understand how the Elliott Wave Principle and socionomic insight can help your investment strategies.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

What Really Moves the Markets

What Really Moves the Markets: News? The Fed? The Real Answers Will Surprise You
Elliott Wave International's free 118-page Independent Investor eBook explains why financial markets are NOT a matter of action and reaction
December 29, 2010

By Elliott Wave International

"There is no group more subjective than conventional analysts, who look at the same 'fundamental' news event a war, interest rates, P/E ratio, GDP, economic policy, the Fed’s monetary policy, you name it and come up with countless opposing conclusions. They generally don’t even bother to study the data." -- EWI president Robert Prechter, March 2004 Elliott Wave Theorist.

If you watch financial news, you probably share Bob Prechter's sentiment. How many times have you seen analysts attribute an S&P 500 rally to "good news from China," for example -- only to focus on a different, supposedly bearish, news story later the same day if the rally fizzles out?

You need objective tools to make objective forecasts. So, we put together a unique resource for you: a free 118-page Independent Investor eBook, where you see dozens of examples and charts that show what really creates market trends.

Here's a quick excerpt. For details on how to read the entire Independent Investor eBook online now, free, look below.


Independent Investor eBook
Chapter 1: What Really Moves the Markets? (excerpt)

Action and Reaction

In the world of physics, action is followed by reaction. Most financial analysts, economists, historians, sociologists and futurists believe that society works the same way. They typically say, “Because so-and-so has happened, such-and-such will follow.” ... But is it true?

Suppose you knew for certain that inflation would triple the money supply over the next 20 years. What would you predict for the price of gold?

Most analysts and investors are certain that inflation makes gold go up in price. They view financial pricing as simple action and reaction, as in physics. They reason that a rising money supply reduces the value of each purchasing unit, so the price of gold, which is an alternative to money, will reflect that change, increment for increment.

Figure 4 shows a time when the money supply tripled yet gold lost over half its value. In other words, gold not only failed to reflect the amount of inflation that occurred but also failed even to go in the same direction. It failed the prediction from physics by a whopping factor of six, thereby unequivocally invalidating it.

Investors who feared inflation in January 1980 were right, yet they lost dollar value for two decades...Gold’s bear market produced more than a 90% loss in terms of gold’s average purchasing power of goods, services, homes and corporate shares despite persistent inflation!

How is such an outcome possible? Easy: Financial markets are not a matter of action and reaction. The physics model of financial markets is wrong. ...

Cause and Effect

Suppose the devil were to offer you historic news a day in advance. ... His first offer: “The president will be assassinated tomorrow.” You can’t believe it. You and only you know it’s going to happen. The devil transports you back to November 22, 1963. You short the market. Do you make money? ...

[...continued in the free 118-page Independent Investor eBook]


Read the rest of the eye-opening report online now, free! All you need is a free Club EWI profile. Here's what else you'll learn:
  • The Problem With “Efficient Market Hypothesis”
  • How To Invest During a Long-Term Bear Market
  • What’s The Best Investment During Recessions: Gold, Stocks or T-Notes?
  • Why "Buy and Hold" Doesn’t Work Now
  • How To Be One of the Few the Government Hasn’t Fooled
  • How Gold, Silver and T-Bonds Will Behave in a Bear Market
  • MUCH MORE
Keep reading this 118-page Independent Investor eBook now, free -- all you need is a free Club EWI profile.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Parachutes vs. Pillows: Why Diversification Doesn't Work

Parachutes vs. Pillows: Why Diversification Doesn't Work
Prechter and Kendall's "All the Same Market" Analysis Shows how Diversification Can't Protect You from Correlated Risk
December 22, 2010

By Elliott Wave International

A dear friend of mine wants to celebrate an important health milestone by going skydiving with friends. She feels happy and healthy and excited. She wants to do something very thrilling to celebrate.

I'm going to help my friend celebrate, by way of something very mundane: I intend to photograph the event from the ground. Of course I'm excited to be there, and I understand my friend's motivation -- it's just that I am not a thrill seeker (especially when it comes to heights)!

Similarly, I don't take big risks with my investments. I'm sure it's a thrill to make a million, but the risk of losing all my capital is too terrifying for me to stomach.

When I started to research my investment choices, the idea of "portfolio diversification" made a lot of sense to me. All of the "experts" said it's the key to reducing risk. It seemed safe in the same way that ropes and pulleys could really help a novice enjoy rock climbing or the trapeze.

But then I came across this gem of investing wisdom, written in terms that I understood on a visceral level:

Recommending diversification so that novices can reduce risk is like recommending that novice skydivers strap a pillow to their backsides to "reduce risk." Wouldn't it be more helpful to advise them to avoid skydiving until they have learned all about it? Novices should not be investing; they should be saving, which means acting to protect their principal, not to generate a return when they don't know how.

The Elliott Wave Theorist (April 29, 1994)

I can appreciate the metaphor.

What fascinates me even more is how this contrary view of diversification is magnified when you consider how markets can correlate.

In Conquer the Crash, Robert Prechter and Pete Kendall first put forth their "All the Same Market" hypothesis, stating that in the Great Asset Mania and its bear market aftermath, all markets "move up and down more or less together…as liquidity expands and contracts."

Consider, for instance, the tried and increasingly debilitating strategy of diversification. With the market smash extending across every investment front but cash, one might think that this concept would at least be challenged by now. But it remains a virtually uncontested truism among market advisors and their followers.

The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast (Oct 31, 2008)

The first edition of Conquer the Crash published in 2002; since then, our analysts have produced a multitude of chart-based evidence to demonstrate the coordinated trends across diverse financial markets.

Ready to turn in your pillow?

Anyone interested in making informed financial decisions can benefit from our newly available "Death to Diversification" eBook, which explains more about how you can avoid the false security of a diversified portfolio.

As a Club EWI member, we are proud to offer you this new FREE e-book: You can see for yourself the kind of analysis our subscribers have received and used for over 30 years.

Click here to login or sign up for instant access.

Thursday, December 09, 2010

Learn Elliott Wave Analysis

Learn Elliott Wave Analysis -- Free
Often, basics is all you need to know.
March 5, 2010

By Editorial Staff

Understand the basics of the subject matter, break it down to its smallest parts -- and you've laid a good foundation for proper application of... well, anything, really. That's what we had in mind when we put together our free 10-lesson online Basic Elliott Wave Tutorial, based largely on Robert Prechter's classic "Elliott Wave Principle -- Key to Market Behavior." Here's an excerpt:

Successful market timing depends upon learning the patterns of crowd behavior. By anticipating the crowd, you can avoid becoming a part of it. ...the Wave Principle is not primarily a forecasting tool; it is a detailed description of how markets behave. In markets, progress ultimately takes the form of five waves of a specific structure.

The personality of each wave in the Elliott sequence is an integral part of the reflection of the mass psychology it embodies. The progression of mass emotions from pessimism to optimism and back again tends to follow a similar path each time around, producing similar circumstances at corresponding points in the wave structure.

These properties not only forewarn the analyst about what to expect in the next sequence but at times can help determine one's present location in the progression of waves, when for other reasons the count is unclear or open to differing interpretations.

As waves are in the process of unfolding, there are times when several different wave counts are perfectly admissible under all known Elliott rules. It is at these junctures that knowledge of wave personality can be invaluable. If the analyst recognizes the character of a single wave, he can often correctly interpret the complexities of the larger pattern.

The following discussions relate to an underlying bull market... These observations apply in reverse when the actionary waves are downward and the reactionary waves are upward.

Idealized Elliott Wave Pattern

1) First waves -- ...about half of first waves are part of the "basing" process and thus tend to be heavily corrected by wave two. In contrast to the bear market rallies within the previous decline, however, this first wave rise is technically more constructive, often displaying a subtle increase in volume and breadth. Plenty of short selling is in evidence as the majority has finally become convinced that the overall trend is down. Investors have finally gotten "one more rally to sell on," and they take advantage of it. The other half of first waves rise from either large bases formed by the previous correction, as in 1949, from downside failures, as in 1962, or from extreme compression, as in both 1962 and 1974. From such beginnings, first waves are dynamic and only moderately retraced. ...

Read the rest of this 10-lesson Basic Elliott Wave Tutorial online now, free! Here's what you'll learn:
  • What the basic Elliott wave progression looks like
  • Difference between impulsive and corrective waves
  • How to estimate the length of waves
  • How Fibonacci numbers fit into wave analysis
  • Practical application tips for the method
  • More
Keep reading this free tutorial today.

Thursday, December 02, 2010

Simple Tools for Competent Traders

Simple Tools for Competent Trades
Improve your Financial Decision-Making Skills with Guidance from EWI Chief Commodity Analyst Jeffrey Kennedy.
December 2, 2010

By Elliott Wave International

Improve your Financial Decision-Making Skills with Guidance from EWI Chief Commodity Analyst Jeffrey Kennedy.

As a high school freshman, I had a friend over to do math homework after school. It was cold in the room, so I stood on my chair and jumped up and down to try and bat open a closed heating vent.

My dad walked in and commented on the geometry problem we were working on, as I continued to struggle, unsuccessfully, to open the vent. Then, he handed me a ruler from the table and said:

"Simple tools are what separate us from the animals."

Without another word, he left us to finish our homework. Sadly, I don't remember any of the geometric formulas that I was trying to master on that winter's day. But you can bet that I have never failed to reach for a simple, practical tool since.

Here at Elliott Wave International, our technical analysts provide you with simple, practical tools that can help your analysis and trading.

EWI Senior Analyst Jeffrey Kennedy has spent years using and mastering — among many other technical trading tools — several well-known moving average techniques. In the process, he has even developed his own personal moving average method that he calls the "Stoplight System."

For a limited time, the first two chapters of "How You Can Find High-Probability Trading Opportunities Using Moving Averages" are available FREE when you join Club EWI.

In these excerpts, Jeffrey will teach you about:

  • Defining the Moving Average and Its Components
  • The Dual Moving Average Cross-Over System
  • Moving Average Price Channel System
  • Combining the Crossover and Price Channel Techniques
  • The Most Popular Moving Averages

Like any good mentor, Jeffrey's insights are meant to help you become more successful and highly evolved in your endeavors.

Here is one of the charts showing how moving averages are similar to the Wave Principle in signaling buying opportunities:

Tools for Competent Traders

This chart of Corning shows how each time the market moves into the price channel (marked by the short vertical lines), it signals a buying opportunity. When Corning's price breaks through the price channel (indicated by the short diagonal line), the trend has turned to the downside. So, we have a clear uptrend followed by a clear downtrend.

Remember, "Simple tools are what separate us from the animals."

We have extended our special offer -- for a limited time, the first two chapters of "How You Can Find High-Probability Trading Opportunities Using Moving Averages" are available FREE -- through December 6th. Sign up for a free Club EWI membership and gain instant access to the excerpt by clicking here!