Saturday, April 14, 2012

The Kondratieff Cycle And Subdivisions

The economic long wave is a boom and bust cycle driving the global economy, first discovered by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff in the 1920s. Kondratieff was researching debt, interest rate, production and prices when he discovered the economic long wave. The Long Wave Dynamics approach calculates the ideal Kondratieff long wave cycle as 56 years in length, but it can run long and short in Fibonacci ratios to the ideal length in time.



The current long wave is of the long variety and began in 1949. Current analysis suggests that the current K-wave will end in 2013, running eight years and a Fibonacci ratio of 14.5% longer than the ideal 56 years. 



The late renowned Harvard economist Joseph A. Schumpeter, author of the book Business Cycles; A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Processbelieved that the economic long wave is the single most important tool for economic prognostication.


The current long wave is now in the Kondratieff Winter season. Most investors wish they had access to this long wave season chart in 2007. Every long wave has four seasons, just like a year. The approximate length of a long wave season is 14 years, but they can run short and long. Each season typically contains four Kitchin cycles with an ideal length of 42 months. However, long wave seasons can have fewer or more Kitchin cycles than the normal four.





www.escholarship.org
 

















































The Kitchin Cycles: Harvard’s Joseph Schumpeter concluded that every long wave was made up of 18 smaller business cycles or Kitchin cycles. In more recent years, with more sophisticated charting technology and market analysis, the research conclusions of market analyst P.Q. Wall, that the long wave is make up of only 16 market cycles, has been validated. This is an essential distinction in cycle research.

Schumpeter’s model of how all the cycles worked together to produce long waves included Kitchin cycles (the regular business cycle of 3-5 years) and Juglar cycles (7-11 years), with three Kitchins in each Juglar. Schumpeter also wrote of the Kuznets cycles (15-25 years), but didn’t put them in the charts below. The chart depicts the flow of the Kitchin and Juglar cycles integrated in 56-year long wave cycles. Note that Schumpeter’s model presented 18 business cycles in a regular long wave. See: schumpeter_business_cycles.pdf
Market cycles differ from business cycles in that they are identified on an index chart, and not necessarily in the economic data as a business cycle. However, they often correlate to the regular business or trade cycle. Every long wave appears to be made up of 16 market “Kitchin” cycles.

Chart 15.2 Kitchin Cycles Since 1982
The chart above demonstrates our count of the 15 Kitchin cycles that have come and gone in the current long wave since 1949 using stochastics. We are currently in cycle number 16, with its expected conclusion in the year 2013.

The 16 Kitchin cycles that make up a long wave are ideally 42 months in length, but they are rarely ideal and fluctuate in length both short and long, often in Fibonacci ratios of their ideal length in time. In each Kitchin Cycle there are ideally 36 dips or 36 Hurst "5 week" lows.






The Kitchin Third: The ideal Kitchin cycle is 42 months or 1277.5 days in length, the ideal Kitchin Third is 14 months or 425.83 days. A Kitchin cycle is made up of 9 Wall Cycles, therefore each Kitchin Third is made up of three Wall Cycles. PQ Wall had a general rule of third last and weakest. This goes for the final Kitchin Third in a Kitchin Cycle, but also goes for Wall Cycle #3, #6, and #9, or the final Wall Cycle in each Kitchin Third. The Kitchin Cycle often unfolds in the three Kitchin Third sections, but the Kitchin Third is not typically as distinct as the other cycles.

Kitchin 3rds
The chart displays the full Kitchin cycle #14 in this long wave, which began on September 1, 1998 and ended on October 10, 2002. This Kitchin cycle, like most in the current long wave, ran long. Therefore, the Wall cycles and Kitchin 3rds also ran longer than ideal. The nine Wall cycles and three Kitchin 3rds are all clear in this Kitchin cycle
Schumpeter’s model of how all the cycles worked together to produce long waves included Kitchin cycles (the regular business cycle of 3-5 years) and Juglar cycles (7-11 years), with three Kitchins in each Juglar. Schumpeter also wrote of the Kuznets cycles (15-25 years), but didn’t put them in the charts below. The chart depicts the flow of the Kitchin and Juglar cycles integrated in 56-year long wave cycles. Note that Schumpeter’s model presented 18 business cycles in a regular long wave.

The Wall Cycle (aka 20-Week Cycle):  The Wall cycle is the ideal trader’s cycle. Accurate technical analysis of the Wall cycle is essential for stock market traders. If you divide the ideal 56 year long wave by 144 you have the ideal Wall cycle. The mathematical relationship of these cycles indicates the Wall cycle is a miniature long wave. The approximate 20 week cycle (141.9 days) fluctuates short and long by Fibonacci ratios to the ideal length.
Wall Cycle
The chart presents the Wall cycle that ran from July 8, 2009 to February 5th 2010. The Wall cycles are currently expected to be running long due to government stimulus and aggressive monetary policy. If the ideal Wall cycle is 141.9 days, then an exact 50% extension of that is 212.85 days. July 8, 2009 plus 212.85 days is February 5th, 2010.

The Quarter Wall Cycle (aka Trader’s Cycle)

Quarter Wall Cycle
This chart is an example of the four Quarter Wall cycles in a Wall cycle in the DJIA and 8,5,5 stochastics. This is the Wall cycle that ran from October 10, 2002 until March 12, 2003. Tracking the Quarter Wall cycle is of critical importance for traders.
As the name implies, the Quarter Wall cycle reflects that the Wall cycle tends to unfold in four sections, or Quarter Wall cycles. The Quarter Wall cycle is a mini version of the long wave season. The ideal Quarter Wall cycle fluctuates in Fibonacci ratios in time relative to its ideal length of 35.475 days.The Quarter Wall is the critical cycle for traders.  Just like the other cycles, the Quarter Wall will run short and long relative to the ”ideal” in Fibonacci ratios in time. The forecasting power of the Quarter Wall forecasting tool is often startling.


"There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

 William Shakespeare

"By the Law of Periodical Repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again, and again, and again - and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s, and each obeying its own law … The same Nature which delights in periodical repetition in the sky is the Nature which orders the affairs of the earth. Let us not underrate the value of that hint."

Mark Twain

Friday, April 13, 2012

Al Larson's Natural Times

May 9th, 2002 [Al Larson @ http://daytradingforecasts.com]
Every now and then God blesses me with a new insite into the marvelous workings of the universe. A few weeks ago, I saw a new phenonema operating in the S&P. This I call Natural Times. These are times of energy impulses in the S&P. Most of the time, there is no planet aspect at these times. They are not as simple as that. These points tend to be pretty accurate, and seem to account for many of the turns during the day.
Apparently Al Larson's Natural Times is a set of fixed cycles dividing the 24 h-day in 4 major cycles of 6 hours each, and moving back 4 Minutes per day. About 4 Minutes because the geocentric movement of the Sun (or rotation of Earth towards Sun) = average 1° every 4 min [1 Day = 1440 minutes/360°], sometimes more, sometimes a little less … check solar ephemeris for solar angular speed per day.

The basic rhythm between these times is always [in minutes]

00:30   00:23   00:19   00:25   00:33   00:53   00:48   00:44   00:23   01:01   =   05:59 hh:mm
00:30   00:23   00:19   00:25   00:33   00:53   00:48   00:44   00:23   01:01   =   05:59 hh:mm  
00:30   00:23   00:19   00:25   00:33   00:53   00:48   00:44   00:23   01:01   =   05:59 hh:mm  
00:30   00:23   00:19   00:25   00:33   00:53   00:48   00:44   00:23   01:01   =   05:59 hh:mm


e.g.

2012-Apr-12 (Thu)   08:17    08:50    09:43    10:31    11:15    11:38    12:39    13:09     ...
2012-Apr-13 (Fri)    08:13    08:46    09:39    10:27    11:11    11:34    12:35    13:05 ...
2012-Apr-14 (Sat)    08:09    08:42    09:35    10:23    11:07    11:30    12:31    13:01  ...
2012-Apr-15 (Sun)    08:05    08:38    09:31    10:19    11:03    11:26    12:27    12:57  ...
2012-Apr-16 (Mon)    08:01    08:34    09:27    10:15    10:59    11:22    12:23    12:53 ...



Solar Forecast for SPX


Thursday, April 12, 2012

STD-Green-Red-Blue-Pattern in the SPX & ST Outlook


This week was a 'Blue Week' = M-shaped. Ideally the right M-shoulder-high was today.

Next week is a red week = trending = high of week on Monday - low of week on Friday or inverse

tomorrow Friday = last Monday or inverse = blue = W-shaped 
= choppy 
= (9.40H) 10.00-30L 12.45H 1.40L 3.00-30H

Next Monday = today Thursday or inverse 




SLT - LT - IT Delta-Pattern in current Stock Indices




























German DAX























Wednesday, April 11, 2012

W.D. Gann's Cycles for Stock Market, Soybeans & Corn



In the stock market and commodity courses that W.D. Gann published during the 1930's he had a section on cycles. Gann listed his major cycles as:

82 to 90 Years, 60 Years, 45 Years, 30 Years, and 20 Years

Some analysts state that Gann's 60-Year Cycle was his "Master Time Factor" because it is twice his 30-Year Cycle and three times his 20-Year Cycle.

Gann listed his minor cycles as:

10 Years, 5 Years, 3 Years, 2 Years, and 1 Year.

Gann taught his students to go back in time to see what the market under study was doing 82 to 90 years ago, 60 years ago, 45 years ago etc. This method of Gann Cycle Analysis is quite useful as it gives one a roadmap of what pattern may unfold during the coming year or so.

If one finds in the market under analysis the pattern that unfolded 60 years ago has comparisons to the pattern that unfolded 30 years ago, or 20 years ago, the probabilities favor a comparable pattern unfolding at the current time.

However, there are additional ways to use Gann's Cycles. Smaller intervals of Gann's Cycles are useful tools as they align with highs, lows, and accelerations.

One-fifth (the 17-year cycle) divisions of Gann's 84-Year Cycle regularly align with major highs and lows in stocks. The depression era low of July 1932 to the beginning of the post WW II bull market in 1949 is 17 years. The low of 1949 to the high of 1966 is another 17 years. From early 1966 to August 1982, it is 17 years. August 1982 to January 2000 is another 17 years. January 2000 to December 2016 will be another 17 years.

Obviously, the one-fifth (17-year) division of Gann's 84-Year Cycle is quite important in the stock market.

Various intervals of Gann's smaller cycles are just as significant.

Let's now look at Gann's 84-Year Cycle in soybean prices.

This chart shows the sawtooth, high-low pattern of one-sixth divisions of Gann's 84-Year Cycle in soybeans. In soybeans, measurements of Gann's 84-Year Cycle are taken from the spike high in soybean prices of February 1, 1918. One revolution of the 84-Year Cycle completed at the historic low of October 2001. It is amazing that after 84- Years, this interval of the cycle continues to align with historic highs and lows.

The 84-Year Cycle shows there is a one-third division to the lows and a one-third division to the highs. The only exception to the sawtooth pattern was the historical low of October 2001. The probabilities favor the turning point in 2016 will revert to the pattern and be a significant low.

Let us now take a look at smaller divisions of the 84-Year Cycle in soybeans. This chart shows an approximate 48 to 50 Week Interval of Gann's 84-Year Cycle measured from February 1, 1918.

... A major bull market in beans began on June 8, 2010 just as this interval of Gann's 84-Year Cycle bottomed and turned up.

STD-Yellow-Green-Pattern in SPX

















Saturday, April 7, 2012

SPX vs Solar Forecast | April 6



April 9 L
April 10-11 H
April 16 L
April 17 H
April 20 L

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Eurodollar COT Indications for Stock Market Tops | Tom McClellan

www.mcoscillator.com - February 03, 2012 

... For almost a year, we have known that a top was due to arrive in February 2012.  And sure enough, stock prices have been rising nicely in recent weeks as fulfillment of that expectation.

Now this leading indication says that things are going to get less fun for investors for a while. The next 3 months show a sideways to downward structure in the eurodollar COT data, and the implication is that the steep price advance that we have been seeing should transition to a more sideways market ...

Eurodollar futures COT chart (from last year) sees the S&P 500 correcting until June, but then rallying hard. The next major inflection point is due in early June, when this leading indication says that a big multi-month rally is due to begin

_____________________________________________

www.mcoscillator.com - May 05, 2011 



There are some informational jewels in the CFTC’s weekly Commitment of Traders (COT) Report, and sometimes in ways that most people would not imagine. This week’s chart looks at data on commercial traders’ net positions in eurodollar futures, but with a twist: that data is shifted forward by one year to reveal that it actually leads the movements of the stock market. 

... The term “eurodollars” should not be confused with the exchange rate between the dollar and the euro.  It refers to dollar denominated time deposits in European banks, and the term predates the creation of the euro currency.  Eurodollar deposits typically follow the LIBOR interest rates.

... I am taking data from the eurodollar market, and applying it to an analysis of the US stock market.  The key discovery that I made a few years ago is that the movements of the SP500 tend to echo what the commercial eurodollar traders were doing previously.  I played around with alignments to get the best fit, and found that a one-year lead time gave the best correlation.


Let’s pause a minute to let that deep point sink in.  Commercial eurodollar traders seem to “know” a year in advance what the stock market is going to do.  It is not a perfect correlation, but it is a darned good one.  I’m not sure what makes this work, but I have seen that it has worked great since about 1997.  It may help to understand that the commercial traders of eurodollar futures are typically the big banks, who are using these futures contracts to manage their assets and fund flows.  So what we are seeing in their futures trading are responses to immediate banking liquidity conditions, and those actions give us a glimpse of future liquidity conditions for the stock market.  These liquidity conditions are revealed first in the banking system, and then the liquidity waves travel through the stock market a year later.  But even if we cannot identify exactly what makes something work, after a few years of seeing that it does work we can learn to accept it.

Friday, March 30, 2012

9-Month Cycle | Tom McClellan


Chart In Focus
July 22, 2011

The 9-month cycle in the stock market used to be a very regular and important factor governing stock price movements.  But recent changes in the rules and structures of the markets may have made this cycle go the way of Saturday trading and paper stock certificates.  Or perhaps it has just changed itself into a new form.  Let's take a look.

My lead chart this week highlights what I am talking about.  Before 2007, there were important bottoms about every 185 trading days.  Cycles analysts for years have called this the "9-month cycle", or the "40-week cycle", even though the precise period was a little bit shorter than those numbers.  Big round numbers are easier to say, which is why those names were used.
In addition to the major cycle lows every 185 trading days, there was also a significant mid-cycle low that would appear somewhere in between the major bottoms.  The mid-cycle low was usually not as punctual, and could arrive early or late, even as the major cycle low would tend to be more on time.  This mid-cycle low was a "harmonic" of the frequency of the major cycle low, meaning that they were even multiples of each other.  Harmonic frequencies are a big deal for mechanical engineers dealing with solid structures, but they also show up in other arenas like the stock market.

Starting in 2007, this all changed, as delineated by the red vertical line.  It was hard to understand this change as it was occurring at the time, but easier to see now that we have the luxury of looking back at the historical data.  What appears to have happened beginning in 2007 was that the length of this cycle contracted dramatically, for both the major cycle and the mid-cycle periods.

One of the reasons why it was so difficult to understand this change in period as it was occurring in real time is because of another trait of this cycle, which is known as a "phase shift".  In my historical research, I have identified the 9-month cycle as working on the stock market all the way back into the 1960s, although curiously not so much before then.  One of the more interesting behaviors of this cycle over that time period is that about every 6-8 years, the 9-month cycle would seem to skip a beat, and then start up again on some new schedule.  Here is a great example of this behavior:

Flashback to 2002-06 and the 9-month cycle

In the lower portion of this chart, there is a modified sine wave pattern to help visualize the behavior of the cycle in the SP500's price movements.  The market was following this cycle pattern very nicely up until late 2005, and then it jumped onto a new schedule that just happened to be about a half cycle length off of the original schedule.

So with the knowledge that a phase shift was a possibility with this cycle, it was hard to understand what was happening in early 2008.  And this illustrates one of the big pitfalls with doing any sort of cycle analysis: cycles can change, and so while they may give us nice predictions of what should happen at some point in the future, there is no guarantee that the past behavior will remain in effect in the future.

It just so happens that 2007 was when this cycle changed, and it was also the year that the uptick rule for shorting stocks went away.  It is hard to understand why a rule change like this could make a difference on a market cycle, but I have an explanation that may help.

Imagine a wave pool in a laboratory, where scientists create waves to study how they travel through the water.  Now imagine that you remove all of the water, and replace it with 30-weight motor oil.  Because the oil is lighter but more viscous than the water, the behavior of waves in that wave pool would understandably be different.

So thinking of the financial markets, if the regulators were to do something that changes the "viscosity of money", making it flow more or less easily, then we would likely see changes in the way that waves propagate through that medium as well.  Such changes might include restrictions on shorting stocks, the advent of money market funds, the introduction of stock index futures and options, leveraged ETFs, etc.  All of these affect the ease with which money can flow into and through the stock market.

Now, if you look back at the top chart, you can see that the blue numbers are getting bigger again lately.  Those numbers represent the time period between the major lows of this cycle (formerly known as 9-month).  The lowest number was 159 trading days in early 2008, and it has climbed back all the way up to 177 as of the latest major cycle price low.  It may be that after the initial shock, this cycle is working on getting back up to is "natural" frequency.  Or it may be that 159 and 177 are just the widest extremes of a new range of cycle periods that average more like 168 trading days, and that this is the new natural frequency.  We won't know for sure for several more cycles' worth of time, and that's the big problem with this analytical technique.

For what it's worth, and to help your planning, 159 to 177 trading days from the most recent major cycle low equates to a timeframe of Oct. 31 to Nov. 25, 2011.



Advanced GET's Cycle-tool suggests this was the 9 Month Cycle crest. However, the tool is not adjusted according to Tom McClellan's findings.