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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Enigma who wrote (92361)	1/2/2003 11:21:10 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116815

It is a load of bull with a long history. It is like Kondratieff. Nobody uses it or believes it, but it has cachet because no one can deny it either. It is based on careful observation of long term market behaviour. In the case of Kondratieff, it was inconvenient for the Galbraithians, Keyenesians and Communists to admit that they did not have solutions so Kondratieff had to be wrong. Maynard K was convinced he himself did know how to cure economic cycles or at least mitigate their worst effects. No one followed his precepts exactly, so we don't know really if he was right. The triumph of the cyclists is that for perhaps unknown reasons, they turn out to be right overall, without anyone using them for fine-grained look-ahead precision. Kondratieff works in principle by the time honoured method of backtesting, but without a method to determine when to use the long wave or the short, with precision, people tend to think of it as observation, not science. One programmer used Kondratieff in the States with fair results and one cyclist used a similar method with regression in New Zealand with good results long term from 1970 onwards. I know another economist who has used charting and simple supply demand principles and some fundamentals to predict the growth in the economy with great correctness. Shannon of Bell Labs did a statistical empirical look at equity volatility and money management and made money in the 1950's. So cycles do work if you have enough computing horsepower, statistical knowledge and know how to avoid gamblers ruin. In other words you need a calculated edge, as it is impossible to calculate timing 100% correctly in any future move. People who say they have an analog fit to the waves of the future change probably would not say it if they had it. Personally, If I had tomorrow's newspaper, you would never hear it out of me. Perhaps occasionally I would want to borrow huge sums of money, and would magically pay it back the very next day with great interest, never saying a word about what I did with it, or where I got the interest. Having said that, gold is going to 356 dollars by next Friday. I have a feeling. I learned long ago, that to have feeling is better than predicting with math, as if you are wrong, well it was only a hunch. Hunching is better than crunching often, unless your name is Albert Claude Einstein Shannon Kondratieff Zardoz Merlin Nostradamus. And you are lucky too boot. Basic Soothsayer's Rules for prediction of true future events. 1. If possible make them as similar as possible to past events. Believability is a big issue. Things tend to re-happen. It looks like genius. Remember the old saying, "past successes are not necessarily predictive of future success" -- well it's a crock. That was invented by brokerages to indicate you should really believe their picks but you cannot sue them if they kite you. Really, the past is boringly prologue to the future. Else, why plan anything? 2. Add some spice to the story as nobody like to read about a boring future. 3. Make your predictions things that some people want to happen anyway. If you area popular enough predictor, people might make them happen just to please you. Or themselves. 4. Be suitably vague. Include some ifs, to give you a way out. (works for stock research analysts) Imprecision is a plus when critics hold you to the necessity of being exactly right to be useful. 5. Don't appear to have a vested interest in the outcome. 6. Occasionally use scientific logic and little known, but published schedules as well as natural precise cycles such as comet returns that know one else knows about. The old "Italian city will almost disappear from explosion this decade and cause much fright and condemnation" always works. They do with good regularity anyway. 7. Wear cool clothes and indicate that the inspiration for the insight comes from a place you are not in control of. i.e. Your mind. 8. When in doubt predict something easy that you can change yourself, such as what you will wear tomorrow. Predicting your own life is much more successful than others people's. 9. The art of prediction is really the art of being a fraud who reinvents himself after each failure. This is a remarkably successful technique used by such luminaries as Bernie Cornfeld, and host of others who did not even go to jail. While it is not the last refuge of a scoundrel, it is certainly one of their main haunts. 10. After you are proved wrong, time and time again, repeat the mantra that faith comes above proof, and eventually history will prove you right. (Or other meaningless drivel of that sort -- you have to have an answer) Also remind the reader that the purpose of communication in our society in primarily entertainment. If they wanted to make use of data why didn't they pay for the premium service with the lower error rate? EC<:-}

To: Enigma who wrote (92361)	1/3/2003 10:16:48 AM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116815

"For another thing", Elliot waves are long term general market indicators to do with traded equities. Certain singular metal commodities do not have Elliot patterns in short term (less than 2 year cycles), as they follow basically long, long term cycles. Gold firmly follows the 40 month, 8 and 11 year long-term cycle as does inflation. It has a correlation with the market swings which follow, 10 month, 40 month and 5.5 year cycles as well as the long one, but it moves in negative correlation with the underlying market trend as well as shadowing the market in its short term swing. Right now for gold to remain true to its recent history, it will only decline slightly if the market does too. But underlying the slight decline in the new year will be a longer term trend out to midsummer that will start to show in the spring. This long cycle deviation has been in effect for two years now, if you have not noticed. The short term one to two month 10 to 15 dollar swing has also been in effect. So ultimately the gold market may test 330. But its upside in that case is firmly in the 370 to 400 range. It should reach a firm 370 by june, if it does not swing up suddenly. 30 dollar price moves in one day are not unusual historically. In today's dollars, 30 to 70 dollar prices swings or even 100 dollar prices swing in one year are not uncommon. This is from a constant dollar record going back 200 years. If gold is not in a down trend, the historical average increase in gold's price including all drop-backs, - long term -, is 4.33 dollars per month. The average drop-back takes from one to two months, and is about 10 dollars. There are about ten such drop-backs per year. They are, of course, made up for. The worst drop back was 22 dollars in the last two years. So on that basis, we can expect a test to 325 worst case, and a price of 370.50 by June, with the worst over by April-May. I might add that such a catastrophic drop back is not indicated here, unless accompanied by a market collapse of 1500 points as well. On the other hand gold is tending to move against the market often so even in a market drop back this lag in gold is not guaranteed. Other forces, such as the dollar and bonds may be at work. Gold has reacted it appears at first glance with the 2001 increase in commodities. However it is on a two year rise and "diagonally" (not ramp-wise), which is traditional. Commodities are not on a two year rise. From this we can see that gold is not a "pure" commodity. It has a distinct long term diagonal pattern, that is rarely unbroken for long. I should point out that there is a good case for short two and three year price swings in gold. We have already seen this recently and the record, which is really an inflation record, goes back many years as well. From 1977 it should be remembered, gold appreciated from an approximate 100 dollar low to about 480 dollars in 1984. This is in line with our $4.33 price rise per month very closely. EC<:-}