Читать книгу Supertiming: The Unique Elliott Wave System - Robert C. Beckman - Страница 8

Elliott explained the historic movement of share prices on the basis of irresistible cyclical forces acting over long periods of time. Obviously, he was not alone in his direction of thought, although he was the only man ever to apply these long-term cyclical influences to the stock market. N. D. Kondratieff, in his essay “Die langen Wellen der Konjunktur” discovered the 54-year cycle of economic life which confirmed the findings of the Dutchman J. van Gelderen, who in his book Springvloed; Beschouwing Over Industriele Ontwikkeling en Prijsbeweging, observed that in addition to the 10-year cycle discovered by W. Stanley Jevans in 1878, a much longer cycle of economic activity existed. Joseph Schumpeter later formalised the work of the main cyclical theorists: Kondratieff (54-year cycle), Juglar (18-year cycle), and Kitchin (4-year cycle). It was Schumpeter’s concept in his Theory of Economic Development that each Kondratieff Cycle contained 3 complete Juglar cycles and 14 Kitchin cycles.

Professor Schumpeter wrote of his model:

“No claims are made for our three-cycle scheme except that it is a useful descriptive or illustrative device. Using it, however, in that capacity, we in fact got ‘ex visu’ of 1929, a ‘forecast’ of a serious depression embodied in the formula: confidence of depression phrases of all three cycles.”

Of the stock market Schumpeter states:

“It is natural to expect that upward movement on the stock exchange will, in general and in the absence of unfavourable external factors, set in earlier and gather force more quickly than the corresponding upward movements in business, i.e. often come about already in the later stages of revival when things are beginning to look better every day, with new possibilities showing themselves. Similarly, it is to be expected that stock prices will turn before other indicators, i.e. when in the latter stages of prosperity limitations and difficulties emerge and it becomes clear that possible achievements have been fully discounted.”

Whether or not Elliott was influenced by the work of the great cyclical economists it is not possible to say. From what one can gather, Elliott was intellectually honest yet there appears no mention of cyclical economic studies in any of his work. Should Elliott have drawn the conclusions in his work quite independently of those set out by Schumpeter and others, the nature of his findings becomes all the more intriguing.