More About the Author
For Robert Prechter's full biography, please visit www.robertprechter.com.
Robert R. Prechter, Jr., is a financial and social theorist and a market analyst. He has written 14 books. Elliott Wave Principle with A.J. Frost (1978) forecasted the great bull market of the 1980s and 1990s. Conquer the Crash (2002, 2009), a New York Times bestseller, predicted the current global financial crisis in detail. Prechter's two-book set Socionomics (2003) shows how his social and financial theories weave together with his market forecasting approach: Waves of group mood determine the tenor of society's actions, from more inward, dark, bearish expressions to more outward, sunnier and bullish endeavors. Prechter's newest website, www.socionomics.net, explains his socionomics hypothesis and how it applies to various human arenas.
Prechter has dedicated much of his career to employing and enhancing R. N. Elliott's financial pricing model called the Wave Principle. He began his career as a Technical Market Specialist with the Merrill Lynch Market Analysis Department. Prechter is President of Elliott Wave International, the world's largest market forecasting firm. EWI serves institutional and private investors around the world.
Financial Theory
Prechter's theory of financial causality proposes a separation between finance and economics. In the economic realm, goods and services have utility value and mostly are priced rationally via the Law of Supply and Demand. This leads to rough equilibrium. In the financial realm, investments are priced non-rationally, with changes fueled by uncertain future demand and according to the Law of Patterned Herding. This approach generates speculation and unceasing dynamism. Only once the analyst recognizes this divergence can he properly view financial pricing, Prechter asserts.
Socionomics
Prechter's theory of socionomics says that trends and events across a broad spectrum of human interaction are impelled by a common immutable force: social mood. With its claim that mood impels action and events, socionomics is unique; most social theories posit the reverse.
The Wave Principle
As a market analyst, Prechter applies the Wave Principle, a financial pricing model identified and described by Ralph Nelson Elliott in the 1930s. According to this model, financial market prices develop in a series of five- and three-wave forms and produce a fractal. Prechter has written and/or edited a dozen books on the Wave Principle. Prechter began applying the Wave Principle to financial markets in 1972. Prechter's firm, Elliott Wave International, analyzes every major financial market in the world, 24 hours a day, according to the Wave Principle.
Awards
Using the Wave Principle, Prechter won the U.S. Trading Championship in 1984 with a then-record 444% return in four months in a monitored, real-money options trading account. Prechter has won numerous speaking, timing and publishing awards, and in 1989, he was named "Guru of the Decade" by the Financial News Network (now CNBC). In 1999, Prechter received the Canadian Society of Technical Analysts' first annual A.J. Frost Memorial Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Development of Technical Analysis. In 2003, Traders Library granted him its Hall of Fame award.
Miscellaneous
Prechter was born in 1949. He attended Yale University on a full scholarship. In 1979, Prechter founded Elliott Wave International and began publishing monthly market analysis under the masthead, The Elliott Wave Theorist. He was a nine-year member the Market Technicians Association's board and was the MTA's President in 1990-1991. Prechter employs a staff of analysts who apply the Wave Principle, real-time, to every major market in the world. He recently created the Socionomics Institute, which elucidates socionomics, and he underwrites the Socionomics Foundation, which is dedicated to supporting socionomics-related academic research. Elliott Wave Principle has been translated into a dozen languages, and Conquer the Crash was a New York Times bestseller. Prechter has made multiple speeches and media appearances around the globe. In 2008, the Georgia state legislature asked Prechter to testify before the legislature's Joint Economic Committee regarding the developing real estate crisis. Bob is a member of the Triple Nine Society, the Shakespeare Oxford Society and the Shakespeare Fellowship.
