Prechter's Perspective [Paperback]

Robert R. Prechter Jr. (Author), Peter Kendall (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1996

Prechter's Perspective gives you an inside look at the man named "Guru of the Decade" after winning the U.S. Trading Championship with a record 444.44% profit.

Prechter's Perspective compiles actual trading knowledge from a career that took Bob Prechter three decades to build. You'll get Bob's thoughts on how Fibonacci ratios can help you time the markets and when to use risk-limiting stops. You'll get his tips on ruling out emotional tendencies and using discipline to keep the markets in your favor.

This book gives you lots of detail about the markets over the last 25 years, but it's more than just a history lesson. Bob also teaches you about how the Wave Principle applies to anticipating the legacies of national leaders, trend changes in pop culture and the next big move in the markets (plus the little ones, too).

If you're a newcomer to Elliott Wave or if you're looking for the right resource to give a friend, family member or colleague, this 221-page newly revised edition of Prechter's Perspective is the best overview of the Wave Principle you can get.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book is drawn from Robert Prechter's media interviews (1977 - 2000), selected excerpts from The Elliott Wave Theorist, The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast and other sources. With a contrary yet common-sense approach to markets and a straight-forward style, Prechter tells us what modern investors go out of their way to ignore: the market is layered with complexity. An added bonus is that much of his commentary on markets, investing and social events is timeless. In displaying the full bounty of the Wave Principle, Bob paints a compelling and highly readable portrait of both the structure and the irony behind the social activities of man.

"In the biggest imaginable picture," says Prechter, "the trend is always up, according to the Wave Principle. Mankind is on an upward path, with corrections along the way as he moves through history." Beyond this heartening message, the Wave Principle's true value is the way in which it accounts for those "corrections along the way." In doing so better than any other tool, it has an accomplished record of forecasting success. Bob has extended this success to forecasting changes in the culture at large, which he covers in the final chapter.

Join me on an enjoyable journey through Prechter's Perspective.

-- Peter Kendall, Editor

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

This book is drawn from Robert Prechter's media interviews (1977 - 2000), selected excerpts from The Elliott Wave Theorist, The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast and other sources. With a contrary yet common-sense approach to markets and a straight-forward style, Prechter tells us what modern investors go out of their way to ignore: the market is layered with complexity. An added bonus is that much of his commentary on markets, investing and social events is timeless. In displaying the full bounty of the Wave Principle, Bob paints a compelling and highly readable portrait of both the structure and the irony behind the social activities of man.

"In the biggest imaginable picture," says Prechter, "the trend is always up, according to the Wave Principle. Mankind is on an upward path, with corrections along the way as he moves through history." Beyond this heartening message, the Wave Principle's true value is the way in which it accounts for those "corrections along the way." In doing so better than any other tool, it has an accomplished record of forecasting success. Bob has extended this success to forecasting changes in the culture at large, which he covers in the final chapter.

Join me on an enjoyable journey through Prechter's Perspective.

-- Peter Kendall, Editor --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 267 pages
• Publisher: New Classics Library; 1st edition (May 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932750400
• ISBN-13: 978-0932750402
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,929,577 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile read even if you aren't into Elliott Wave, April 11, 2006

By 

Paul M. King "pmkingtrading.com" (Vermont, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Prechter's Perspective: Conversations with Bob Prechter, Legendary Market Theorist (Paperback)

In this interview-style book published in 2004, Bob presents his own perspectives on subjects as far-ranging as Elliot Wave Principle (obviously) to the way he believes that the 'normal' cause and effect relationships people take for granted in a market environment (and the world in general) are actually inverted.

As well as a detailed and personal discussion of the application of Elliott Wave in the context of the practical uses in actual trading, Bob gives some simple but excellent rules for trading in general. These include:

* Having a method
* Having discipline
* Gaining experience
* Accepting responsibility for your actions
* Accommodating losses
* Accepting huge gains

Although an interview format book is sometimes difficult for some people to extract the true `value' from, it is well worth the effort of studying this book since it can give you some useful insights into things that you may currently take for granted as `truths' that are actually detrimental to your trading performance.

The main novel theme in this book is about Bob's concept of `Socionomics', where social mood and psychology are the result of movements in the markets not the other way round. Believing that the market goes down because people are depressed, for example is a complete reversal of the `conventional wisdom' and thinking about it deeply can lead to some interesting conclusions and beliefs that have a significant practical impact on how one approaches trading.

Discussing specific approaches to trading, and how Bob thinks about them is a useful and informative look into the trading methods of an obviously accomplished and passionate market participant and also gives a context for the application of Elliott Wave Principle. All-in-all it should be considered a very worthwhile read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Prechter's Perspective, February 7, 2010

By 

O. Chulu (usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Prechter's Perspective (Paperback)

Robert Prechter is a genius who has glimpsed deep into the heart of nature via his continuation of the ground breaking work of Ralph Nelson Elliott. He is a responsible steward of this knowledge and presents his analysis of Elliott waves in a concise and understandable manner. This book is invaluable to anyone who is attempting to gain not only an understanding of Elliott waves as it applies to the market but to over arching societal trends. This book is a gem as much for social scientists as for market researchers.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must read, January 18, 2010

By 

Riccardo Ronco "halcyon_2002" (Ric 67) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Prechter's Perspective: Conversations with Bob Prechter, Legendary Market Theorist (Paperback)

Even if you agree or disagree with the Elliott wave theory, it cannot be denied the increadible wealth of knowledge of history, markets, economy and social trends that Mr. Prechter has. For this reason alone one should read his work. Not for trading (or if you do, use his recommendations with a genuine trend following filter for the big calls like a multi-month breakout signal) but to open the mind on how forces can affect the stock markets. In my professional life I met only another major technical analyst with even a superior knowledge of the markets and that was Mr. Ian Notley. Charts must make sense and that is only possible when one overlaps them with macro indicators, cycles and yes, long-term elliott waves. Can I recommend also to look at the Kondratieff wave theory updated work by the "Long Wave Analyst"?