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Get Ready To Celebrate Phi Day With Us on 6.18
Most people who remember their elementary school math, remember circles and the irrational number, pi, or 3.14. In fact, many people, including MIT students, celebrate March 14 as Pi Day (3.14). When we learned about that here at Elliott Wave International, we looked at one another and shouted, "Pi Day, Schmi Day! What the world really needs is a Phi Day."
This year, once again, we're celebrating Phi (pronounced "fie") Day on its numerical representation, which is .618 or June 18, and we ask you to join with us to start spreading the word.
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Once you get interested in Elliott wave analysis, the next step is to want to know more about Fibonacci relationships, which spring from phi. Bob Prechter explains how the two are connected in his book,
Beautiful Pictures from the Gallery of Phinance, (which is deeply discounted for Phi Day
):
The Fibonacci Sequence and the Wave Principle
The Fibonacci sequence is 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, and so on. It begins with the number 1, and each successive term is the sum of the previous two. The limit ratio between adjacent terms is .618034…, an irrational number variously called the "golden mean" and "divine proportion," but in this century more succinctly, "phi" (the Greek letter, φ). A "golden section" is a line split into Fibonacci proportion, as follows: .618 and .382 to equal 1.00.
Both the Fibonacci sequence and the Fibonacci ratio appear ubiquitously in natural forms, ranging from the geometry of the DNA molecule to the physiology of plants and animals to patterns of human mentation. Ralph N. Elliott's publisher, renowned investment advisor Charles Collins, first realized that the Wave Principle is connected to the Fibonacci sequence and communicated that fact to Elliott. After researching the subject to the small extent possible at the time, Elliott presented the final unifying conclusion of his theory in 1940, explaining that the progress of waves has the same mathematical base as so many phenomena of life.
The Fibonacci sequence governs the numbers of waves that form the movement of aggregate stock prices in an expansion upon the underlying 5-wave-3-wave relationship. The simplest expression of a corrective wave is a straight-line decline. The simplest expression of a motive wave is a straight-line advance. A complete cycle is two lines. At the next degree of complexity, the corresponding numbers are 3, 5 and 8. This sequence continues to infinity.
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To kick off our celebration of Phi Day last year, I wrote an article that appeared on the Fox News web site:
Happy Phi Day -- Perfect Time for Some 'Phinancial' Fun
By Susan C. Walker for Fox News.com
It’s about to be June 18, which is also written as 6-18. So let me be the first to wish you a Happy Phi Day!
Just as some people who are fascinated by the irrational properties of the ratio known as pi (3.14...) celebrate it on Pi Day (March 14 or 3-14), here at the financial forecasting firm where I work, we are fascinated by phi (0.618...), and we want to introduce more people to its interesting properties.
How? By introducing Phi Day on June 18 or 6-18. Phi (pronounced 'fie') is the Greek letter that represents the golden number, which is 1.618034... The reciprocal of this number is 0.618034… or, by rounding down, 0.618, which in month and day notation equates to June 18.
Phi is an irrational number like pi, but its impact goes well beyond pi’s, which essentially delineates the static relationship between the circumference and the diameter of a circle. Phi, on the other hand, governs patterns of growth and decay, from botany to financial markets; in naturally occurring structures, such as DNA; and in manmade creations in art and architecture, such as the ancient Greek temples.
It even identifies where your navel appears in your body (approximately 0.618 of the distance from your feet to the top of your head.). Leonardo DaVinci wrote and illustrated his book, "On the Divine Proportion," in which he included his ideas about how the human body is based on the golden ratio.
This ratio has gone by many names, such as the golden ratio, the divine proportion and the golden mean. It wasn't until early in the 20th century that we began using the Greek letter phi to describe it — thanks to American mathematician Mark Barr. He took phi from the initial letter of the name of the Greek sculptor, Phidias, who appears to have used the golden ratio when designing both the Parthenon and its great statue of Athena on the Acropolis in Athens.
To be continued...
For more information on phi and the Fibonacci sequence, including 5 free resources and 5 deeply discounted Fibonacci product, please visit our special Phi Day webpage