It's a sign of hard-fought wisdom when you hear yourself say, "If only I knew then what I know now." In fact, many of us are saying to ourselves right now, "If only I knew a few months ago that the stock market would turn so bearish…"
Subscribers to Bob Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist often get the flip side of that feeling, as in, "Boy, am I glad I was prepared for what's happening in the economy and the markets today." Let's look at three examples taken from Bob's Theorist of just over a year ago in September 2007, which he titled, Fasten Your Seat Belt. This is the best way I know to point out that those who got Bob's message one year ago have been well prepared for the fiasco that the markets and the economy find themselves in now.
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Excerpted from the September 2007 Elliott Wave Theorist by Bob Prechter
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT
1. "Investors should stay in the safest cash equivalents. There is a high probability that a financial crisis will expose weaknesses in overly leveraged banks. Make sure you are not one of the suckers who has lent them deposits. Real estate, stock shares, commodities, most bonds (corporate, municipal and mortgage) and even most bank CDs are likely to produce losses eventually…. I presume our readers took steps some time ago to protect their savings by keeping them in Treasury bills, Swiss money market claims, outright cash and as deposits in one or more of the perhaps dozen truly safe banks, money-market funds and insurance policies in the world, as instructed in Conquer the Crash. T-bills have outperformed the S&P 500 for the past seven years, and their relative performance is likely to soar in coming weeks and years, simply by not producing losses."
2. "The market is certainly poised for a panic. Confidence has held sway for 2½ decades, during which time investors have become utterly unconcerned with risk. They hold a number of misconceptions that foster such complacency. The day the Fed lowers one of its rates or engineers a major temporary loan and the stock market goes down anyway is the day that investors will become utterly uncertain of what they believe about market causality, and panic will have no bridle. Sadly, Ben Bernanke will be blamed for the debacle, when all he will have been guilty of is serving an immoral monopoly, bad timing and failing to understand the forces at work. The third item pertains to almost everyone."
3. "Three things signal an approaching economic contraction:
(1) The yield curve is racing back to normal after being inverted for over six months… now that short rates are falling back below long rates, we know that the demand for short-term loans is down, indicating a cooling economy.
(2) Silver topped out over a year ago and remains weak. Silver is an industrial metal, and along with copper leads changes in the economy.
(3) The stock market seems to have begun wave c in July. That’s all you need to know to forecast an economic contraction.
"Economists are nearly unanimous that things are fine. If our Elliott wave interpretation is right, the economy is heading not just into recession but into depression. The size of the stock market decline will determine the extent of the contraction. The bigger it becomes, the deeper the contraction will be."
And it's not as if Bob's market insights stopped in September 2007. Far from it – every month, he publishes his current thoughts and logical discussions of what he believes will happen in the economy and the markets over the next few months and years. He always looks forward to try to prepare his readers for the worst – and the best. Merely chewing over current events is not enough to keep his interest, nor does he believe it's enough to keep his readers' interest either.
In fact, he just published his October 2008 issue, which asks the question: Have investors panicked and capitulated? The answer to this question is critical, because it goes straight to the point of whether the markets have truly bottomed. Toward the end of this month's issue, he explains how a bloated credit system with "backing" ensures deflation. What you read here now will prepare you to take care of your finances and your state of mind as more unprecedented things happen over the next few months and years.
Excerpted from the current October 2008 Elliott Wave Theorist by Bob Prechter
"Believers in perpetual inflation think that the government can keep assuming others’ bad debts infinitely. But it can’t. The only reason that Congress has gotten away with issuing this latest blizzard of new IOUs is that society is still near the top of a Grand Supercycle, so optimism and confidence still have the upper hand. But as pessimism and skepticism continue to wax and the economy contracts, the bond market will figure out that the Treasury will be unable to fund all these obligations with tax collections. Then Treasury bond prices will begin falling as if they were sub-prime mortgages. A collapsing bond market is deflation; it is a contraction of the outstanding credit supply. Recent bailout schemes will not reverse the deflationary freight train. They will serve only to confuse the marketplace and hinder the efficient retirement of bad debts, thus exacerbating the crisis and aggravating investors’ uncertainties and thereby falling right in line with the declining trend of social mood."
Get tomorrow's financial news today. Don't wait until it's too late to do anything constructive about your finances. Get a free copy of Conquer the Crash when you subscribe now to Bob Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist by itself or as part of the Elliott Wave Financial Forecast.