Showing posts with label Kondratieff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kondratieff. Show all posts

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Future Ups and Downs into 2065 | Samuel Benner’s Prophecies

Samuel Benner was a farmer from Ohio who first published his prophecies about price fluctuations in 1875. The 19th century was the time of Laplacian probability, Gaussian distributions, Peano curves and Cantor set. While mathematicians were looking for structures in mathematics, Samuel Benner was studying and writing about a model of ‘Time’ to forecast the future. He lived in an era of Axe Houghton Indices, the time when the Chicago Board of Trade was established and agricultural commodity trading was active business. Society was busy with agriculture and expanding railroads. This is why his workings were based on pig iron, corn, cotton and hogs. Along with agriculture came the essential science of weather forecasting. What years would be dry or wet? When to expect years of heat, storm and cold? Agricultural statistics was compiled and used to establish demand and supply patterns. It was then 140 years back Benner wrote that the future cannot be calculated based on agricultural statistics. Statistics compilation would remain always poor, irregular, manipulable, undependable and non predictive. For Benner the axiom “history repeats itself” implies a cyclical movement in human affairs, and as it is a generally received opinion that everything moves in cycles, especially in nature. 

 
Prediction of the future can only be done by studying the past. History repeats itself with marvelous accuracy in detail from one panic year to another. Samuel Benner was the first to show how history repeated systematically. He was vocal about the cyclicality of financial catastrophes and his model illustrated the crisis' of 1891, 1902, 1910 and even 1929, 1987 and 2003. However, 2009 was a big miss in his set of nested cycles (exactly 20 Lunar Node Cycles after the 1637 Dutch Tulipomania bust). Time according to Benner was a pattern, a rule that did not change because of war, panic or elections. It was relentless in nature. It was periodical and not haphazard. The rule was unchangeable, determinable. Failures in business were connected with ignorance of ‘Time’. Today one can judge Samuel Benner as a farmer or a genius, but that would not change the fact that he was one of the first to see the mathematical hierarchy in ‘Time’. The story of the Benner’s work is intertwined with his personal experiences of bankruptcy. He was a prosperous farmer who was wiped out financially by the 1873 panic and then wanted to find out about the law of nature. He took the yearly average prices to smoothen the data. When he compared them he saw up and down yearly cycles repeating in a fixed sequence of a large cycle of 18-20-16 years and a small cycle of 9-10-8 years. The cycles low depicted reactions and depressions. According to Benner these were cast iron rules and he referred to them as ‘God in prices’.  

Benner discovered an 11 year cycle in corn and hog prices with alternating peaks at 4 and 6 year intervals. He also discovered an 11 year cycle peak in cotton prices and a 27 year cycle in pig iron prices with lows every 11, 9 and 7 years and peaks in a sequential order of 8, 9 and 10 years. He described a 54 Year Panic Cycle which arose from panics every 16, 18, 20 years, with this series repeating every 54 years, or as he explains, “it takes panics 54 years in their order to make a revolution or to return to the same order”. His book is one of the first examples of the development of cycles and periodicity theory in financial and commodity markets and was very popular amongst bankers and business men of the late 1800’s. His cycles and numerical sequences were effective throughout the 20th century, and can still be found to be operative today, predicting financial prices. Theorists will notice the similarities between his 11 year cycle and the sunspot cycle also of 11 years, something which has even been studied in current times by the Federal Reserve. Whether Benner was knowledgeable about this direct influence or not, he did make a connection through the weather and climate, and was likely aware of the earlier work on sunspots by Herschel, Jevons and others.

Benner never fully explained the basis of his cycle theories, but did state: "The cause producing the periodicity and length of these cycles may be found in our solar system … It may be a meteorological fact that Jupiter is the ruling element in our price cycles of natural productions; while also it may be suggested that Saturn exerts an influence regulating the cycles in manufacture and trade." Further, Uranus and Neptune: "may send forth an electric influence affecting Jupiter, Saturn and, in turn, the Earth … When certain combinations are ascertained which produce one legitimate invariable manifestation from an analysis of the operations of the combined solar system, we may be enabled to discover the cause producing our price cycles, and the length of their duration."

Later the larger 54 year cycle was also discussed in detail by Russian economist Kondratiev in 1925. Edward R. Dewey, Director of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, assessed Benner's pig iron price forecasts over a 60 year period. Remarkably, he regarded this cycle as showing a gain - loss ratio of 45 to 1, which was “the most notable forecast of prices in existence”.

Extending and updating Samuel Benner's cycles and correlating them with more recent US-stock market prices, pointed to the low in 2003, the high in 2010, and the minor crisis in 2011. This would then be followed by a rising stock market into 2018 and a depression in 2021. 

Monday, October 1, 2012

2013 - Peaks in Solar Cycle #24, Stocks and Commodities

Credits: John Hampson
... Solar peaks occur roughly every 11 years and secular peaks in equities and commodities occur close to solar peaks. There is a sine wave in long term real stocks and an opposite-polarity sine wave in long term real commodities, both which have around a 33 year (equivalent to 3 solar cycles or 1 lunisolar cycle) duration ... Treasuries (or inverse rates/yields) move in around a 66 year cycle (2 lunisolar cycles) with peaks and troughs converging with secular commodities peaks. The result is we see two different kinds of secular commodities bulls: one set against rates moving to a peak, and one set against rates moving to nothing ...

Saturday, April 14, 2012

The Kondratieff Cycle And Subdivisions

The economic long wave is a boom and bust cycle driving the global economy, first discovered by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff in the 1920s. Kondratieff was researching debt, interest rate, production and prices when he discovered the economic long wave. The Long Wave Dynamics approach calculates the ideal Kondratieff long wave cycle as 56 years in length, but it can run long and short in Fibonacci ratios to the ideal length in time.



The current long wave is of the long variety and began in 1949. Current analysis suggests that the current K-wave will end in 2013, running eight years and a Fibonacci ratio of 14.5% longer than the ideal 56 years. 



The late renowned Harvard economist Joseph A. Schumpeter, author of the book Business Cycles; A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Processbelieved that the economic long wave is the single most important tool for economic prognostication.


The current long wave is now in the Kondratieff Winter season. Most investors wish they had access to this long wave season chart in 2007. Every long wave has four seasons, just like a year. The approximate length of a long wave season is 14 years, but they can run short and long. Each season typically contains four Kitchin cycles with an ideal length of 42 months. However, long wave seasons can have fewer or more Kitchin cycles than the normal four.





www.escholarship.org
 

















































The Kitchin Cycles: Harvard’s Joseph Schumpeter concluded that every long wave was made up of 18 smaller business cycles or Kitchin cycles. In more recent years, with more sophisticated charting technology and market analysis, the research conclusions of market analyst P.Q. Wall, that the long wave is make up of only 16 market cycles, has been validated. This is an essential distinction in cycle research.

Schumpeter’s model of how all the cycles worked together to produce long waves included Kitchin cycles (the regular business cycle of 3-5 years) and Juglar cycles (7-11 years), with three Kitchins in each Juglar. Schumpeter also wrote of the Kuznets cycles (15-25 years), but didn’t put them in the charts below. The chart depicts the flow of the Kitchin and Juglar cycles integrated in 56-year long wave cycles. Note that Schumpeter’s model presented 18 business cycles in a regular long wave. See: schumpeter_business_cycles.pdf
Market cycles differ from business cycles in that they are identified on an index chart, and not necessarily in the economic data as a business cycle. However, they often correlate to the regular business or trade cycle. Every long wave appears to be made up of 16 market “Kitchin” cycles.

Chart 15.2 Kitchin Cycles Since 1982
The chart above demonstrates our count of the 15 Kitchin cycles that have come and gone in the current long wave since 1949 using stochastics. We are currently in cycle number 16, with its expected conclusion in the year 2013.

The 16 Kitchin cycles that make up a long wave are ideally 42 months in length, but they are rarely ideal and fluctuate in length both short and long, often in Fibonacci ratios of their ideal length in time. In each Kitchin Cycle there are ideally 36 dips or 36 Hurst "5 week" lows.






The Kitchin Third: The ideal Kitchin cycle is 42 months or 1277.5 days in length, the ideal Kitchin Third is 14 months or 425.83 days. A Kitchin cycle is made up of 9 Wall Cycles, therefore each Kitchin Third is made up of three Wall Cycles. PQ Wall had a general rule of third last and weakest. This goes for the final Kitchin Third in a Kitchin Cycle, but also goes for Wall Cycle #3, #6, and #9, or the final Wall Cycle in each Kitchin Third. The Kitchin Cycle often unfolds in the three Kitchin Third sections, but the Kitchin Third is not typically as distinct as the other cycles.

Kitchin 3rds
The chart displays the full Kitchin cycle #14 in this long wave, which began on September 1, 1998 and ended on October 10, 2002. This Kitchin cycle, like most in the current long wave, ran long. Therefore, the Wall cycles and Kitchin 3rds also ran longer than ideal. The nine Wall cycles and three Kitchin 3rds are all clear in this Kitchin cycle
Schumpeter’s model of how all the cycles worked together to produce long waves included Kitchin cycles (the regular business cycle of 3-5 years) and Juglar cycles (7-11 years), with three Kitchins in each Juglar. Schumpeter also wrote of the Kuznets cycles (15-25 years), but didn’t put them in the charts below. The chart depicts the flow of the Kitchin and Juglar cycles integrated in 56-year long wave cycles. Note that Schumpeter’s model presented 18 business cycles in a regular long wave.

The Wall Cycle (aka 20-Week Cycle):  The Wall cycle is the ideal trader’s cycle. Accurate technical analysis of the Wall cycle is essential for stock market traders. If you divide the ideal 56 year long wave by 144 you have the ideal Wall cycle. The mathematical relationship of these cycles indicates the Wall cycle is a miniature long wave. The approximate 20 week cycle (141.9 days) fluctuates short and long by Fibonacci ratios to the ideal length.
Wall Cycle
The chart presents the Wall cycle that ran from July 8, 2009 to February 5th 2010. The Wall cycles are currently expected to be running long due to government stimulus and aggressive monetary policy. If the ideal Wall cycle is 141.9 days, then an exact 50% extension of that is 212.85 days. July 8, 2009 plus 212.85 days is February 5th, 2010.

The Quarter Wall Cycle (aka Trader’s Cycle)

Quarter Wall Cycle
This chart is an example of the four Quarter Wall cycles in a Wall cycle in the DJIA and 8,5,5 stochastics. This is the Wall cycle that ran from October 10, 2002 until March 12, 2003. Tracking the Quarter Wall cycle is of critical importance for traders.
As the name implies, the Quarter Wall cycle reflects that the Wall cycle tends to unfold in four sections, or Quarter Wall cycles. The Quarter Wall cycle is a mini version of the long wave season. The ideal Quarter Wall cycle fluctuates in Fibonacci ratios in time relative to its ideal length of 35.475 days.The Quarter Wall is the critical cycle for traders.  Just like the other cycles, the Quarter Wall will run short and long relative to the ”ideal” in Fibonacci ratios in time. The forecasting power of the Quarter Wall forecasting tool is often startling.


"There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

 William Shakespeare

"By the Law of Periodical Repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again, and again, and again - and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s, and each obeying its own law … The same Nature which delights in periodical repetition in the sky is the Nature which orders the affairs of the earth. Let us not underrate the value of that hint."

Mark Twain