I cannot remember such a flurry of interest in cyclical trading theories since the aftermath of the panic of 1987. They used to come by airmail, usually well argued, and now they come by Email often in a more abbreviated form, and repeated to countless other correspondents. If one were old-fashioned, one would think that the facility of electronic communications had led to slipshod thinking. What is easily communicated may not be closely argued or fully thought through.
People are impressed when they come for the first time to the names of the cyclical sages, such as Kondratiev, whom I have actively published, or Kitchen – does anyone talk of Kitchen (with a capital K) cycles nowadays? Then at the trading level there are Jones and Precter – if I have spelled his name correctly. There has been no shortage of able men who have devoted their lives to research of the cycles of the economy or of stock markets. Almost everyone is convinced by them when they are first explained.
Even some first class economists have been involved in the development of these theories. William Stanley Jevons is one of the greatest of the English nineteenth century school of mathematical economics – a splendid economist in every way. He has been ridiculed for giving his classical imprimatur to a theory of an economic cycle which he thought was linked to a 10.45 year cycle of sunspots. World trade and sunspot activity were linked through the effect of sunspots on agriculture, particularly Indian agriculture. Sunspots always seem to be unacceptable to the scientific community. In the late nineteenth century scientific economist could not bring themselves to believe that the sunspot cycle could cause the business cycle. They thought it was Voodoo economics and it probably was. In the twenty first century climatologists cannot believe that global warming is caused by the sunspot cycle. They are probably also correct.
Nevertheless, there is one mathematical fact in Jevons’s theory which still niggles at my mind. In 1878, in an article in Nature, then, as now, a highly respected scientific publication, William Stanley Jevons argued that there were fifty year and ten year cycles – which were later to be named after Kondratiev and Juglar, a Russian and French economist. Jevons said that the ten year cycle coincided with the sunspot cycle which had recently been calculated at 10.45 years. The longer Kondratiev cycle ought therefore to be 5 times the Juglar, or 52.25 years.
All of this was written in the 1870s, though with acknowledgements to earlier work going back to the 1840s. In 1720, the South Sea Bubble had burst. That was then 158 years earlier; in 1929 the Wall Street bubble burst. That was 51 years later. From 1720 to 1729 is a period of 209 years, equal to 20 Juglars or 4 Kondratievs. It must, presumably be a coincidence, but it remains a fact that between the first and second great crashes of modern finance exactly 20 sunspot cycles occurred, and that Jevons’s rule would have allowed him to predict the 1929 Wall Street crash in 1878, 51 years before it actually occurred. Of course 51 years is itself the period of the Kondratiev cycle.
William Rees-Mogg
The Daily Reckoning Australia
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About the Author
Leading political editor William Rees-Mogg is former editor-in-chief for The Times and a member of the House of Lords. He has been credited with accurately forecasting glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall – as well as the 1987 crash. His political commentary appears in The Times every Monday. His financial insights can only be found in the Fleet Street Letter, the UK's longest-running investment newsletter.
Comment by jim henderson on 25 January 2008:
ooops - 1720 to 1729 . . . 209?
Comment by Coffee Addict on 25 January 2008:
As a member of the House of Lords, William should consider his words carefully lest he and his peers be seen as condescending, arrogant snobs.
Maybe I’m just as bad (or perhaps worse) for blogging similar types of criticisms under pseudonym so I'll stop this line of thought here.
Unlike traditional writings, the ideas on this and other internet sites can only ever be read as formative. Views feed off each other evolve. That's what makes the e communication both fun and educative.
Knowing what a wide range people are thinking about an issue is essential if you are to provide any professional advice on that issue. So let all the chartists have their say.
For the record, I’m not a fan of any of the so called cycles either. On this I agree with William.
Comment by novosonic on 26 January 2008:
here at the begining of the second year of the last solar flare.
i give pause to consider the future.
a>if one has been accused of living the lie, several years prior to the year of fire.
b>i just can't remember my chinese stuff without the hand written copy.
c>the five mythical elements of ancient chinese civilization just don't look the same in the digital age....
d>now if you piss on the fire, one might think you've eliminated the first element with the second element.
e>but then in the ground lies a burnt offering. the gift of the magi, if you will.
f>so you have charcoal, potassium nitrate. now if your in a hurry to put up a smokescreen, well a little red phosphorous would light up the sky and give away you position to the scavenengers forces of the almighty air.
g>now it's just unclean to eat bottom feeders unless you snare them or climb the mountain and raid the nest, for a hot omlet.
h>now where i come from if your suffering from anemia, at exactely 14:oo hrs you need to crack the egg into a cold beer.
at this point i degress, and back to the begining. now earth and water and air precede the fourth element.
now that we are in the year of the fifth element. does anyone know what the sixth dimension is?
has anyone heard of walter russel ?
he wrote the book 'atomic suicide', and essentially until a peace and law one world government rises from the ashes of eminent death and destruction at the hands of herr bush and the ignorance, disease, corruption that has conquered the united states of america. we have no future.
the constitution is null and void. the money is worthless, the people are starving, they live in fear and ignorance at the changes at hand.
you were born with free choice the power of GO'D is unlimited. but those who refuse to except responsibility for the choices and actions suffer the consequences under the LAW OF LOVE.