Joseph M. Miller, Daan Joubert & Marion Butler
During the approximately two years since our work was published, we have seen the NASDAQ top out and fall precipitously and we have seen most other world indexes stall and appear to make a multi-year bull market top.
Indications suggest there is a very high probability that over the period 1998-2001 we have come to the end of a Grand Super Cycle Elliott Wave, the largest size wave Elliott listed in his wave descriptions. The bull phase of this cycle started about 1776 and has lasted over two hundred years. When the bull phase of any cycle ends, the logical conclusion is that we are going to start the bear (correction) phase associated with this cycle. Each correction phase of any cycle degree is commensurate with the preceding bull phase it is correcting. We are ending at least a Grand Super Cycle Bull Market, so we can expect at the very least a Grand Super Cycle Bear Market Correction (Our work suggests this degree of correction can be very deep and last many decades).
Two of the possible reasons why there could be the long lasting downturn in the economy that is suggested by our analysis were sought in global warming and a potential oil crisis as reserves become depleted.
At the time of writing, less than two years ago, the general opinion among policy makers and even many scientists was that global warming was a myth and if there were some signs of a heating phenomenon it was a perfectly natural development. Now the opinion has shifted substantially to the view that global warming is real and that it does pose a threat to the stability of the world as we have come to know it.
Also, when writing on the depletion of oil reserves the widely held view was that there was enough oil to last for many decades, which implied that there was sufficient time to ensure adequate alternative solutions by the time a crisis could develop. Now it seems much more likely that the peak in global oil production could happen within as little as 10 years into the new millennium.
And with no reliable and practical alternatives to oil approaching the stage where these could be implemented on a large scale, and with the US veering away from measures to reduce the hothouse effect, the economic downturn into an extended bear market that now seems imminent may well be followed by an extended period during which the reduced supply of oil and a rising global temperature combine to make life really quite difficult, if not impossible, for many of us and for our children.
As we enter the 21st Century, we find the world’s economies, currencies, debt markets, stock markets, and politics in disarray. Leadership in world affairs is sadly lacking. Both the IMF and the World Bank have fallen on hard times and dropped into disfavor. When we evaluate the United States Stock Market with these facts in the background, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that there is credible evidence of a looming turn downward in stock market direction and psychology.
We in fact tried very diligently to show in our article that there is good evidence to suggest such a market turnaround from bull to bear is currently happening between 1998 and 2001. In addition we have gone to great lengths to demonstrate the bear market we are facing is going to be much more severe than 1987, 1974, or even 1929. We have stated our reasons to suggest the bear market will resemble the bear market period between 1720 and 1776, a period of a generation in length and of great severity in degree of market and business decline. We discussed why this bear market will probably be even worse than just previously described, since we are ending an X-Wave (1,000 years in length and described in our article). These are sobering thoughts to contemplate in our current bullish and positive environment.