The Heretics of Finance: Conversations with Leading Practitioners of Technical Analysis

Chapter 9. Robert R. Prechter Jr.

Being wrong in forecasting a market does not mean you have made a mistake. This is a probability business. If your principles are sound, you will be right a certain percentage of the time, which means that you must be wrong a certain percentage of the time. So being wrong is a consequence of doing the right thing, not "making a mistake."

Robert R. Prechter Jr., CMT, is founder and president of Elliott Wave International, the world's largest independent financial forecasting firm, which provides round-the-clock analysis on global financial markets. He has been writing market commentary since 1976.

Prechter served for nine years on the national Board of the Market Technicians Association and in 1990–1991 served as its president. In 1989, Financial News Network (now CNBC) named him "Guru of the Decade," and in 1999, he received the Canadian Society of Technical Analysts' (CSTA) first annual A. J. Frost Memorial Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Development of Technical Analysis. In 2003, Traders Library granted him its Hall of Fame Award.

Prechter has written thirteen books on finance, beginning with Elliott Wave Principle: Key to Market Behavior in 1978. His 2002 title, Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Crash and Depression, was a New York Times best seller. In Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction (1999–2003), Prechter presents a theory of endogenously regulated social mood and its manifestation ...