This article is a most interesting and extremely well researched work and the authors have made some extremely good points and have demonstrated some very interesting trends in monetary and other history. It is a monumental work of research. However there is a main thesis or thread throughout with which I cannot help but disagree in a very complete sense.

While there is no doubt that Elliott waves are the seen or unseen underpinning of monetary and market phenomena, and this due to the fractal nature of human emotional life, which has been shown by the experts to be similar to many phenomena in Nature, which exhibit this mathematical series (the Elliott wave and the Fibonacci series), there are limits to where this wave form can be observed or deduced. These limits are in themselves mathematical, which is to say that for example the Elliott wave can be ascertained in a chart of stock prices, commodity prices, FOREX, indices or indeed historical price charts of gold, or any market place activity were humans bid prices over a period, the prices being factual entities, unchanging and not subject to opinion.

Where Elliott wave theory does not work is when opinion rather than mathematical factual entities such as prices are used to calculate the waveforms. There is no doubt that the history listed in "12,000 Years of Elliott Waves" is factually correct and extremely well researched; however the interpretation of those events as components of impulse or corrective waves just does not hold up, being subjective. The effect of doing this is to make a non-mathematical series appear to be fitted to the wave. I am certain this was not intended, and I do not mean to infer that some slight of hand or deception was used, rather I think that it is a case of unintentionally biasing historical events into a system which demands impulse waves or positive developments, and corrective waves, or negative developments, whereas in reality this view of history on the planet generally for the last 12,000 years has allowed opinion (which in a historian is a perfectly valid trait) to mould the events into this waveform. There are many events attributed to impulse waves which could be seen by another as more describable by a corrective wave, and vice-versa.

In short to take one example, the invasion by Ethiopia of Egypt is definitely negative (corrective or downward wave) for the Egyptians. But what about from the point of view of the Ethiopians? And was there really such a thing as the world economy in those distant days? Who knows what was happening in South America at the same time as these events in Egypt, and how much could South America be allowed to contribute to the overall world economic picture at that time? Or any other place? This viewing of historical events, the rise and fall of civilizations in particular, from a single perspective, even if it is the perspective of the majority of historians at one particular time, can in most cases be offset by a differing opinion as to whether it was positive or negative, or indeed neither. In any case even if we all agreed on a particular event, how can our opinion be attributed a mathematical certainty? Or a mathematical value as is required by Elliott wave theory.

For the Elliott wave is a mathematical phenomena. While the great Fibonacci series is "everywhere" in nature it is in fact not everywhere. True, it is found in the most amazing places, but not everywhere. When it is found it is beyond question where nature has placed it …..not necessarily where we want it to be.

To use an extreme example the Twentieth Century is considered, in your essay, as the height of a boom period and the zenith of a Grand Super Cycle and X wave, expected to be followed by a 100 year correction, but some people I am certain (maybe a minority) would view the century as negative in the extreme – a period of extreme suffering & poverty throughout most of the world, with a record number of wars, not a period of unheard of wealth and progress (except for small groups of people in a handful of countries) but quite the opposite, hopefully to be followed by a new golden age of 100 years, which is already heralded by the computer and information age just in its infancy.

With the inclusion of monetary history along with such corrective wave features as 'global warming' 'the threat of China invading Taiwan' (which is again a controversial opinion), there is again a tendancy for opinion to replace numbers. While I agree with their negative view of fiat money I take an opposing view of the observation that "Recent history has seen the extreme depreciation of fiat paper currencies around the world". The reason I disagree with this statement is because it infers depreciation against the US Dollar, and in that respect it is a true statement. But the dollar itself is a fiat currency, and currencies if valued against gold as I think they should be when we discuss their value, have not really depreciated at all in general in recent history except for one or two. It is the US Dollar that has appreciated (against gold) along side super-inflation (against gold). Without getting further into that subject what I am illustrating by this is again an example of "corrective wave" arguments that could be rephrased as positive "impulse wave" arguments.

The point is that although human emotion when measured in a marketplace can be shown to exhibit Elliott waves, civilisations and historical events, even monetary ones, cannot be measured mathematically as with prices of stocks. To fit them into a mathematical formula cannot help but be influenced by opinion. And historical events are judged differently by different people. Opinions even if agreed to by thousands of people do not add up to mathematical numbers, and therefore to waves of numbers. Just as many Elliotticians in vain try to mould waves to charts, I could probably (with a great deal of work) fit Elliott waves to the dates of events in history. But another Elliottician would soon come along and fit the same dates to completely different wave counts. I am sure they could fit completely different wave counts to the events described. And of course they could leave out some events the authors feel are important, and add in others that they think are more important. But they would not increase the validity because these are events not numbers, values, ratios or series, however tempting it is to think as much.

G.M. Ross

15 June 2000