Happy Pi Day, Beware the Ides, Et tu, Brute?...

tis sinusoidal
time
anonymousmonetarist.blogspot.com/2010/03/happy-pi-day-beware-ides-et-tu-brute.html

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'Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th.
With the use of computers, Pi has been calculated to over 1 trillion digits past the decimal. Pi
is an irrational and transcendental number meaning it will continue infinitely without
repeating.'
- piday.org

'Nitpickers please note that originally the Ides of March was not necessarily March 15th but
rather the period March 13th to 17th. Later…..Roman calendar makers would save on
tablets and papyrus by designating the Ides to occur on the 15th of March, May, July and
October. In other months, it was the 13th.'
-Art Cashin

'Gann advised analysts to keep track of the strongest harmonies of the solar fundamental
both from the zero point of the vernal equinox and from the zero point of each major pivot,
explaining the subject in visual terms by reference to the geometry of the circle. He perhaps
left it for his more sophisticated readers to conclude that the division of time periods and
price movements into eights in fact related to the properties of the musical octave, to the

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properties of sound. The same may be said of the importance he attached to the seventh
unit of a series, in that it can be held to represent the final tone of a given octave.'
-Alexander Goulden

'The two days on either side of the new lunar month represent most of the positive returns
on equity markets for the next four weeks.'
- Macquarie Securities

'We find strong empirical support in favor of a geomagnetic–storm effect in stock returns
after controlling for market seasonals and other environmental and behavioral factors.
Unusually high levels of geomagnetic activity have a negative, statistically and economically
significant effect on the following week’s stock returns for all US stock market indices. {There
is} evidence of substantially higher returns around the world during periods of quiet
geomagnetic activity.'
-Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

'It has been found in a great number of tests that the mean motion of the sun is the correct
motion to be observed.'
- Sepharial

The Holy Bible is 'The Book of Books.'

-W.D. Gann

'Robert was a great believer in Astrology because he had found this great science referred
to so many times in the Holy Bible. He had made notes as he read the Bible at different
times where it referred to Astrology or the signs in the heavens and was thoroughly
convinced that the influence of the heavenly bodies govern our lives. Robert knew that the
Bible was replete with references that the heavens ruled. He had read where it said:
'Discern the end from the beginning, where Jesus said, "I will judge you in the place of your
nativity.'
-W.D. Gann, Tunnel Through the Air

'With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older,

I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin', sneezin' and wheezin,
the calliope crashed to the ground
Blinded by the light, wrapped up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Mama always told me not to look into the eye's of the sun
But mama, that's where the fun is'
-Manfred Mann

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WSJ
By Eleanor Laise
March 13, 2010

Mr. Sornette, 52 years old, is the director of the Financial Crisis Observatory at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, or as he calls it, "the MIT of Europe." Late last year,
he launched the bubble experiment by identifying four developing bubbles and forecasting
when they'll peak.

His predictions are locked away in encrypted files that can't be altered, to be revealed only
when the forecasted bubble peaks have passed, on May 1.

Mr. Sornette says that his observatory can track tens of thousands of stocks, bonds, and
other securities. The term "observatory" is also meant to underscore his scientific,
quantitative approach to studying bubbles.

Mr. Sornette works with a handful of postdoctoral fellows and senior researchers, sifting
through data on an institute supercomputer called "Brutus."

Nassim Taleb, who popularized the term "black swan" to describe extreme events that are
highly unpredictable, is well acquainted with Mr. Sornette's work but still doesn't believe
that any models can be used to make precise predictions. However, he says that Mr.
Sornette's work, which is rooted in disciplines distinct from traditional economic models, "is
vastly more useful to me than anything else in economic.

With a Ph.D. in physical sciences, Mr. Sornette worked on methods to predict the rupture of
pressure tanks on European Ariane rockets in the early 1990s. He realized that the tanks
didn't just rupture without warning. Mr. Sornette was able to identify patterns in acoustic
emissions, which are waves produced by stressed materials, that had some predictive
power.

Realizing that financial crashes are somewhat like market "ruptures," he became interested
in studying market fluctuations. "It was an act of faith" to apply the type of work he was
doing on the rockets' tanks to the markets, he says. "You make this stupid analogy, which
can sometimes be very productive."

AM here : The productivity of stupid analogies? Roger that.

Over the weekend had the pleasure of an extended conversation with a nationally known
smartypants. Suggested to him that if someone had, a couple years ago, told me that one
could glean understanding of the markets through the knowledge of the Bible, a guitar, and
a sailboat, I would have had a less than cordial retort.

His reply? 'I figured that out early on.'

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Lucky him... although have always believed that when the student is ready the teacher will
arrive did not expect the coursework to be so challenging... truth would appear to be
dynamic not linear and it is a process of unlearning.

To believe that the 'natural law' guides both the flower and the star system, to reconcile that
with the bloodied determinism of an entrepreneurial Irishman, is to embrace a thesis that is
antithetical.

And yet...

Sacred geometry and fourth dimensional constructs of the markets seem a bit wild until
one considers that it was Einstein that postulated the concept of a single spacetime
continuum. Einstein's special relativity treats space and time as components of a four-
dimensional manifold.

In the Old Testament time was traditionally regarded as a medium for the passage of
predestined events. For Einstein, the past is a set of events that can send light signals to the
observer, and the future is a set of events to which the observer can send light signals. Light
is a wave and a particle.

And fourth dimensional market math? The fourth degree being an angle? What's the big
deal with only 4 dimensions when string theory and M theory predict that physical space in
general has in fact 10 and 11 dimensions respectively.

Wack-a-doodle-doo.

So let's revisit Professor's Sornette's epiphany again : 'You make this stupid analogy, which
can sometimes be very productive', and let's try to get a little stupid...

Previous postings on this blog have suggested what reverence your blogger holds for the
Fractal Man, Professor Mandelbrot. Fractals are objects or quantities that display self-
similarity ON ALL SCALES.

It stands to reason then that glimpses of the 'natural law' can then be discerned by
observing with one's senses this 'self-similarity'.

Or to quote Ian Fleming, 'Once is happenstance. twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy
action.'

Several postings on this blog have examined such 'coincidences' ... here is another:

John Needham's Danielcode theory suggests that fast markets often retrace 29.7%. Now
that's certainly an outlier proposition, and if shown empirically would suggest it is not the
tail waggin' the dog i.e., working because folks believe it works.

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Although the longitudinal data set in support of this retracement is being developed let us
suggest it as a theory and see if perhaps there is any fractal or 'self-similarity' existing for
this unremarkable 29.7.

29.7 is the orbit of Saturn in earth years. Saturn (referred to by the Ancients as Cronus or
Kronos) was the Roman Deity of Time. This is where the term chronology comes from.

The synodial month, the average length of a month, is 29.7.

1335, blessed time in the book of Daniel, when divided by 45 (where 45 is 1/8th of a circle or
45 degrees) is 29.7.

One of Dewey's most common cycles is 2.96 years. Interchangeable per the fungibility of the
decimal point in sacred geometry.

The frequency ratio of A as you ascend by a perfect fifth is 27/8 the inverse ratio of 8/27
(29.63%). Frequency has an inverse relationship to the concept of wavelength.

The orbital velocity of Mercury (in astro terms the communicator and trickster, e.g.
'retracement in fast markets') is 29.7 miles per second.

The nearest distance of the elliptical orbit of Pluto to the sun is 29.7 AU.

Do these coincidences mean anything? Maybe not. But consider this. For the majority of
market participants, random walk is the holy grail. But this Gospel suggests that the
probability of the market movements that have occurred in recent memory, and the
movements your humble blogger expects to see in the future, come in at a modest, oh let's
see... fingers and toes ... gazillion squared.

Maybe our dearly held assumptions are wrong.

Maybe reality is the tail risk.

Think outside the cave.

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