Recognising the Subtle of Boom-Bust Cycles -> Kondratiev, Ramachandran & Brunswik

1. Just in case you are wondering whether there is any theory available that might be better than astrology or macro-economics that might be able to help you prepare for the immediate and long term future, then you may want to investigate theories which have the form of PERMUTATION SYMMETRIES. These are theories and models that have a cyclic or ring structure. Think of Oedipus Rex, and the logic of tightly bound fate which causally folds back on itself.
An example of this sort of cyclic theory is Kondratiev. For good summation with links, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave

Source: http://northcoastinvestmentresearch.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/the-kondratieff-cycle/



2. Whether traders, government regulators and market pundits like it or not, markets are bound by bilateral, translational and rotational symmetries at every discrete level of transaction. That is, from the level of a one to one party exchange, to the level of large movements of funds, goods, intangibles, across borders and recorded on electronic screens. Are markets suffused with these basic symmetries or are we projecting these symmetries onto what are actually random events of the markets? Epistemologically, the limit of pattern recognition is probably fixed at the neuronal level. [See, research on "mirror neurones"--Ramachandran's "A Tell-Tell Brain" (2011) is a good place to start. My 17 year old son is writing a philosophy paper on mirror neurones and the quantum brain hypothesis, and he tells me Ramachandran is quite readable.]

3. Is it possible that those who are able to read the markets well aren't just outliers on a normal distribution, but "wired" with a particular perceptual talent. My investigations in behavioural finance led me to a tragic-hero character named Brunswik of the University of California, Berkeley, who originated pyscho-metric testing for employment back in the 1920's and who created an amazing training model for enhancing pattern-recognition, which is used to this day, for example, to train up radar engineers to make split-second decisions relating to identifying "friend or foe" fighters in hundreds of milliseconds. One of his models which i really admire is called, "Brunswik Lens Symmetry" and is a classic in pedagogical methods. I wrote a rather lame 100 question do-it-yourself-Brunswik-Lens-Symmetry test 5 years ago which I've withheld from publication. Spooky thing is that it is fairly good at predicting the character of potential employees. Anyway, Brunswik was a tragic-hero, however, because he and his wife ended their lives together in a double suicide. His lecturing style was said to be rigorous, incorporating JS Mill, critiquing the Austrian School, and forming testable social algorithms whenever he could. The reason his stuff isn't really out in the open is because of the mathematics he used. Too bad. I believe his stuff really works and could be incorporated in say training stock market operators and machines in recognising certain types of market signals.

Source: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2007-10421-008