Talk:Robert Prechter/Archive 1

message: The "questionable relevance" paragraph regarding Elliott's theory seems out of place on a biographical page, especially because there is an "Elliott wave principle" page. Also, the "afterthought" and "market timing… discredited" comments do not communicate a NPOV.
--Rgfolsom 18:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Questionable Relevance"? 

message: The edits from Smallbones removed relevant biographical information with no explanation, and added back irrelevant and mistaken criticisms without explaining exactly what "better" means. Once more: the first paragraph under "Criticism" speaks to the Elliott wave principle, and is flagrantly not from a NPOV. As for the Criticism paragraph on Prechter himself, he published a best-selling book as recently as 2002-2003. Labels like "afterthought" are more flagrant non-NPOV.
It's also noteworthy that Smallbones had not contributed to this article before getting into an editing dispute with me regarding the Socionomics page, a fact will speak for itself in any coming requests for mediation.
Rgfolsom 23:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable Relevance (etc.) still unexplained 

message: For the record, Smallbones has not tried to show familiarity with the subject matter or establish notability, but took an article I've been working on recently and reverted it to a stub. Robert Prechter's position as a public person more than meets the criterion set out in Wikipedia:Notability (people), and I'll soon be adding lots more references that show this. Smallbones appears to pay no regard to Wikipedia's policy regarding etiquette, consensus building, reverts, and -- in previous changes to Prechter's bio -- the policy on biased or malicious content.
Rgfolsom 22:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  For the Record 

message: OK. I have restored a set of edits which I hope are not copyvios. Admins please note:
* all versions from 2006-11-07 t 02:27:23 back to 2006-07-07 t 06:28:00 appear to be substantially the copyvio from elliottwave.com note above
* all versions from 2006-05-19 t 20:05:06 back to 2006-01-03 t 18:54:16 appear to be a copyvio from http://books.global-investor.com/pages/gurus.htm?PerIndex=1827&ginPtrCode=00000&identifier=
-- RHaworth 02:26, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Restore

message: from The Wall Street Journal, August 19, 1993
:In early 1987, the "Elliott Wave" theorist from Georgia drew wide attention for his market forecasts. There he was on the cover of Barron's: "3600 on the Dow? That, Says Bob Prechter, Is Where We're Going." It was a bold prediction at a time when the Dow industrial average was barely at 2000.
:Unfortunately, the Dow never got within 800 points of the target before the market crashed in October. To compound things, Mr. Prechter then turned into a superbear, causing his followers to miss rally after rally in subsequent years. The result: Mr. Prechter went from stock-market hero to punchline of in-crowd jokes.
Prechter is just terrible at predicting the stock market.  It's not me that's saying this
it is The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Business Week, and Esquire among others.  I don't see why the 9 citations I put in should be reduced to 2.  They were the only cites from major publications in this article.
Please do not accuse me of edit-warring on this page - I have only made 4 edits here and added a lot of information, and removed little if anything.  All of my edits were reverted, taking out a lot of information.
Before I edited this page, it was essentially taken word-for-word directly from Prechter's web site (see above for details).
So please answer this question.  If a user sees one of the world's worst stock pickers advertising on Wikipedia, how is he supposed to edit the article to put in the documented truth? Smallbones 16:54, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And Amen to that, Smallbones. I quite agree, as does Timer Digest.  Perhaps "everyone is wrong" on this though hehehe. Punanimal 08:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Smallbones, you continue to insert flagrantly opinionated criticisms into the lead section of this biography, such as "Mr. Prechter went from stock-market hero to punchline of in-crowd jokes." This violates Wikipedia's policies regarding POV, bias, and undue weight. What's more, the article you cut and pasted from was already duly noted in the criticism section, which is where it belongs. Rgfolsom 19:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to put the documented truth in here? 

message: Per request, I've unprotected this article--hopefully, you've all sorted out your issues. If not, I have it watchlisted and will reprotect at the first sign of an edit war. AmiDaniel (talk) 07:35, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unprotected 

message: OK, I used  and  tags to stop all the debates about location= (without the P.O. Box address, it's no longer spam), and to address the conflict of interest and point of view concerns that these are, in fact, Prechter's publications ... the New York Times article reference is sitting there ready for date= and page= citations (someone who is already registered at the NYT website will have to fill in the missing fields) ... and since  I've had Enough Fun for one day, someone else can also go through the "Books" section (BTW, I suggest that it be renamed to "Bibliography") and insert  tags.
Now, everybody, please ... just ! —  23:38, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for all your work with the citations.  I like the  template. Smallbones 09:47, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  References and citations 

message: I think all the to-do about the bestseller claim just takes away from the main question:  should people other than Robert Folsom be able to edit this article?
For what it is worth, it's clear that Conquering the Crash was a "bestseller"
The Business Week reference is easily accessible:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_44/b3806033.htm
Smallbones 15:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bestseller claim 

message: Smallbones, the Barron's cite & Hulbert quote is perfect -- I'm glad you used it. It makes Prechter look bad. You think you found a "reliable source," and you can the "reliable source" do the negative work.
In fact, you've made my point for me, dude. You picked your crayon and drew the picture you preferred. You should have done more digging and less drawing, or perhaps looked more closely at what you decided to overlook.
Barron's took Hulbert's data grossly out of context. And by repeating the quote you repeat the error. Not because I think so, but because of what Hulbert himself said at the time. In the NYT, Oct. 4 '98 p. C7, Hulbert's "Strategies" column listed the five "best-performing market timing strategies of the investment newsletters monitored by the Hulbert Financial Digest." Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist made the list. Here' what else Hulbert said:
:According to Prof. Jeremy Siegel at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, stocks failed to keep pace with T-bills in 25 percent of the rolling five-year periods since 1802. The situation is barely better when investors hold for 10 years; 20 percent of those periods failed to keep up with T-bills. In fact, to get the failure rate down to just five percent -- a benchmark for an acceptable bet -- investors must be willing to hold stocks for more than 20 years. No wonder so few investors have sufficient staying power to buy and hold….
:But there are a select few market-timing newsletters -- just five among all those that I have tracked over the last 15 years -- that have shown that they can at least immunize investors, relatively speaking, from more risk than the performance they forfeit in the process. The Elliott Wave Theorist, for example, has had an annualized return of 12 percent since 1982 -- 3.6 percentage points shy of the Wilshire 5000, but at just about half the risk.
When Hulbert speaks for his own data, well, "a different picture of Prechter emerges" is the least one can say. (Orangemike, I respectfully I hope you're following this.)
What's more, that data you quoted is eight years old, which is obviously BEFORE the 50% decline in the S&P 500 in 2000-2002, when Prechter had investors OUT of stocks, during which time his Hulbert ratings became EVEN BETTER.
By July 2003, according to Peter Brimelow, Prechter had pulled "ahead of the Wilshire 5000 on a risk-adjusted basis over the 23 years that the HFD has been following him."
Here's what else Brimelow said:
:Prechter himself is highly educated and much respected by his fellow technicians. His recent two-volume study "Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction" shows a mind-boggling range of reading, from rock music (Prechter once played in a band) to higher mathematics.
Nice quote, don't you agree? It would look great over on the Socionomics page.
Now, I'm going to repeat myself and say that I didn't want to go here. You did. And because you did, it allowed me to slam-dunk the point I made to begin with.
In fact, your references are incomplete by Wikipedia's standards, and amount to yet more POV, which Wikipedia especially forbids in a bio of a living person.
So, I'll go ahead and get the more accurate and up-to-date Hulbert data in place on the page.
That said, I'll be ready to stop posting track record stuff as soon as you are. One man's "reliable source" is someone else's shamelessly inaccurate misquotation. Rgfolsom 20:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anger management 101 

message: Dear Mr. Folsom,
That was your 8th reversion in a row of my edits on this page
user:CanaryInACoalmine and User:Orangemike have very politely asked that you not edit this article because of your conflict of interest (working for Robert Prechter).
May I ask you not to accuse me of misquoting as well.  Some quotes that I'm sure you'll find interesting follow.
PETER BRIMELOW
Elliott Wave's Prechter sounds the alarm
Oct 20, 2005
[]
“by the Hulbert Financial Digest's count, the EWFF's trader's portfolio has endured a staggering annualized loss of 18.1% over the 20 years through September. (EWFF split off in 1999 from Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist, which no longer offers specific portfolio advice. But the two seem to work in tandem.)”
PETER BRIMELOW
Is Prechter's bearishness permanent?
CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Jun 30, 2003
Prechter's specialty is the Elliott Wave, an esoteric theory about the movement of markets and practically everything else besides. It's fatally easy to poke fun at. 
But Prechter himself is highly educated and much respected by his fellow technicians. His recent two-volume study "Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction" shows a mind-boggling range of reading, from rock music (Prechter once played in a band) to higher mathematics. 
[]
 
Ride That Wave!
Is Bob Prechter's long-forecast economic and market collapse finally at hand?
By Jonathan R. Laing
Barron’s , October 26, 1998  
Such lurid forecasts make Prechter easy to dismiss. After being accorded guru status on Wall Street in the 'Eighties for being one of the few prognosticators to predict the huge 1982 liftoff in the stock market and to stay aboard for most of the ride until just before the 1987 Crash, Prechter has been dead wrong about the market practically ever since. For he has remained timorously invested mostly in Treasury bills for the past 10 years, blowing better than 200% gains in the Dow and the S&P 500 Index. According to numbers compiled by the Hulbert Financial Digest, the Elliott Wave Theorist timing strategy would have yielded a 12% annual return from the end of 1982 through August 31 of this year, compared with 15.6% for the value-weighted Wilshire 5000 and the 16.6% annual return logged by the S&P. That's a huge underperformance, even taking into account the fact that Prechter's strategy was only half as risky as being fully invested at all times.
Smallbones 14:53, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  8th reversion in a row 

message: I've summarized Prechter's efforts to publish R.N. Elliott's works, and the other ways Elliott analysis became visible.
As for a more important issue, I need to be clear, Smallbones: You have published falsehoods in the biography of a living person. I had specifically identified the problem on the talk page and removed the offending text from the article. But you reverted the article to include those falsehoods, to wit:
 
1. "His first prediction of a falling market made to the general public was published on October 20, the day after the crash."
 
I've read both WSJ articles you cited, listed as footnotes 14 and 15. They have absolutely nothing to do with your sentence. In other words, your references don't refer to the "facts" you assert. Furthermore, the USA Today quotation previously showed that your assertions were flat-out wrong. You re-posted "facts" that were a proven fiction.
 
2. "He has made unclear claims to have advised his newsletter subscribers to exit the market before the crash."
 
I've read the Investopedia page you cited. Yet here your reference has everything to do with your sentence, namely by proving the opposite of what you say: Prechter did CLEARLY "advise his subscribers to get out on Friday, October 2, 1987…The following Monday -- and the ensuing two and a half weeks -- saw the mighty index drop to 1738.74 in an astounding decline of more than 34%...Clients who took Prechter's advice to get out missed the sickening ride down and no doubt felt deeply indebted to him."
 
You forged the meaning of your own reference. Investopedia says Prechter clearly helped subscribers, which for you becomes "Prechter made unclear claims…"
::response perhaps its a bit subtle, so let me explain this in detail.  Prechter DID NOT claim to call the crash in the Investopedia article.  They DID NOT quote him on this even though they clearly could have if they wanted to and he could have said straight out "I called the crash."  Instead they cited a fairly minor publication which said POST-crash that Prechter called the crash.  That's pretty unclear to me why such an important point would be handled in such an indirect manner.  Also in the other reference “Nobody specifically predicted a ‘crash’ before it started, including me. But I did tell people to sell right when the sentiment indicators showed the majority bullish.” That's got to be considered unclear.  In the first half he says he didn't call the crash, and in the second half he implies that he did.  Smallbones 13:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Re-introduces Elliott," No falsehoods 

message: Please see
Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks
and
Wikipedia:No personal attacks
especially Wikipedia:No personal attacks#Examples_that_are_not_personal_attacks which I quote here for everyone's ease of reference:
Debate is an essential part of the culture of Wikipedia.  Be  civil and adhere to good  wiki etiquette when stating disagreements to avoid personalizing them and try to minimize unnecessarily antagonistic comments.  Disagreements with other editors can be discussed without resorting to personal attacks.  It is important not to personalize comments that are directed at content and actions, but it is equally important not to interpret impersonal comments as personal attacks.  Examples of comments that are not personal attacks include:
* Disagreements about content such as "Your statement about X is wrong" or "Your statement is a point of view, not fact" are not personal attacks.
* Remarks describing an editor's actions and made without involving their personal character should not be construed as personal attacks.  Stating "Your statement is a personal attack..." is not itself a personal attack — it is a statement regarding the actions of the user, not a statement about the user. (It can however be a harmful statement if it's untrue.)  A comment such as "responding to accusation of bad faith by user X" in an edit summary or on a talk page is not a personal attack against user X.
* A comment in an edit history such as "reverting vandalism" is not a personal attack if it's concerned with clear vandalism, although otherwise it is. "Vandalism" imputes bad intentions and bad motives to the person accused. If the edit that is being reverted could be interpreted as a good-faith edit, then don't label it as vandalism. See Wikipedia:Vandalism for what is and isn't vandalism.
CanaryInACoalmine 15:12, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More things to think about 

message: I just reviewed the latest re-write of the main article.  In my opinion it seems fair and balanced, without undue emphasis on either view.  Of course, you may disagree with me, but I think that if I was the subject of the article, I couldn't find fault.
Dare I ask ... have we achieved a compromise now?  Or will the edit war continue until the outcome of the arbitration process? CanaryInACoalmine 09:31, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Have We Achieved A Compromise Now?