Signs Point to Deflation: 20 Questions with Robert Prechter

June 30, 2010

By Elliott Wave International

The following article is an excerpt from Elliott Wave International’s free report, 20 Questions With Deflationist Robert Prechter. It has been adapted from Prechter’s June 19 appearance on Jim Puplava’s Financial Sense Newshour. To read the entire conversation, access the 20-page report here.

Jim Puplava: Bob, I want to pick up from last September. Since then we’ve had several quarters of positive economic growth. Asset classes rose substantially, CPI turned positive, gold has hit a new record, oil is close to $80 a barrel. I guess a lot of our listeners would like to know, have these events altered your views on deflation?

Robert Prechter: No, because we forecasted these events, and we forecasted them at the bottom in March and April of 2009. On February 23 in the Elliott Wave Theorist, I said that we were almost at the bottom; that ideally the S&P should get down in the 600s before turning up; and that the Dow was going to rally from that low up to about 10,000. We put that target out a few days after the low. The main thing we said at the time was that it was going to be only a partial retracement, in other words a bear market rally. By the end of it, we said people would be bullish on the economy, there would be positive economic numbers, investors would think we have made the turn, the Fed would take credit for having saved the financial system, and there would be optimism across the board. All of this has happened. And going into April 2010, few people in the fundamentalist or technical camp were looking for a downturn.

The final thing I said was that Obama’s popularity would rise into that peak, and on that one I was wrong. His ratings couldn’t even bounce during that period, which I found very surprising. But both Obama and George Bush’s popularity trends followed the real value of stocks, not the inflated dollar price of the stock market, which I find interesting.

As far as inflation and deflation go, we had deflation during the down cycle in 2008. Commodities fell hard, the stock market fell hard and real estate fell hard. But the recovery that we were looking for in the first quarter of 2009 was expected to be a reflationary, and it was. You saw a decline in credit spreads. You saw a rise from the lows in commodity prices and stock prices. All of that is perfectly normal. These are just waves ebbing and flowing. But the long-term trend is still down, and as this cycle matures we are going to see more and more evidence of deflation.

Editor’s Note: The article you are reading is just one small excerpt from Elliott Wave International’s FREE report, 20 Questions With Deflationist Robert Prechter. The full 20-page report includes even more of Prechter’s insightful analysis on fiat currency, gold, the Fed, the Great Depression, financial bubbles, and government intervention. You’ll learn how to protect your money — and even profit — in today’s environment. Read ALL of Prechter’s candid answers for FREE now. Access the free 20-page report here.