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

'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 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

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.'

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.

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.