Glad you didn’t choose Humes book on Logical induction. If he followed his own theories in real life, he’d be broke.
Pure logic by itself is powerless to guide action about the future or the unobserved.
You can’t insist on deductive certainty before acting, you would be paralyzed taking any action in the future. You would have no certainty that the sun would rise, food would grow. You would never drive over bridge. You would have to resign your position as head of the chemistry department because after 1000 experiments mixing bleach and ammonia, you still would have no confidence that the next test would produce noxious fumes.
Science, technology, medicine and everyday survival would be impossible. And we would have no basis for preferring a well tested theory over a wild speculation.
Von Wright is an easier bar.
If the cycle outperforms after known effects are removed, scales with confluence, and holds up out of sample and across sub-periods, it has met von Wright’s standard. That doesn’t make it certain. It means the remaining doubt is only the irreducible uncertainty that applies to every empirical claim. That’s the most anyone can ask of a cycle, and it’s a far stronger position
What you’re all witnessing in real time is a phenomena that has been studied, quantified.
It’s called the Phenomena of Autumn Panics.
Panics are an international phenomena. All the markets across the world are synced. A butterfly flapped her wings in Brazil. Indonesia stock market is crashing.
If I take all the best fitting cycles of past market behavior, and reduce it to one composite cycle, I have a composite cycles that exceeds 80% accuracy. You’ll note almost ALL probabilities were pointing to the same conclusion. Autumn Panic in October. I used the standard of reasonableness where the odds were stacked in my favor to go short.
I’d also suggest that at least 60% of the posts on this forum and on social media are people predicting the future. That’s what a prepper does. Can we list all the predictions that are on the table that have been posted here?
It’s human nature to predict the future. Our brains aren’t very good at staying in the moment. We are a neurotic creature. How many of the thousands of predictions are based on any model other than “this guys says it will be and I trust this guy?” A few? A Modest number? Most?
Find a logic book in your collection that shows that rising prices + high valuations alone do not equal a bubble.
Maybe a book on market logic would be a better fit for the discussion?
I know, I know… YUK…
The question worth asking are how reliable have company valuations in the past been at forecasting a market event in the future vs market timing which actually go back to Babylon
WE GOT DATA. They have been carving this stuff into rocks since forever.
A proper assessment requires examining the quality and structure of the price advance through a Dow Theory / market-process lens. Sentiment and valuation can support the analysis, but they should not lead it.
Why do I think there will be buyers at the bottom here? Because HUMAN NATURE doesn’t change
Regency bias is when people give disproportionate weight to the most recent information when forming judgments, often ignoring older but more representative evidence.
The good news is soon enough, we’ll know which theory will be proven right.
November low. Rally into 1st Quarter 2027. And then revisit the question. Is the top in?
