Did We Just See the Final Wave of the 300-Year Industrial Era Bull Market?

I've mentioned before that I have serious reservations about Elliot Wave analysis. The biggest problem seems to be their "Alternate Wave Counts" where, whenever something doesn't transpire as forecast, they say the wave count was off but this new, alternative wave count will be accurate.

That said there has been a pretty much unbroken upward sweep to market values over the decades although, as I've mentioned, I don't trust any indices that go back further than the 1871 start point for the Cowles Commission. From "Equity Valuation and Forecasting Future Returns and a Gift for our Readers":

... I’ve got “COMMON-STOCK INDEXES 1871-1937″ open on the desk as I type and Mr. Cowles is quite explicit as to the reasons the Commission didn’t go further back than 1871. (pg. 4)
A big one is the paucity of publicly traded industrials.
During a mis-spent youth I read every line of the book.

My favorite tidbit is the listing, among the pre-1871 industrials, of New York Guano.
Some things never change.

Here’s Yale’s (and my) gift to the MarketBeat’s readers:
http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cm/m03/index.htm
It links to a big ‘ol hog of a PDF,...

As Bob Arnott pointed out in "Does Stock-Market Data Really Go Back 200 Years?":

...For the years 1802 through 1820, Profs. Smith and Cole collected prices on three dozen banking, insurance, transportation and other stocks -- but ended up including only seven, all banks, in their stock-market index. Through 1845, they tracked 19 insurance stocks, but rejected 95% of them, adding only one to their index. For 1834 onward, they added a maximum of 27 railroad stocks....

Survivorship bias. How many canal companies or turnpikes were left out? All the weird little issues floated around some hopeful invention?

With those two huge caveats here's MAPanalysis:

DJIA – The big one!!! 13 October 2012

Context first:

I have requested permission to use a rebuilt chart from 1790 to present and if I am given permission shall put it here! That is to show you the most complete industrial era picture I have come across. (Permission kindly granted 14Oct12 with thanks)

 (click to enlarge)

Start of Industrial Era – Circa 1727, Pivot 1 1836, Pivot 2 1843
Zooming into Dow from 1920
Zooming in a bit from 1998

So let us just have a look at the final wave of the industrial Era that started some 300 years ago!

Lets zoom into the final wave detail from the October 11 low

...MORE 

And from ZeroHedge:

Forget 666; 808 Is The Number Of This Market's Beast

Presented with little comment, except to say - it seems, as Boaz at EminiAddict points out, that the S&P 500 likes to travel around 808 points from swing low to swing high. Extending the analog suggests a drop to 565 on the S&P 500 by mid-2014.



and using EminiAddict's channel projection... suggests a 565 swing low to come...