The US Forest Service has Smokey the Bear. Smokey was developed in the 1940's as part of a campaign to prevent forest fires. Forest fires were considered a threat to human welfare, so the push was on to prevent them. And a successful push it was. Except that it was determined in recent years that forest fires were actually beneficial - they served to clear out the underbrush and deadwood in the wildlands. Without the aid of periodic cleansing a forest becomes dense and overgrown. Inevitably a forest fire does occur, and it's far more destructive and uncontrollable than otherwise would be the case.
The Federal Reserve has Rocket the Bull (could probably add a four letter expletive to "Bull" and still be accurate). Otherwise known as the PPT (Plunge Protection Team). What many of us have long suspected has now become known as true. In recent years our friendly central bankers have actively intervened in the stock market via S&P 500 futures any time things got a little shaky. You see, it was determined that bear markets are a threat to human welfare. Also, and probably more to the point, the welfare of politicians and certain powerful bureaucrats. It occurs to me that the analogy to proper forest management is spot on - bear markets clear out the underbrush and deadwood. Without them the inevitable stock market forest fire is likely to be quite destructive and - yes- uncontrollable.
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Above is the EW count I've been maintaining for the ES up until this week. But the action since the Wed, Oct 15 lows has taken a clearly impulsive form. Also, the drop from the Sep 19 high into last weeks lows is only 3 waves at best, for certain it's choppy nature did not form a completed 5 wave impulse. So the odds that the recent drop was just a short term correction and that new ATH's are forthcoming are high. So their is an alternate long term count that has to be considered:
As can be seen, the alternate has an extended Intermediate W5 in Major W3 so that the top for Major W3 is pushed out from last December to the recent Sep 19 high. This means that the recent correction is Major W4 of Primary W III with Major W5 currently in progress. Note that Major W5 will equal the travel of Major W1 at ES 2034.25. The interesting thing about this is that a channel drawn around the move up off of last week's lows shows the ES hitting that 2034.25 level right around election day the week after next. Hmmm.............
