I doubt that any one can really call a bear market (in this bad boy) until several months after we have entered into it.
You do a lot of typing, I notice.
An analyst did predict an extended 2013-2015 bear market and made his statement during the topping of bitcoin's exchange rate in late 2013.
I'm pretty sure you know who I'm talking about.
No.
Is there some sort of sorcerer out there? someone who actually knows the future? I doubt it. We have a system of probabilities, and merely because some one happens to be correct does not mean that they actually knew the future, because the future had not happened yet. Now in retrospect, we can describe what happened.
that's very interesting.
I wonder how many other things out there we rely on that use a system of probabilities?
Such as - medicine, rocket science, physics, sociology, surgery risk factors, traffic control perhaps, even driving your car with the expectation you won't crash this time? Studying for a degree to become a lawyer or a doctor doesn't mean you will actually get a job, but you will invest in it anyways... shitloads of time and money. The general direction can be fairly certain once you start studying. There is no guarantee of the exact nature of your qualification or job that you get at the end of it, or whether you even survive to pass it, but it's highly probable.
I think prediction in markets, in some scenarios, can be made with some degree of certainty and in other with a higher degree. Exact predictions no, but general predictions yes for sure. Take heart surgery... there is no guarantee that the patient will live through it, or be able to run a marathon afterwards or what date they will die. But there is a high degree of certainty that they will live longer and benefit from it somehow, the reasoning for the surgery is that the general direction from it afterwards would be up. The precise nature of that life extension can be fairly vague.
Take BTC, I think at this point we are all fairly certain, that even if it does go down, it's going up again. No new lows and then breaking from the 300 range were the first signals, breaking 1200 was the next. Many others followed. Many people before predicted with a high degree of certainty that BTC was going up, they weren't necessarily the lucky ones, they were correct because they understood BTC and previous market movements and weighed it up to find the most probable outcome. Predicting something that comes true doesn't make you lucky by default. The exactness of it perhaps yes. Entering a bear market after a long bull run is a fairly vague statement to make. "We are really high now, now it's time to go down for a while"... Everything else can be vague, but the general prediction of direction can be spot on. An experienced Sorcerer doesn't have to use magic to identify a coming bear market, it's just an inevitability after a certain point. If they do it many times, they aren't a sorcerer really, they are just very good and experienced at finding probable outcomes with a high degree of certainty. High enough that they are actually certain.
No one knows the future for pretty much anything at all. Most people on this forum understand black swans... So yeah, even saying the sun will rise tmrw, by your definition, would make me a sorcerer. I'm gonna go ahead and say it though, maybe I'll be lucky and be correct....
I can also say, I believe it's absolutely certain that what goes up comes down and vice versa. I'm not predicting the future, I'm stating a truth. Everything in our universe is made of vibrating wave forms of some sort. So in markets, there are some fundamental truths that we base our probable predictions around which may in fact in some way give us more certainty than other fields.
