Running the proverbial numbers race.

Investment Adviser, March, 2006

Numbers in financial markets tend to assume enormous importance, sometimes irrespective of their fundamental significance. Think of the fuss made when the Dow Jones Industrial average first passed 10,000 or when the Nasdaq passed 5000.

Chartists pore over the graphs and find deep meaning in resistance points, head-and-shoulders patterns and Fibonacci numbers. And books can be filled with the intricacies of the Elliott wave theory and its five-three pattern.

Sometimes, numbers can be useful just to make us pause and think where we have come from. This can be the case with history -" the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, for example. And in financial markets, numerical markets can be the trigger for changes in opinion.

The Nikkei...

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