The Mystic Time

Time like many other aspects could be labeled as mystic, but the reality is different.
Thanks to a friend, after a break of 15 years, I restarted Yoga a few months back. I also picked up the Bhagwad Gita ‘As it is’ and made it a part of the extended Saturday sessions. This could be considered a mystic exercise as spiritualism, supernaturalism and magic get bundled together as one.
Mysticism deals with mystery and the unexplained. Sometimes called as ‘mystery religion’, mysticism deals with the pursuit of an ultimate reality or a spiritual truth. Time in general and the power to overcome time (forecasting) in particular have always been a major subject of mysticism. All cultures had their oracles, druids, shamans, wizards, prophets, fortune tellers and other characters that were believed to be skilled enough to see the future and make contact with the spiritual world (or stock prices now).
This the economists might call as the unorganized sector of forecasting services. We may hate to talk about or study it as an area of higher study, conveniently discounting it but our day to day life is built around an attempt to live and understand the unknown.
The only mystics we are willing to accept are The Gods. They are the ones who possess the power to heal and forecast. However, when humans attempt it, it’s funny, entertaining and occult. The subject has a lot to do with what we humans can comprehend and what we can’t. If we can, it’s scientific and statistically significant, if we can’t its mystic. We can consult astrologers or read astro blogs when it comes for personal solutions, but when it comes to markets, Astrofunds are magical. We live in a world of convenience where accepting or ignoring something is easy. Here the unpopular is the infamous.
Leonardo Fibonacci (1170-1250) taught Europe how to count but what is left of his great work is a mystic sequence and a magical golden proportion. We had emerging market brokers asking if Fibonacci actually made money. Lack of historical interpretation, overestimation of personal skill complicated by a need for statistically significant proof has junked this great idea. A few scientists have found mathematics and logic in mysticism. The divine proportion rules nature. Mathematically known as phi, this number is present in all the aspects of the universe around us. We can see the proportion in the petals of a flower, in the human body, in pieces of art and architecture like the ancient pyramids, in stock market prices.
Because we consider Fibonacci as mystical we don’t see its utility beyond magic. Thanks to chartists and Elliotticians, Fibonacci is widely followed today. We have a section of experts talking about power law for a century and a half, but even they could not give Fibonacci its much deserved attention. We just did not want to do with anything magical. It was not scientific. Did we really try to see the science in Fibonacci series? No. A simple curve drawn on the Fibonacci sequence proves that the sequence is a power law curve. How did such a simple idea miss us for so long? Simplicity is tough and trashing is easy. A few fundamentalists recently refuted Fibonacci and sighted it as a mere coincidence appearing in markets. When you see the power law function in Fibonacci 61.8% retracement ceases to be magic and becomes a part of the other fractalled proportion we see in markets at all time degrees.

Idea of mysticism is also linked with Yoga and meditation. The meditative practice has seen a rise in the number of practitioners and celebrity acceptance. Recently Bill Gross, Fund manager mentioned about his decade long Yoga practice. However sighting meditation as a good tool for traders might create a chuckle. Neuroscientists have studied brain activity of Tibetan monks. With mediation Monks can shift brain activity to parts associated with peace and happiness. We will spend millions of dollars and decades of man hours creating subjects and research papers proving how fallible human mind is but we will not teach meditation and spiritual thought to traders to help them contain greed because that’s mysticism.
Considered a pseudoscience or superstition, astrology has played an important role in the development of cultures and history of mankind. Astrologers use sidereal time (‘star time’) to count and predict future events, such as catastrophes, diseases or opportune moments in the future for certain actions. Astrology has a lot to do with time and forecasting. There is even a concept called ‘Time Astrology’ which deals with the idea that there is good and bad timing, trying to predict the perfect moments for human actions. Time astrologers analyze the quality of the moment, its inner characteristics and influence on human lives. The cyclicality of time is also present in its various aspects, represented by the Zodiac and the predictability of time itself. The zodiac cycle is believed to influence human lives and one’s character.
Astrology is another science that has been trashed as mystic knowledge. It remains for niche clubs. We humans did not make an effort to understand astrology. There are many reasons. The subject assumes time cycles and planetary placement and its effect on a certain person or society as a whole. Many astro cyclists are computer engineers ex fundamentalists turned astro forecasters. India the land of astrology has generations taking up fancy to the subject. The astrology mystics can surprise you many times when they talk about Uranus, Jupiter and Saturn cycles affecting you. Finding a good astro adviser is as hard as stock picking but the idea of astrology being occult is sheer nonsense. Nostradamus contributed more than just some entertaining quatrains.
It was not very long ago charting was also mystical. A J Frost challenged the idea of charting being similar to falconry. Market Technicians Association was established in 1973 got the needed certification for its Technicians in 2006. Elliott waves are still considered mystical. It was a similar case with the Foundation of Cycles, started in 1940’s the institution failed to have the global reach it deserves just because time cycles are also considered mystical. I remember a quant laughing about a fellow time cyclist without even knowing that his area of work on power law was also the explanation for cycles in time.
Time is also on the short list. It is a mystery that the human mind is unable to solve. Time is the invisible presence which apparently governs everything, from the pulse of life in our heartbeats to the changing of seasons and generations. It is mysterious and controversial, unexplained and yet so natural. People have always wondered about the true nature of time and tried to solve its puzzle. Is it just another dimension or is it a higher dimension which stands above everything? Is it an illusion or is it real? Is it linear or is it cyclical? Did time exist before us or did we invent time? As Carlo Rovelli says, “It is not reality that has a time flow, but our very approximate knowledge of reality. Time is the effect of our ignorance.” The mystery of the mystic.
Time starts to unfold when we look at cyclicality, proportion and self-similar fractals (Time Triads). People pray at a religious place. A few of them praying for health, a few of them old praying for age, a few failed hedge fund managers, confessing (go to Jesus meetings). They all are not jut there because they felt a need to be more spiritual. They are also there because TIME seems to have turned against them. For some it was the decay of age, for a few it was the fluctuation written extensively by Mandelbrot and Shiller. For a few it was the excitement cycles which take us from believing that we are Gods to bringing us back to reality that we are not. For some it is the simple turn down in credit cycles, which makes us go spiritual.
Statistical significance has always been linked to a time series, but rarely on a fractalled time series. This means that statistics has mostly assumed like the rest of the sciences that time is a linear variable. Golden proportion is owing to the time fractals. The world we live in and our life are mathematical because time is the force that holds the world together. Bhagwad Gita was written sometime in the 5th century BC. The sacred book talks about the universe as a fraction. “A part of it we know, and the rest unknown.”