Lindsay Mirror Image Projections

George Lindsay once wrote that his theory of mirror image projections was one of the two pillars of his forecasting method. The other pillar was his theory of counts from the middle section (upon which I plan to post soon).

The basic idea of a mirror image projection is simple to state. One chooses the exact date of a bull market high or a bear market low as a "center post" or "axis of symmetry". Then bull market highs which occur BEFORE the center post predict bear market lows AFTER the centerpost. And such a bear market low will occur exactly as many days after the center post as the corresponding bull market high occurred before the center post. In a similar way, bear market lows BEFORE the center post predict bull market highs AFTER the center post.

There are certain complications which have to do with the exact points from which to measure the time from a bull market high or a bear market low to the center post. I can't go into these now. It is also true that Lindsay employed a kind of averaging procedure to do these calculations in that he used several center posts simultaneously and placed special emphasis on resulting projections which agreed to within a few days on one another.

In the current context I want to mention two such calculations for the Dow which provide pieces of the forecasting puzzle which fit together with the pieces coming from the Three Peaks and a Domed House formation and well as from Basic Advances and Declines.

The most recent center post easily seen on the charts is the October 10, 2002 bear market low. The previous bear market low in the Dow occurred on August 31, 1998 on a closing basis. Lindsay said that one should start the time count from the top of some rally subsequent to that August 31 low. There was a very minor top on September 2, and measuring forward from that day to October 10, 2002 yields a time count of 1499 calendar days. Counting forward 1499 days from October 10, 2002 brings us to November 17, 2006. This is the projected date for a bull market top. Note the agreement with the projections from the calculation of basic advances in the last post and with the projection from the Three Peaks and a Domed House formation.

There is another somewhat more obscure calculation along the same lines. This time I shall use the Dow high at 11750 on January 14, 2000 as a center post. According to my calculations a basic advance began from a low on October 9, 1992. The high of the first big rally from that low occurred on March 8, 1993. Counting from the latter date forward to January 14, 2000 gives an interval of 2503 calendar days. Counting this many days after January 14, 2000 gives November 21, 2006 as the date on which a new basic decline should begin.

So these mirror image calculations suggest November 17 and November 21 as likely dates for a bull market top. The theory of basic advances and declines gives November 18 and 29. The 7 month 10 day projection from point 6 of the minor (red) domed house gives November 27 as a top date.

In my next post I plan to show how counts from the middle section line up with these dates too.