2010 Academy Awards: Why Did Such Negative Characters Win?
Best Supporting Actor and Actress Take the Gold for Dark Performances

This year's Academy Awards was a jarring mix of glam and glum, starting with the contrast between the ultra-elite posing on the red carpet and the array of down-and-dirty films that walked away with the coveted golden statues.

Why Is Radical Islam Becoming More Moderate?
The stock charts and magazine covers explain why.

"Radical Islam Is a Fact of Life. How to Live With It," proclaimed Newsweek magazine one year ago on the cover of its March 2, 2009, issue. Its recent Feb. 22, 2010, cover sang a different song, though: "How bin Laden Lost the Clash of Civilizations: The Untold Story of the Triumph of Muslim Moderation." What happened in the space of one year?

"Anger in the Air"
What Will Follow?

Tea Party: Bright Future Ahead?
For a socionomist, the emergence of the tea party movement is not a surprise.

The tea party movement is gathering momentum across the United States. Could anyone have envisioned that several years ago? One man did. Read these amazingly prescient socionomic forecasts for the coming bear market by Robert Prechter.

In Defense of Ebenezer Scrooge
Again I go where no "contrarian" may have gone before

Simply say the word and there's no explanation necessary. "Scrooge." It's often a playful insult, but when spoken seriously you know what it means...

Popular Culture and the Stock Market

Both a study of the stock market and a study of trends in popular attitudes support the conclusion that the movement of aggregate stock prices is a direct recording of mood and mood change within the investment community, and by extension, within the society at large. It is clear that extremes in popular cultural trends coincide with extremes in stock prices, since they peak and trough coincidentally in their reflection of the popular mood.

Climate Change: Not Exactly Front-Page News Any More
Why has the Copenhagen Climate Summit been such a "quiet" event, so far?

The ongoing Copenhagen Climate Summit potentially the most important climate change event of this decade. Yet it's hardly been the top story in the news. Why? Here's an answer from the perspective of socionomics, Bob Prechter's new science of social prediction.

The Hidden Engine of the Eugenics Movement
A history lesson in social control

VIDEO: How Social Mood Trends Define Popular Culture

In the following two clips from The Socionomics Institute's documentary History's Hidden Engine, you'll see clearly that extremes in popular cultural trends coincide with extremes in stock prices, since they peak and trough coincidentally in their reflection of the popular mood.

It's Not Science Fiction, Isaac, it's Socionomics

Pig Humor No Laughing Matter

Bread and Circuses
Tree Huggers are (Usually) Lousy Traders

It’s nothing new to compare today's Western Civilization to the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Writers have observed the parallels for years, and for good reason:  currency depreciation, the deterioration of morality, the character of government, and more. 

They Could Have Shot Any of Us
The drug war brings danger to everyman’s doorstep

Imagine that you've gone to a local convenience store to withdrawn money from an ATM. You walk back out, get in your car and begin backing up... when a black Cadillac SUV pulls next to you. A man jumps out and stands in front of your car. He's pointing a gun. He's yelling. You're frightened. You want to escape. What would you do?

Who Would've Guessed? Mexico Decriminalizes Marijuana

Mexico has taken an important step in fulfilling a forecast from the July 2009 Socionomist: President Felipe Calderón just approved a law that decriminalizes small-scale possession of several different drugs.

Swine Flu: Is Another "Wave" Still Ahead?
EWI's Message Board is a free resource to get your questions answered by EWI and Socionomics Institute's experts.

Mexican Violence and the Stock Markets
Plugging your ears won't make it go away

More than 10,000 people have died violently in less than two years. A single city has seen over 1,000 murders in only seven months. Today the conflict is more deadly than Iraq and Afghanistan. And it is right on our doorstep.

Climate Change Debate: Why So Many Skeptics?
And why only NOW?

Have you noticed that the number of skeptics about global warming is on the rise? We at Elliott Wave International are no climate experts, so we won't take sides. Market timing is our expertise, and to us, the most interesting question is: Why is this change happening now? Here's a socionomic answer.

It's Official: Swine Flu Is a Pandemic
The "quiet epidemic" is back.

"WHO declares first 21st century flu pandemic," reads a June 11 headline. To us here at Elliott Wave International, what continues to be most interesting is the timing of the swine flu outbreak. As we've reported before, disease epidemics are hardly random. Historically, they occur at specific moments in human history: when social mood is at a low.

Social Mood, Stocks and Epidemics
As prices fall, susceptibility rises

As measured by the stock market, we recently completed a large wave in a powerfully-negative social-mood trend. It bottomed amid extremely pessimistic sentiment. Social stress reached higher levels than it has in decades. Soon after, H1N1 swine flu erupted and came right to the edge of being a pandemic. If this was the only such instance of disease breaking out after a social-mood decline, it might be coincidence, but there are numerous examples in the historical record.

"The Changes No One Else Sees Coming"
Put bluntly, it's the ability to separate the facts from the B.S., to distinguish the cause from the effect.

Huge changes are happening already. And they are drastic in ways the overused political slogans never expected. Yet if anything, the political talk you now hear about "change" and the "public mood" are in fact pages from our playbook...