History Does Not Repeat Itself...!! or Does IT?

1930: Markets declined after counter trend rally

2010: Markets continued to rally after a brief pullback

Astonishing similarity between the stock market patterns of the Great Depression (1929-1930) and the Great Recession (2007-2010), bring to mind the famous adage, "History Repeats Itself." However, it seems like if a person would have followed the history he would have lost big time, because history stopped repeating without any notice.


As we might all remember that not long ago, hundreds of financial pundits were talking about a 1932-like crash purely based or charts, waves, cycles and myriad of other reasons. Alas! these advisors picked up this similarity at a point when it went away. And if they had not adjusted their analysis with the market, they would have lost a lot of money. 


In short, market is a continuously evolving intelligent entity, which likes to deceive the majority especially historians. Therefore, as long as there are too many rigid market historians, "History will not repeat." On the flip side, history will be repeated when historians are not looking for the repeat. Thus, it is quite possible that this recent surge is just a fake-out (taking out a lot of stops), before the repeat of 1930 - A trader should always be prepared.


Life Lesson: 
One should learn from his past mistakes and try to be prepared for similar adverse situation in the future. However, history will not repeat when one is prepared, but rather when one is not.