Analyst Bearish Now, Bullish on Future

NEW YORK — Robert Prechter, whose reportedly negative comments played a role in Tuesday’s steep stock market decline, is a “technical” analyst who rose to prominence with the bull market of the past five years.

Prechter, 38, has published an advisory letter, the Elliott Wave Theorist, based in Gainesville, Ga., since 1978.

His secretary and an associate in his office said he was unavailable for comment Tuesday on reports that he had issued a bearish market forecast on his private telephone hot line for subscribers. They declined to disclose the contents of any of his latest forecasts.

But it was understood that Prechter had not changed his frequent public prediction that the Dow Jones industrial average will eventually reach 3,686 in the current market cycle.

In his advertising, Prechter describes his telephone service as a “short-term traders’ hot line.”

Prechter’s forecasting approach, like those of many other technical analysts, focuses on past market patterns. It is based on the theory that there are periodic waves, positive and negative, in mass psychology that help explain the behavior of stock prices.

His bullish views of the market outlook in recent years helped gain him a wide following among investors as stock prices rose to record highs as recently as late August.