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And what does make the stock market rise and fall? Mason Sexton graduated from Harvard Business School in 1972, went to Wall Street, and decided that all the traditional ways of making predictions were "at best hit or miss." Then he learned of the Fibonacci Ratio, based on the work of a 13th century Italian mathematician, and a modern development of it known as the Elliott Wave Theory, which declares that all advancing markets have five waves up and three waves down.
"But the key to the timing of when these waves will bottom or crest depends very much on astrology," says Sexton, "which is simply the science of understanding the nature of time, since our sense of time depends on the relationship of the earth to the sun and moon. We are getting very close to the end of the primary wave-three rally, which has been in effect since July 1984. Then we will have a primary-wave correction, which will take eight months, representing a decline of 400 to 600 points."
That is what Sexton was saying last August, when he predicted the market would hit its peak late that month. On Oct. 2, he warned: "Any Dow close below 2387 would be a signal to sell all stocks." And he took his own advice, not only selling but also going short.
Incredible? Sexton has l,500 subscribers who pay $360 a year for his biweekly newsletter of predictions, and many have written to thank him for saving them from Black Monday. Says Marc Klee, who helps manage the $200 million American Fund Advisors: "His techniques are unconventional, to say the least, but I've been working with him three years or so, and his track record is well above average."
One of the most go-getting New Age entrepreneurs is Chris Majer, 36, president of SportsMind, Inc., based in Seattle. As the corporate name indicates, Majer originally worked mainly on athletic training, though his current clients include not only AT&T but also the U.S. Army. Majer started his military efforts in 1982 with an eight-week, $50,000 training program at Fort Hood in Texas. Traditional calisthenics were replaced by a holistic stretching-warm-up-aerobics-cool-down routine. Soldiers practiced visualizing their combat tasks. The results in training test scores were apparently so good that the Army expanded SportsMind's assignment into a yearlong, $350,000 program to help train Green Berets. "They wanted the most far-ranging human- performance program we could deliver," Majer says.
The Green Berets were taught meditation techniques so that they could spend long hours hidden in enemy territory. "They have to be comfortable at a deep level with who they are," Majer says, "not make mental mistakes or they'll give away their position and get killed. People say all this New Age stuff is a bunch of hoo-hoo, but it gets results."
While the idea of New Age Green Berets meditating in the jungle can inspire laughter, it can also inspire a certain concern about the political and social implications of the whole movement. Is it some kind of neoleftist response to the Age of Reagan, or is it an ultrarightist extension of Reaganism? The answer depends somewhat on the answerer's politics. While some see in the New Agers' chants and nebulous slogans a revival of the shaggy '60s, others see the devotion of many New Agers to moneymaking as simply a new variant of yuppieism.