The anonymous guru who nailed the IBEX low at 6,200 points

The stock market guru who announced the IBEX low at 6,200 points

On May 13, an account without a name or public resume put four figures and two dates in writing. The IBEX would drop below 6,000 points before August 31, 2012; it would not break 5,000; BBVA would fall below 4 euros; and it would not touch 3. Weeks later, the index gained almost 3,000 points. The crystal ball, for now, was working.

That set of forecasts, launched as a Nostradamus challenge, turned its author into a reference for a good handful of retail investors. The skeptics arrived just as quickly: for some, it was a bluff, a troll with a cartoon avatar. The underlying doubt was never who was right, but whether getting four predictions right in a row says anything.

The predictions that hit the mark

The author claimed to have bought at 6,200 points and not to risk the account. His thesis: the rebound would come before summer and would not be definitive. A year earlier, in early 2011, the IBEX hovered around 9,500-10,500 and the media considered the crisis over. In a few months, it fell to 7,000, the summer seemed like the end, and then it rose again. Zinger: down again.

The full breakdown of the initial four figures, with their entry levels and deadlines, remains in the original development word for word. It shows that the author was not hiding: he admits that the rebound was not definitive and warns of a fall before summer.

The technical analysis war

The declared method was pure technical analysis: charts, supports, resistances. Buy and sell indicators, he argued, predict the past: they give a signal when the movement has already occurred. He bought at 6,200; the indicators turned to buy when the IBEX was already around 7,000.

Against that thesis, the other current argues that technical analysis is as effective as entering and exiting randomly. Manuals are cited that debunk Japanese candlesticks and diamond patterns, and it is recalled that the only defensible use lies in the very short term and in highly liquid assets. Some recount three consecutive successful trades with 50% of capital and 10:1 leverage before everything went wrong.

Why does the guru believe the stock market ignores the real economy?

Because the numbers he displays do not match the narrative. The US owed 13 or 14 trillion dollars in 2007, with the S&P at 1,500; it owed 14 or 15 trillion in 2009, with the S&P at 700; and it carried 16.4 trillion in 2013 with the index at its highs. More debt has not meant a lower stock market.

The argument is that the stock market measures mass psychology —euphoria and panic—, not national accounting. And for years, it has been driven by machines that operate with rules, without emotions, and only with data.

16,000 points: where consensus breaks

The star prediction was to recover the IBEX's 16,000 points, and that's where the water parted. Doubling the index's capitalization sounded like science fiction to most, who placed it on a five or ten-year horizon, if at all. Others admitted the medium-term scenario and flatly rejected the peak.

The pattern that does repeat: when the press is not alarmist, the market falls; and it rises sharply when theoretically there is no reason.

The trail goes cold

With the IBEX deflating from 8,724 to 8,207 and then jumping 310 points, the question shifted. It was no longer whether he would hit 16,000, but whether the fall below 6,000 was still valid. The author stopped appearing. Whoever held that account, rightly or wrongly, had made a few predictions and disappeared before they were fully realized.

What remains is the uncomfortable part: no one has yet proven whether it was method, luck, or simple coin-flip arithmetic.