Robert Prechter (1949-) first heard of the Wave Principle in the late 1960s while an undergraduate studying psychology at Yale. While working as a Technical Market Specialist at Merrill Lynch in New York in the mid-1970s, he located the only available copies of R.N. Elliott's original books in the New York Public Library and began publishing wave studies on the stock market. In 1978, Prechter co-authored, with A.J. Frost, Elliott Wave Principle - Key To Market Behavior. Over the next two years, he started The Elliott Wave Theorist, a publication devoted to analysis of the U.S. financial markets, and republished Elliott's original books and articles along with a detailed biography in a compendium entitled R.N. Elliott's Masterworks.

During the 1980s, Prechter won numerous awards for market timing as well as the United States Trading Championship, culminating in Financial News Network (now CNBC) granting him the title, "Guru of the Decade." In 1990-1991, he was elected and served as president of the nation-al Market Technicians Association in its 21st year.

During the 1990s, Prechter expanded his firm to provide analysis on all major markets worldwide from intraday to monthly time scales via print and on-line publications. He also published three books on the major practitioners of wave analysis as well as his own views in Prechter's Perspective and At the Crest of the Tidal Wave. In recent years, he and his staff have begun gathering data on social and cultural trends to expand upon the socionomic thesis first presented in his 1985 and 1986 papers, "Popular Culture and the Stock Market" and "The Fractal Nature of Social Progress," which will be reprinted in an upcoming book.

Prechter is a member of Mensa, Intertel, The Foundation for the Study of Cycles and The Shakespeare Oxford Society. For fun, he jet skis and plays music.