Biography

Financial philosopher P.Q. Wall was born July 22, 1931 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where his father was District Attorney for six years and Circuit Court Judge for eighteen. By the time P.Q. left for college in September 1949 he was already absorbed “in the humorous and ironic aspect of cycles, by which nature rules society in ways deemed impossible by scientific dogma.”

After graduating from New York University he stayed in New York for seventeen years, at the end of which he was running a small life insurance company (Zurich Life) and had also steeped himself in philosophy, searching for what he calls “the roots of world motive.”

While P.Q. cannot find enough good words to say for thinkers like Aristotle, Berkeley, Confucius, Hegel, Kant, Lao Tse, and Schopenhauer, he feels that Heraclitus, Nietzsche and Spengler had the deepest grasp. Of economic philosophers in this century only Kondratieff, with Schumpeter and some others of the Austrian school, are valid in P.Q.’s eyes. “Since philosophic depth is an art rather than a science, it is ever for the few. Beyond Heraclitus there can be no progress, only difference, just as poetry cannot surpass but at best equal Shakespeare.”

Seeking new horizons, he brought his now extensive family to Denver where his notions of destiny led him to look for patterns of “world motive” in the market.

In 1980 P.Q. married Ellen Toppel in Denver, by whom he had the last two of his nine sons, and with her massive encouragement he began his early market letters.

These early letters were metaphysical extravaganzas in which he heaped ridicule on the “linear, literal minds of the B.B.F.’s (bullishly biased fundamentalists).” He insisted that “world wide supply and demand is a six hundred pound gorilla who sleeps wherever he wants to, after suitable snacks on pipe-puffing econ. profs. I track his rhythmic exertions while others follow the pious announcements of solemn human figureheads, as fraudulent as they are impotent.”

The eccentric letter had scant commercial value for all of its market genius, but it did lead to the post of Chief Technical Analyst with a N.Y.S.E. firm, which gamely continued his letter.

After this, a strange twist of fate brought the unexpected—sudden, total blindness. The market letter was abandoned during a series of drastic operations, failures early on, but later restoring his vision dramatically to 20/20. As “Ellie” stuck by him through thick and thin he took this idle time to investigate and ponder quantum physics, Sheldrake’s “morphogenetic fields” in biology and other neglected scientific corners that shed light on the preponderance of “world motive” in human affairs.

While he co-managed fifty-five million dollars, P.Q. solidified the theories that led to the P. Wall Forecast and the many predictions he is famous for.

In 1987 the questions put to P.Q. by Kurt Holzkamp, a brilliant student interning with him, gave rise to a book, Magic is Real. That which underlies history and economics is explored, twelve unconscious contraries expressed by the ancient Europeans as the runes. This book is one of P.Q.’s two major works. The other, Destiny is Real, was completed in 1998.

In the fall of 1988 Ellen persuaded her husband to begin a new, more clearly written letter in which to set forth his well known forecasting, the P.Q. Wall Forecast. With the accuracy of his cycle studies now overwhelmingly apparent, P.Q. and “Ellie” stepped at last into the public limelight.

Is there a secret to market timing?  P.Q. thinks so.

“Nobody sees the future,” sees P.Q., “but some professional forecasters are better guessers because they are better assessors of probabilities. They practice an art, not a science, hence only a handful do valid work.

“Technical tools are not as reliable as scientific theorems. Their chief value is that when all are used together the reconciliation may open doors and windows into the problems so that one’s right-brained intuition may enter and grasp the essence.”

P.Q. taught investment analysis at both Regis and Metro State College in Denver, both at the senior and the M.B.A. level. This was probably the only course offered in the United States in which nature, not man, was represented as controlling history and economics. The course was overwhelmingly popular, and in great demand.

In 1992 P.Q. moved to New Orleans, succumbing to a lifelong yearning for Dixieland jazz and the Southern life-style and because “New Orleans has more sheer poetry than any other place in this country.”

He died in New Orleans on August 19, 2009 from cancer.  His two best friends, Peter Eliades (www.stockmarketcycles.com) and Robert Prechter (www.elliottwave.com) continue to send their excellent letters to his current subscribers.

Powered by eShop v.6