The eight principles of Hurst's cyclic model

In plain language — The eight principles are consistency rules for a cyclic reading: price combines multiple components, durations vary, and troughs at different scales may tend to align. They are model assumptions, not guaranteed laws of nature.

The canon used by the tradition

David Hickson’s teaching arrangement lists cyclicality, commonality, summation, harmonicity, synchronicity, proportionality, nominality, and variation.

Together they say that different oscillations sum into price; some duration relationships follow simple ratios; troughs tend to nest; and periods and amplitudes vary around nominal values. “Tend” is the important word: a cyclic label remains a revisable estimate.

What Hurst directly confirms in 1974

In “Cyclic Analysis,” Hurst says that the course describes eight Basic Principles. In the same article he names six relationships as most important: nominality, harmonicity, proportionality, synchronicity, summation, and variation.

This is primary evidence for the canon’s existence and for those six names. The exact teaching list of all eight, in the arrangement shown here, still comes from Hickson’s later account until a complete text of the 1973 course is available.

Three principles that need care

Harmonicity does not force every observed period to be exactly twice or three times its neighbour. It provides a nominal relationship to compare with data.

Synchronicity describes a tendency for component troughs to coincide “wherever possible.” It does not require every low to align perfectly, and it does not say that peaks must align.

Cyclicality, in the post-Hurst formulation, assumes that components continue to act when barely visible. Because that is a strong assumption, it cannot make the model immune to falsification: an unseen component must remain a hypothesis, not an automatic explanation.

Correct use

Phasing analysis uses the principles as constraints when proposing a trough map. A coherent map is not yet a signal: it still needs an entry rule, invalidation, real-time data discipline, and out-of-sample testing.