In recent years, Prechter has incorporated social behavior into his market analysis.

"The Wave Principle describes a form of collective human herding behavior," he says. "Behavior governs social mood, which results in social action and creates social history."

From a social standpoint, he says, there is a lot of evidence that the current bull market cycle is mature.

Examples of the optimistic and ebullient social mood currently include "essentially worldwide peace," he says. "Wars tend to follow bear markets as they are a result of a negative, fearful and angry social mood."

He cited the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War II as examples of wars that followed major bear markets.

"The fact that you can look around the world and see very little fighting and people getting along quite well is a reflection of the fact that the social mood trend has been up for a long time," he says.

During the past several hundred years, Prechter says, "Technology crazes (have) come near the end of major cycles. In the early 1830s, it was a flood of inventions such as the camera and the telegraph. In the 1920s it was radio, air travel and so on. In the 1990s it's the Internet."