Asian Stock Rally on ‘Final Leg,’ May Fall: Technical Analysis

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- Asian stocks are on the “final leg” of a rally from their March lows and face a “correction” by the middle of the month, Elliott Wave International Inc. said.

India is among markets that may give up some gains, with momentum and volumes slowing during the recent rally, Elliott Wave International said in its May Asian-Pacific Financial Forecast report. The decline is a correction within a longer stretch of advances, and prices are set to exceed their recent highs after the temporary drop, the researcher wrote.

The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index climbed 12 percent in April, the biggest monthly gain in more than a decade. That helped erase losses this year, though the measure’s still 47 percent lower than its 2007 peak.

“Corrections are due in most Asian-Pacific indexes by mid- May, and they should last through the end of the month and possibly into June,” Elliott Wave International said in this month’s report, which was released on May 1. “Thereafter, the multi-month rally should resume.”

Elliott Wave Theory, created by U.S. market analyst Ralph Elliott in 1938, attempts to predict future price moves by dividing past trends into sections, or waves, and calculating changes in value.

The principle states that fifth waves display “a slower maximum speed of price change” and that volumes in the fifth wave tends to be less than in the third, Elliott Wave International said.

Benchmark indexes in South Korea and China are among others that may decline as volumes and the rate of change slows, according to the report.

Elliott Wave International said in last month’s report that Asian stocks may gain at least 15 percent during a “multi- month” rally, citing chart formations that predicted this year’s rebound for Chinese shares.

The patterns formed by the rally in India’s Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index between 2003 and 2008 also indicate that prices are poised for a “pullback,” Elliott Wave International said. The decline will be “a small second-wave correction within a much larger advance,” the researcher said.