Author of the book: Beyond the Price

1. Please introduce yourself. What would you like your reader to know about you?

My name is Petr Popov. I am an independent researcher, author, and the creator of Wave Liquidity Redistribution Theory (WLRT).

My path is unusual in that my research did not begin within an academic institution. It grew out of many years of practical observation of markets, decision-making processes, and systems that constantly adapt to changing conditions.

I have been involved in trading and asset management for more than thirty-five years. Over time, I became increasingly interested not only in where price moves, but in what actually allows a system to transition from one state to another, what causes those transitions, and whether they can be formally described, calculated, and diagnosed.

From late 2025 and throughout 2026, this work developed into a broader research program focused on WLRT, market structure, liquidity redistribution, phase time, structural transitions, and complex adaptive systems.

What I would most like readers to know is one thing: I do not see theory and practice as two separate worlds. I am interested in ideas that can be formulated with sufficient rigor, tested, criticized, and then used to understand real systems more clearly.

2. What is your inspiration/motivation?

My main source of motivation has probably always been an interest in questions that do not yet have ready-made answers, and the desire to find those answers myself when I feel they are within my reach.

Since childhood, I have enjoyed solving unconventional mathematical problems — not so much those where you simply apply a known formula, but those where you first have to step away from standard methods and look at the problem differently.

The same thing happened with markets. Quite a long time ago, I realized that price alone is not enough to describe what is happening in a market.

Price is something we can see and measure; it is convenient for analysis. But the same price movement can hide completely different situations. A rise can be powerful, unstable, exhausted, or only just beginning. A decline can continue even when the previous advantage of sellers is already fading.

That is why I became interested in looking for what is not so obvious on the surface, but can help us understand the changes taking place. Most importantly, I wanted to find measurable, computable parameters that would make it possible to diagnose those changes as they develop, rather than guess or simply wait until an event has already happened.

More broadly, I am interested in how complex systems adapt and how we can identify approaching adverse changes in advance and prepare for them.

Markets are only one example. Similar questions arise in organizations, economic and technological systems, and even in the way individuals preserve or gradually lose their future choices.

It is the possibility of finding answers to questions like these that continues to drive my research.

3. How long did it take to complete your book from the idea to publication?

The short answer is: much longer than the writing itself.

The ideas behind Beyond the Price developed over many years. The first outlines of what would later become Wave Liquidity Redistribution Theory (WLRT) date back to 2003.

The public research program, however, began much later. From late 2025 and throughout 2026, I worked on formalizing the theory and publishing its successive versions — not as a series of changing attempts to find an explanation, but as a step-by-step presentation of one developing theory, moving from basic principles toward more complex structures and generalizations. In parallel, I published mathematical extensions, hypothesis-validation materials, and related research.

The book itself emerged from the need to explain the broader meaning of this work in a form accessible to a wider audience, not only to specialists reading highly technical academic papers. I wanted to show not only how particular elements of WLRT work, but why this way of looking at complex systems can be useful at all: how it can help us deal with complex problems, recognize growing fragility earlier, preserve a wider range of possible solutions, and prepare better for future crises.

So if we look at the manuscript purely as a publishing project, the process was relatively fast. But if we look at the intellectual path behind it, the book is the result of more than two decades of observation, rethinking, and solving difficult questions. I was able to find answers to many of them, and those answers opened the way to new problems, new directions of research, and the further development of the theory.

4. What is the main message and idea of your book Beyond the Price?

The central idea is very simple:

Price is important, but price alone is not enough to understand the real condition of a complex object or environment.

In markets, price is often treated as the main object of analysis. In Beyond the Price, I suggest looking beyond price — at what determines an object’s ability to remain resilient, adapt to change, and preserve several possible paths for further development.

Gradually, the book extends this idea beyond markets.

The deeper question is not only:

“How much is it worth?”

but also:

“What is this object capable of in its current state?”

If we look only at the current result — price, profit, the size of an asset, or the amount of resources — we may fail to notice that our freedom of action has already narrowed. And the opposite is also true: an outwardly unfavorable situation does not necessarily mean that everything is going badly if we still have resources, time, and several possible ways forward.

This is where the idea becomes practically important for an individual. A person can appear quite successful while gradually moving into a position where each successive decision becomes increasingly constrained. Conversely, someone may be in a difficult situation while still preserving enough resources and options to change their future trajectory.

That is why the book is not only about markets. It is about noticing earlier when a situation begins to change, understanding when our options are narrowing, and what can be done to preserve greater freedom of choice.

This becomes especially important in periods of crisis and uncertainty. The earlier we understand what is really changing, the better our chances of not merely reacting to what has already happened, but preparing in advance.

5. What was the most unexpected conclusion you came to while working on Beyond the Price?

One of the most unexpected discoveries was how far the original idea could extend beyond trading.

At first, the research was closely connected with markets and liquidity. But as the structure of the theory became clearer, I began to notice the same patterns in very different environments and objects: financial, informational, labor-related, and goods-and-logistics environments. The object may be a single token, an investment portfolio, a company, a market, or something else that is constantly changing and has to adapt to new conditions.

One object may appear stable if we judge it by a single visible indicator, while at the same time gradually losing room for maneuver. Another may temporarily look weak while still preserving resources, connections, time, and several viable directions for further development.

This is what changed my understanding of what “value” means.

Value is not only what an object possesses at a given moment. It is also determined by the possibilities it preserves, what remains accessible to it, and what it is still capable of becoming in the future.

For me, this turned out to be a much broader conclusion than the original task of market analysis. When value is viewed in this way, it is no longer only a current valuation or an accumulated result. An important part of value is the preserved capacity for further development.

That is why WLRT gradually expanded, for me, beyond market analysis and became a more general way of looking at very different adaptive environments.

6. How would you describe your publishing experience with Eliva Press in a few words?

Constructive, professional, and very practical.

I appreciated the direct communication throughout the process and the opportunity to remain closely involved in the final form of the book.

For an author, especially with a technically specific work, it is important that the publishing process does not separate the final product from the original idea. I felt that I could stay involved in the text, the cover, the presentation, and the final corrections.

Seeing the printed book physically arrive after such a long intellectual journey was, of course, a special moment.

7. What contribution do you think your research makes to the academic field or discipline?

The main contribution of WLRT, in my view, is not the introduction of yet another analytical method, but a change in the way we think about what exactly we are analyzing.

Today, markets are still studied mainly through price, return, volume, and other observable indicators. WLRT goes deeper: it seeks to determine what state the object under study is actually in, how liquidity is distributed, which transitions are available, which possibilities remain open, and which are already being lost.

This also changes the way decisions are made. Instead of asking only, “Where will the price go?”, another question becomes central: “What can actually happen from here, and which courses of action are still available?” This makes it possible to evaluate not only a possible outcome, but also fragility, room for maneuver, and the consequences of the decision itself.

It also changes the way markets can be taught. A market can be studied not only as a sequence of prices, charts, and indicators, but as an environment of states, transitions, liquidity redistribution, and phase time. In that framework, a student learns not to guess the next move, but to understand why some transitions become possible while others do not.

But there is also a broader methodological principle that matters to me. If characteristics that are significant to an object’s behavior can be observed, measured, and formalized, they cease to be merely unknown factors and become part of the analysis. This allows us to gradually expand the subject of inquiry itself — from observing outcomes to diagnosing the processes that make some outcomes possible and others impossible.

That is why I see WLRT not as one more tool in the existing toolkit, but as a different coordinate system for analysis, education, and decision-making.

8. How do you hope readers—especially researchers and students—will use your book in their work or studies?

What matters most to me is that the book does not leave the reader indifferent.

It is good if it provokes debate and disagreement. I would genuinely be interested in seeing a reasoned refutation of some of its ideas. That has not happened over the past year, but in research, criticism and attempts at refutation are a normal and useful part of the process.

Of course, I would also be glad to meet like-minded people and followers, especially among young researchers and students. A theory develops faster when people do not work on its questions alone: new problems appear, new areas of application emerge, independent tests are carried out, and ideas arise that one person might simply never reach.

I would also be very interested if the book attracted the attention of serious businesses, investors, pension funds, and hedge funds. For them, many of the ideas in WLRT may be useful not only in terms of returns, but also for monitoring stability, assessing growing fragility, and preparing for adverse scenarios before they become a crisis.

There is one more idea that is very important to me. A multitude of unknowns deprives us of a solution. A multitude of measurable variables, by contrast, creates a space of possible solutions.

I hope the book will help readers do exactly this — replace the unknown with what can be observed, measured, and analyzed, and then make decisions without acting blindly.

9. What future research topics or projects are you planning to explore next?

I am currently developing several directions in parallel.

The first is the further formalization and development of WLRT. I am systematically working through individual parts of the theory, translating them into rigorous mathematical form, and testing them on specific models and observable data. It is important to me that the theory continue to develop not only conceptually, but also as a practical research tool.

The second direction is connected with practical work. Among other things, I am studying the behavior of liquidity in real liquidity pools and looking at how theoretical constructions appear in an environment where state can be observed directly and changes can be measured. This helps connect the formal model with real processes of liquidity redistribution.

A separate direction is WaveCounter™, which is developing as a practical observation architecture for market states, transitions, and phase time. It is a bridge from theory to everyday analysis and decision-making.

In addition, my second book, Before Your Next Trade: Wait or Enter?, has recently been published. It is written primarily for traders and for those who are just beginning to study the market. In it, I tried to show as simply as possible how to read market structure, how to distinguish waiting from the moment of entry, and how not to turn every price movement into a signal to act.

I want my further work to move in two directions at the same time: to deepen the theory and, at the same time, make it clearer, more accessible, and more useful for those who apply it in practice.

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