This analysis is remarkably accurate! Published in 1875 by Samuel Benner, it identifies years of panic, as well as periods when to make money 😳

A 19th-century Ohio farmer created one of investing's most enduring mysteries.

After losing everything in the Panic of 1873, Samuel Benner studied historical price patterns and published a remarkable forecast that claimed to predict market cycles all the way to 2059.

His "Periods When to Make Money" chart uses repeating cycles of 16-18-20 years for panics, 8-9-10 years for peaks, and 7-9-11 years for hard-times bottoms.

The surprising part?

The Benner Cycle came close to several major turning points - it flagged 1927 as a panic year (the 1929 crash came two years later), 1999 as a time to sell (just before the dot-com bust), and 2007 as another sell signal (right before the 2008 financial crisis) 🤯

It's not perfect - it missed some events entirely and was often off by a year or two - but what makes Benner's work fascinating is how it captures the rhythmic psychology of markets.

His core insight: markets don't move randomly. They dance to cycles of human emotion - fear, greed, euphoria, and panic.

Modern research confirms that market sentiment follows cyclical patterns, though not on the precise schedule Benner mapped.

Looking ahead, the Benner Cycle marked 2023 as a hard-times buying opportunity (Row C) and flags 2026 as a time to sell at the peak (Row B). After that comes the warning: the next panic year isn't forecast until 2035, with a hard-times bottom around 2032.

Fascinating 150-year-old math and logic, and a brilliant reminder that history tends to rhyme.