[...] What I discovered was that, statistically, the old assertions not only hold up, but when traded consistently over time, produce big profits for small amounts of time exposed to market conditions [...] Buying a single share of the index at the closing price of our starting date on the January 4 New Moon and holding until the close of the June 1 Solar Eclipse New Moon, produced a profit of $44.35 - 3.49% (bottom left corner of the table).
[...] Staying OUT of the market during all New Moon-Full Moon phases would have protected us from losing some of our buy-and-hold gains … but delivered much better profits for our Loonytoons strategy by being profitable Short trades. We were in the market ALL the time, but continually reversing positions - to get three times the profit of buy-and-hold. The darker green coloring shows the very profitable trades, the light green shows profitable trades. The rose coloring shows that only ONE “assumed” Short phase would have resulted in a trading loss. But, remember … this is overall, taking into account the full 6 month period.
[...] take advantage of the Quarter Moon dates. So, our trading strategy now becomes to open 1 position at either the New Moon or Full Moon, but to add an extra position at the First Quarter or Third Quarter date. And the table below shows a significant boost to our potential profits: Instead of relying totally on the 14 day Short from NM-FM, we add one extra Short at the 1Q Moon - boosting the overall profit from Short trades from $46.61 to $109.36. And we adopt the same strategy when we reverse to Long trades at the Full Moon - 1 Long at Full Moon and one extra Long at 3Q Moon, boosting our Long profits to $152.56.