If your work is affected by geomagnetic disturbances ...

... then it is wise to avoid the equinox months ... [HERE + HERE]

HERE

HERE

Largest Geomagnetic Disturbances during Solar Cycle 24

HERE & HERE & HERE

Yesterday 28 solar storm warnings were reported from satellites watching the sun - a very rare event in just one day (HERE). The most powerful solar storm of the current solar cycle is currently reverberating around the globe. Initially triggered by the impact of a coronal mass ejection (CME) hitting our planet’s magnetosphere, a relatively mild geomagnetic storm erupted at around 04:30 UT, but it has since ramped-up to an impressive G4-class geomagnetic storm, priming high latitudes for some bright auroral displays. Further significant flare activity from Region 2297 is to be expected until it rotates off the visible disk on March 19th. This already caused the largest geomagnetic disturbances during the current solar cycle. 

Playing the Field: Geomagnetic Storms and the Stock Market, a 2003 study of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, notes the following: Unusually high levels of geomagnetic activity have a negative, statistically and economically significant effect on the following week’s stock returns for all US stock market indices.  

When a solar flare or CME happens, it can take up to 2 days to impact the earth. Therefore, two days after a large solar flare we should see a drop in the stock market values for that day. More on the impact of such events on the financial markets and trading see also HERE.

Sunspots and Stocks - The Short-Term

Everything in the universe is constantly bathing in fluctuating electro-magnetic forces and fields that affect virtually every circuit in biological systems. Human physiological rhythms and global behaviors are not only synchronized with solar and geomagnetic activity, but disruptions in these fields can also create adverse effects on human health and behavior. Changes in geomagnetic activity are correlated with altered blood pressure, heart rate, melatonin levels, and increased occurrence of cancer, balance of hormonal system, reproductive system, cardiac and neurological disease, hospital admissions and mortality, as well as depression, fatigue, mental confusion, and traffic accidents. 

'Daily Sunspot Numbers' and 'F10.7 Flux' e.g. @ NASA's OMNIWeb

An important finding is that of all the bodily systems studied thus far, changes in solar activity and consequently geomagnetic conditions most strongly affect the rhythms of the heart. Of course electromagnetic fields generated by power supply systems, telecommunications, appliances, computers and other technology are extremely powerful and have similar effects on organisms.

In the late 1990s Jeffrey Owen Katz and Donna McCormick examined the effects of sunspots especially on the S&P 500 and Minnesota Wheat. They developed several profitable trading strategies generating entries and exits based on solar activity alone. However, they concluded: "We personally do not believe solar influences directly determine the market. We do suspect that they act as triggers for events that are predisposed to occur, or as synchronizers of already-present market rhythms with similar periodicities." Well ...

Sunspot Cycle 24: "None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle"

Conventional wisdom holds that solar activity swings back and forth like a simple pendulum.  At one end of the cycle, there is a quiet time with few sunspots and flares. At the other end, Solar Maximum brings high sunspot numbers and solar storms. It’s a regular rhythm that repeats every 11 years. 

Reality, however, is more complicated. Astronomers have been counting sunspots for centuries, and they have seen that the solar cycle is not perfectly regular. For one thing, the back-and-forth swing in sunspot counts can take anywhere from 10 to 13 years to complete; also, the amplitude of the cycle varies. Some solar maxima are very weak, others very strong (HERE). 

But "none of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle [as the sunspot cycle 24]", said Dr. Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University and other prominent solar scientists at the 2013 Fall Meeting of American Geophysical Union (AGU), held on December 11, 2013 in San Francisco. This solar max is weak, and the overall current cycle conjures up comparisons to the famously feeble Solar Cycle 14 in the early 1900s (see also HERE & HERE).

John Hampson recently expected the "solar cycle 24′s flat top to end by mid-2014", and one of two possibities playing out: "One, equities peak out within the next 6 months, commodities don’t come again, and we thereafter enter the typical post-solar-peak recession (deflationary). Or, two, equities are peaking now and commodities are breaking upwards out of their large consoliation triangles since 2011 to produce a typical late-cyclical final rally and help tip the weak economy into that recession." (see also HERE).

Credits: John Hampson

Credits: Jan Alvestad

 

Credits: Jan Alvestad

Solar Tides & Financial Markets | Al Larson

Astrophysics & Chaos [Mar 30, 1999]

"The Solar Energy System does affect markets. The Sun gives off radiation which varies by about 2 percent. These variations are caused by tidal forces that the revolving planets exert on the gases in the Sun.

These tides cause vortexes in the Sun’s surface leading to solar flares, coronal holes, and magnetic storms. The energy changes from these are carried to Earth on an ionized stream of particles called the Solar Wind.

When the Solar Wind reaches Earth it is deflected around the Earth by the Earth’s magnetic field. 

This creates a magnetosphere around the Earth. At the poles ionized particles can penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. Changes in the solar radiation cause changes in the voltage in the ionosphere.

This in turn causes changes in the electrical currents flowing through people standing on the Earth. These emotional swings account for about 40 percent of price motion."

 

Al Larson a.k.a. Hanns Hannula [extracted from his "Cash in on Chaos Newsletter" @ www.moneytide.com - more HERE & HERE]

 

Hans Hannula (1991): A Lunar Chaos Theory; p. 14