2026 High in the Benner Cycle | "Time to Sell Stocks and Values of all Kinds"

"Benner's Prophecies of Future Ups and Downs in Prices" was authored by Samuel T. Benner and first published in 1875. Benner was an Ohio farmer who, after suffering heavy losses during the Panic of 1873, became intensely interested in the recurring patterns of economic booms and busts. 

 

 » Periods When to Make Money. «  Original business card of George Tritch Hardware Co., 1872.

Through his studies, he identified repeating 8-9-10, 16-18-20, and 27-year cycles that he believed aligned with both lunar cycles, solar activity, and major economic turning points. According to analyses of historical events, his forecasts achieved roughly 90% accuracy (more background HERE). For 2025, Benner’s cycle predicted the US stock market driving higher. For 2026, Benner's chart forecasts a major stock market top: "High Prices and the Time to Sell Stocks and Values of All Kinds" into 2032 ["Years of Hard Times, Low Prices, and a Good Time to Buy Stocks"].   

 » "B." [2026] Years of Good Times. High Prices and the Time to Sell Stocks and Values of All Kinds. «  

  

Benner Cycle Forecast for the Period 2015–2035.

In Benner's projection 2026 is marked as a "B" phase year — a peak of high prices and euphoria, often the culmination of a bull market before a shift to downturns. Historical "B" peaks have aligned (often within 1-2 years) with major tops like: 1929 (Great Depression peak), 2000 (dot-com bubble), 2007 (pre-2008 crisis), and others. 2026 is the final peak year, and should be followed by underperformance or bearish conditions into 2032.

 

 

Martin Armstrong contends that Benner’s cycle is more a historical curiosity than a reliable predictive tool, noting that it has been both right and wrong many times: 

 

The claim that Benner’s Cycle predicted the Great Depression is false. The chart [above] that was published in the Wall Street Journal altered Samuel Benner’s cycle, which was based on agriculture. It predicted a high in 1927, not 1929, and the low in 1930, not 1932. Claims that Benner’s work calls for a crash in 2025 are flat-out wrong. His target years would be 2019 and 2035, based on his data, not the altered, fake news published by the Wall Street Journal in 1933.

 

Benner was a farmer. Applying his cycle to the economy today is no longer effective, any more than the Kondratieff Wave. Both were based on the economy, with agriculture being the #1 sector. As the Industrial Revolution unfolded, those cycles remain relevant for commodities, but not the economy. Agriculture, when Benner developed his model, accounted for 53% of the economy. Today it is 3%. If they were alive today, they would have used the services industry. Capital flows are still pointing to the dollar, given the prospect of war and sovereign defaults outside the USA.

Martin Armstrong, August 30, 2025.

 

See also: 

TPR (2022) - "Periods When to Make Money" | Benner Cycle Projection into 2023 Major Low. 

The 18.6 Year Cycle in the General Economy | Louis M. Thompson

I believe there are weather cycles that trigger events in our economy, and I believe there is one weather cycle that is related to the 18.6 year lunar cycle. For that reason, I have prepared a lunar declination chart patterned after Fig. 1 and shown as Fig. 3. If a relationship between the lunar cycle and the weather cycle can be explained, we will gain a real milestone in explaining the business cycle.

 

 

 

[...] We have a 9.3-year cycle in production, which gives rise to a 9.3-year cycle in grain prices. Highest yields have occurred at the time of minimum declination and the four following years. Lowest prices have occurred because of a build-up of supplies, and the low prices have occurred about every 9.3 years and every 18.6 years. Fig. 3 describes the cycle in agriculture better than it does the general economy. Yet, as we look back to the nineteenth century, there were depressions at the time of maximum declination (285°) in every 18.6-year cycle. In this century, our lowest agricultural prices occurred in 1913, 1932, 1950, 1969, and 1987, or every 18.6 years. lt appears that a weather cycle of 18.6 years drives a production cycle of the same length, which drives a price cycle of the same length.

Quoted from:
Louis M. Thompson (1989) - The 18.6-Year Cycle in the General Economy.
In: Cycles, May/June 1989, Foundation for the Study of Cycles.

 

See also:

Edward R. Dewey & Edwin F. Dakin (1947) - The 18.6 Year Real Estate Cycle. 

In: Cycles: The Science of Prediction.

TPR (2022) - Periods When to Make Money. Benner Cycle Projection into 2023 Major Low.

"Periods When to Make Money" | Benner Cycle Projection into 2023 Major Low

Samuel Benner was a prosperous American farmer who was wiped out financially by the 1873 panic and a hog cholera epidemic. In retirement, he set out to establish the causes and timing of fluctuations in the economy.

 

» If you had used these dates for trading, your percentage gains 

between 1872 and 1939 would have been 50 times your losses! «

 Edward R. Dewey, 1967.

Samuel Benner Cycle Forecast 2015–2035.

In 1875 he published a book called "Benner's prophecies of future ups and downs in prices" forecasting commodity prices for the period 1876 to 1904. Many - not all - of these forecasts were fairly accurate. The Benner Cycle includes:

A (upper line): "Years in which Panics have occurred and will occur again." A 54 year cycle alternating every 18, 20 and 16 years.
B (middle line): "Years of Good Times, High Prices and the time to sell Stocks and values of all kinds." Cycles alternating every 8, 9 and 10 years.
C (lower line): "Years of Hard Times, Low Prices, and a good time to buy Stocks, 'Corner Lots', Goods, etc, and hold till the 'Boom' reaches the years of good times; then unload". A 27 year cycle in pig iron prices with lows every 7, 11, 9 years and peaks in the order 8, 9, 10 years (B - middle line).

 

Benner's cycle projections align with the latest analysis of the "Foundation for the Study of Cycles" and are pointing to a major stock market low in the US in 2023. David Hickson's Hurst cycle analysis projects this low to March of 2023 and Martin Armstrong to April 11, 2023 (Tue).

 

 » Periods When to Make Money «  - The original business card of George Tritch Hardware Co. 

The diagram was apparently compiled by George Tritch in 1872, but Samuel Benner did not attribute it to him in 1875.

 

The "Periods When to Make Money" chart, attributed to George Tritch’s Hardware Co. in 1872, is a fascinating artifact in the history of financial cycle analysis. This chart, often referred to as the Benner Cycle due to Samuel Benner’s 1875 publication "Benner’s Prophecies of Future Ups and Downs in Prices," attempts to predict market cycles by identifying periods of panic, prosperity, and low prices. The controversy over its origin—whether it was truly Tritch’s creation in 1872 or popularized by Benner in 1875—highlights an interesting debate about attribution and influence in early financial forecasting.

Tritch’s business card, reportedly compiled in 1872, predates Benner’s book, suggesting he may have been the original architect of the cycle model. The chart categorizes market phases into three types: panic years (A), good times for selling (B), and hard times for buying (C), with cycles of 16/18/20 years for panics, 8/9/10 years for peaks, and shorter cycles for bottoms. Its simplicity and alleged predictive power, reportedly aligning with events like the Great Depression, the Dot-com Bubble, and the 2008 Financial Crisis, have kept it relevant among some investors, despite skepticism about its scientific basis.

 

However, Benner’s 1875 publication, which expanded on these ideas and tied them to commodity price cycles (e.g., 11-year cycles for corn and pigs, 27-year cycles for pig iron), gained more prominence, possibly overshadowing Tritch’s earlier work. Benner’s focus on solar cycles and planetary influences, as noted in some analyses, adds a layer of financial astrology that critics argue lacks empirical rigor. This has led to mixed views: some praise the chart’s historical accuracy, claiming a 7,939% return from 1872 to 2020, while others, like David McMinn, note its declining reliability post-1870s, with false predictions in 1965 and 1999.

 

The lack of attribution by Benner to Tritch raises questions about intellectual credit, possibly due to the chart’s informal distribution on a business card rather than a formal publication. This oversight, intentional or not, underscores the chaotic nature of early financial theory development, where ideas often spread through informal channels. The chart’s enduring appeal lies in its simplicity and cyclical view of markets, resonating with those seeking patterns in economic chaos, but its reliance on outdated assumptions (e.g., planetary influences) and inconsistent accuracy suggest it’s more a historical curiosity than a reliable tool. Modern investors are better served by combining such models with robust data-driven strategies, as the chart’s performance significantly trails a simple buy-and-hold approach ($5,432 vs. $62,414 from 1904 to 2023).

  

Reference:

 George Tritch (1872) - "Periods When to Make Money" - Business Card of George Tritch Hardware Co.

Samuel Benner (1884) - Benner's prophecies of future ups and downs in prices (3rd. Ed.; original 1875)

 W.D. Gann (1909) - Financial Time Table 1784 - 2102

Edward R. Dewey (1967) - The Case for Cycles 

Elwynn Taylor (2004) - Crop Weather Cycles: Myth or Reality?

Martin A. Armstrong (2008) - The 8.6 Year Global Business Cycle 2002 - 2028

Charles Capriole (2020) - George Tritch Strategy from 1872 has a 90% hit rate
David McMinn (2022) - Benner Cycles & the 9/56 year grid

David Hickson (Oct 3, 2022) - The Next 20 Weeks - S&P 500 - Hurst Cycles Market Update
Lars von  Thienen (Oct 9, 2022) - Market Cycles Report - Cycles of Financial Crisis using long term static cycle models.

TPR (2015) - Future Ups and Downs into 2065. Samuel Benner’s Prophecies.

 

 The Tritch/Benner Strategy generated a return of 7,939% from 1872 to 2020.

Future Ups and Downs into 2065 | Samuel Benner’s Prophecies

Samuel Benner was a farmer from Ohio who first published his prophecies about price fluctuations in 1875. The 19th century was the time of Laplacian probability, Gaussian distributions, Peano curves and Cantor set. While mathematicians were looking for structures in mathematics, Samuel Benner was studying and writing about a model of ‘Time’ to forecast the future. He lived in an era of Axe Houghton Indices, the time when the Chicago Board of Trade was established and agricultural commodity trading was active business. Society was busy with agriculture and expanding railroads. This is why his workings were based on pig iron, corn, cotton and hogs. Along with agriculture came the essential science of weather forecasting. What years would be dry or wet? When to expect years of heat, storm and cold? Agricultural statistics was compiled and used to establish demand and supply patterns. 

 

It was then 140 years back Benner wrote that the future cannot be calculated based on agricultural statistics. Statistics compilation would remain always poor, irregular, manipulable, undependable and non predictive. For Benner the axiom “history repeats itself” implies a cyclical movement in human affairs, and as it is a generally received opinion that everything moves in cycles, especially in nature. 

 

Prediction of the future can only be done by studying the past. History repeats itself with marvelous accuracy in detail from one panic year to another. Samuel Benner was the first to show how history repeated systematically. He was vocal about the cyclicality of financial catastrophes and his model illustrated the crisis' of 1891, 1902, 1910 and even 1929, 1987 and 2003. However, 2009 was a big miss in his set of nested cycles (exactly 20 Lunar Node Cycles after the 1637 Dutch Tulipomania bust). Time according to Benner was a pattern, a rule that did not change because of war, panic or elections. It was relentless in nature. It was periodical and not haphazard. The rule was unchangeable, determinable. Failures in business were connected with ignorance of ‘Time’. 

 

Today one can judge Samuel Benner as a farmer or a genius, but that would not change the fact that he was one of the first to see the mathematical hierarchy in ‘Time’. The story of the Benner’s work is intertwined with his personal experiences of bankruptcy. He was a prosperous farmer who was wiped out financially by the 1873 panic and then wanted to find out about the law of nature. He took the yearly average prices to smoothen the data. When he compared them he saw up and down yearly cycles repeating in a fixed sequence of a large cycle of 18-20-16 years and a small cycle of 9-10-8 years. The cycles low depicted reactions and depressions. According to Benner these were cast iron rules and he referred to them as ‘God in prices’.  

Benner discovered an 11 year cycle in corn and hog prices with alternating peaks at 4 and 6 year intervals. He also discovered an 11 year cycle peak in cotton prices and a 27 year cycle in pig iron prices with lows every 11, 9 and 7 years and peaks in a sequential order of 8, 9 and 10 years. He described a 54 Year Panic Cycle which arose from panics every 16, 18, 20 years, with this series repeating every 54 years, or as he explains, “it takes panics 54 years in their order to make a revolution or to return to the same order”. 

 His book is one of the first examples of the development of cycles and periodicity theory in financial and commodity markets and was very popular amongst bankers and business men of the late 1800’s. His cycles and numerical sequences were effective throughout the 20th century, and can still be found to be operative today, predicting financial prices. Theorists will notice the similarities between his 11 year cycle and the sunspot cycle also of 11 years, something which has even been studied in current times by the Federal Reserve. Whether Benner was knowledgeable about this direct influence or not, he did make a connection through the weather and climate, and was likely aware of the earlier work on sunspots by Herschel, Jevons and others.

Benner never fully explained the basis of his cycle theories, but did state: "The cause producing the periodicity and length of these cycles may be found in our solar system … It may be a meteorological fact that Jupiter is the ruling element in our price cycles of natural productions; while also it may be suggested that Saturn exerts an influence regulating the cycles in manufacture and trade." Further, Uranus and Neptune: "may send forth an electric influence affecting Jupiter, Saturn and, in turn, the Earth … When certain combinations are ascertained which produce one legitimate invariable manifestation from an analysis of the operations of the combined solar system, we may be enabled to discover the cause producing our price cycles, and the length of their duration."

Later the larger 54 year cycle was also discussed in detail by Russian economist Kondratiev in 1925. Edward R. Dewey, Director of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, assessed Benner's pig iron price forecasts over a 60 year period. Remarkably, he regarded this cycle as showing a gain - loss ratio of 45 to 1, which was “the most notable forecast of prices in existence”.

Extending and updating Samuel Benner's cycles and correlating them with more recent US-stock market prices, pointed to the low in 2003, the high in 2010, and the minor crisis in 2011. This would then be followed by a rising stock market into 2018 and a depression in 2021. 

Super Long Term Delta Cycle in the SPX