Just came across something interesting about how markets actually work in cycles. Turns out a farmer named Samuel Benner figured this out way back in the 1800s, and honestly his framework still holds up today.

So here's the thing - after getting wiped out in the 1873 market crash, Benner started obsessing over why markets move the way they do. Being a farmer, he noticed crops followed seasons, and that affected prices. He dug deeper and discovered markets themselves follow predictable patterns. The benner cycle, as it's called, essentially breaks down into three repeating phases: panic years, good times, and hard times.

Panic years are brutal - extreme volatility, irrational buying and selling, people making emotional decisions instead of thinking clearly. Prices either crash hard or spike unexpectedly. Good times are when assets are overpriced and you should be selling. Hard times are when prices are depressed and you should be accumulating. Pretty straightforward if you think about it.

What's wild is how accurate this has been. The benner cycle nailed the Great Depression, the dotcom bubble, even predicted the 2020 COVID crash. Benner found an 11-year cycle in commodity prices that matched solar cycles, then discovered a 27-year pattern in iron prices with specific intervals for lows and highs.

The benner cycle framework is basically saying market panics happen on schedule. It's not random chaos - there's structure to it. When you look at market history through this lens, you start seeing how these cycles have shaped prices for over a century.

Right now, based on this analysis, we're supposedly in the hard times phase where assets are getting cheaper. If the pattern holds, this is actually when smart money should be thinking about positions. Whether you believe in the benner cycle or not, it's hard to ignore that markets do seem to follow these repeating patterns. Definitely worth understanding if you're trying to make sense of what's happening in crypto and traditional markets.