The Commodity Forecasts of Samuel Benner One of the History’s First Providers of Financial Market Forecasts

One of earliest records of financial market forecasting came back in the mid-1800’s by an Ohio farmer named Samuel Benner (1832-1913).

Benner’s famous book Benner’s Prophecies of Futures Ups and Downs is a classic that influenced many future forecasters like Edward R. Dewey, Director of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, who assessed Benner’s pig iron price forecasts over a 60 year period and regarded this cycle as showing a remarkable gain/loss ratio of 45 to 1, calling it “the most notable forecast of prices in existence”.

Benner was a prosperous farmer who was wiped out financially by the 1873 panic and hog cholera epidemic. Upon his retirement he decided to see if he could discover the cause and timing of economic fluctuations, and in 1875 he began publishing commodity price and business forecasts which he continued until 1904.

Benner’s Cycles

He 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. CosmoEconomic 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.”

• Benner’s Prophecies

Benner has had a unending influence across history. Roger Babson was known to have quoted Benner and to have used his work as a foundation for his forecasting services. Dr. Jerome Baumring included Benner’s text as one of the foundational works in his forecasting course series.

A.J. Frost developed a variation of Benner’s cycles in his and Prechter’s Elliot Wave Principle, and Daniel T. Ferrera still tracks Benner’s cycles today in his yearly General Outlooks.

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