Planetary Cycles and the Markets.

[Guest guest]

Therese,

 

I dug up this piece from some web archive from 8 years back.

Hannula's real name is Al Larson and he lectures for the Astro-

Economics group :

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Dr. Hans Hannula writes the AstroPhysics newsletter.

Here is some background info. on Hans and how he came

to discover the value of using astronomical indicators

for market timing.

 

Hans Hannula states,

 

" By training I am an engineer, and a scientist. I am a

graduate of the Air Force Academy, and earned a PhD in

Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University

of Wisconsin. While in the Air Force, I was a jet

instructor pilot, and a combat pilot in Vietnam. I

taught at the Air Force Academy. After leaving the Air

Force, I worked for Bell Laboratories. "

 

Dr. Hannula continues, " I was introduced to the markets

on my first Air Force assignment by a young Captain, who

later retired wealthy by using his Air Force pay to trade

the markets. As I studied the material he gave me, I

became fascinated by various theories about what caused the

markets to move, especially cycles. "

 

" I had been introduced to cycles by one of Dewey's early

books, and then by Jim Hearst's book. While I was in

graduate school, I programmed the material in Jim Hearst's

book and started doing digital filtering of cycles. I did

such things as Fourier transform studies about the cyles in

the Dow. I was fascinated by the potential of applying

digital computers and engineering techniques to analyse the

market. It did help my trading, and I began to feel I could

see what was going on. At that point I had captured the

state of the art of cycles knowledge. I thought I knew it

all. But an interesting thing happened on day at lunch. "

 

" The party I was with was joined by an ex-professor of mine.

He was retired and someone asked him what he was doing now.

He started telling an interesting story. He claimed that

he had extracted the orbital period of Mercury, accurate to

5 decimal places, from the Consumer Price Index. I was very

polite, but I thought the old guy may have flipped his lid.

However, I decided it was worth checking out, so I asked if

I could come over and see his mathematics. He said, sure " .

 

" I paid him a visit. I went through his mathematics.

I found they were ingenious, and very sound. He had

developed a unique means of extracting cycles in such a way

that he did not modify the data from which they were being

extracted. This is unlike any other cycle extraction

technique. I found this breakthrough in cycle extraction

technique extremely interesting. It was also a breakthrough

in my thinking about cycles. What he was extracting from a

financial time series were certainly planetary cycles. The

odds against him coming up with the cycle values, accurate

to 5 and 6 decimal places, by chance or by accident, were

great than 5000 to 1. I knew that this was not absolute

proof that the planets moved the markets, but it was

certainly evidence which could not be ignored. "

 

" When I was asked what the physical mechanism for this

was he said it was just the way the solar system was

built. It was based on work discovered in the 1930's by

cycles researchers who were working on cycles in weather.

Clayton, Luby, Stetson and several other early researchers

had discovered that the so-called solar constant of

radiation was not constant at all, but had about a 2%

variation, and that variation severely effected our weather

and the earth's electromagnetic field. They hypothesis was

that the planets, as they moved, caused tidal waves on the

gaseous sun, stirring up sunspots and solar flares, causing

the variation in radiation. "

 

" I asked if there was an equation for this stirring

tidal force, and discovered that there was. So I did one of

those things I frequently do - I stuck my foot in my mouth

and volunteered to write a program to compute the stirring

force. It took me a few weeks to write the program. When I

gave it to my ex-professor, he began pointing out to me that

the correlations between the highs and the lows in the stirring

force and the Consumer Index. The correlation was uncanny. My

friend told me it was great work. "

 

" At that point I thought, Well, if the solar stirring

force relates to one economic series that is driven by mass

psychology, it would relate to another. My other reading

had informed me that not only our weather but our

electromagnetic field and the currents that flow between

earth and the atmosphere were quite variable and could be

related to this same phenomena. I found that scientists had

even tracked changes in blood PH to changes in the

electromagnetic field. It made a lot of sense to me that

those electromagnetic changes and the currents, flowing

through the very space in which we walk could effect the

human body. I learned that there are large electric

currents, in the thousands of amperes, flowing between the

earth's surface and the atmosphere, causing such powerful

natural events as lightning. My research confirmed that it is

very scientifically proven that these changes affect such

things as the ability of homing pigeons to navigate, an

that time cycles to which people who are isolated in caves

adjust their work routine. "

 

" I started looking at this solar stirring force and the

stock market. One thing I did was apply digital filtering

techniques to extract a nominal 2 year and a nominal 4

year cycle out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. When I

compared the two, I made quite an astounding discovery-the

highs and lows were frequently correlated. They were so

well correlated that the odds against it happening by chance

were several thousand to one. This work I much later

published in the article " In Search of the Cause of Cycles " .

 

Once I was convinced that these planetary cycle-market

correlations were not accidental, but something that could

be traced scientifically, I began some very serious research

work. Since I had a computer model of the planets, I could

easily add equations to describe various forms of energy

transfer. One of the models I came up up with I now call

Astro Points or the AstroPoint index. It is a set of

equations driven by the planetary model that produces a time

series. This time series give me points in time when I

there to be outbursts of solar energy. The correlations

with this time series with highs and lows in the market is

very high. It, and several other correlations, along with

my statistical method of doing the correlations, are

presented in the MTA conference paper, " In Search of Truly

Scientific Correlations " . " These Astro Points, then, give

points in which we expect the earth's energy fields to be

disturbed. The interesting thing is that the energy shows up

in a lot of different forms, - sometimes its an

electromagnetic field disturbance, sometimes it's a solar

flare, sometimes it's a proton shower, etc. But even

thought it arrives in different ways, it almost always has

a psychological effect. In fact, I have even found a very

high correlations to the highs and lows in crises in a

mental health clinic. Our environment does absolutely

affect our psychology. "