A red band means sell, a grey band means buy, and a triangle marks a panic
Each column on the chart is one calendar year. A red band marks a B year, which Benner called good times and high prices, the time to sell. A grey band with a dashed edge marks a C year, hard times and low prices, the time to buy. A black triangle at the top marks an A year, a panic. The three rails under the chart list the same years by number.
The black line is the S&P at the end of each year, drawn on a log scale so that a 10% move looks the same size in 1890 as in 2020. It is dashed before 1927 because those levels come from the Cowles index. The red rule marks today, and to its right the shaded area holds Benner’s card and nothing else, out to 2059. Tap or click any year and its row appears under the chart, with the marks Benner gave it and the nearest marks either side.
An Ohio farmer ruined by the panic of 1873 published the card in 1875
On 18 September 1873 the banking house Jay Cooke & Company failed and set off a panic across the United States. The New York Stock Exchange closed for ten days. Samuel Benner, a farmer in Ohio, lost his farm.
He spent the next months on decades of prices for pig iron, corn and hogs and on the dates of earlier panics, and found that the highs and lows came back in a repeating order of intervals. In 1875 he published the result in Cincinnati as Benner’s Prophecies of Future Ups and Downs in Prices.
The card holds three series. Series A, the panic years, steps 18, 20 and 16 years, a 54-year round. Series B, good times and high prices, steps 9, 10 and 8 years, a 27-year round. Series C, hard times and low prices, steps 11, 9 and 7 years, also 27. Because each series rotates its steps, the gaps between turns stretch and shrink in a fixed order. The library essay sets out his story at more length, with the full table from 1549 to 2269. Read Samuel Benner’s 1875 forecast of booms and panics.