Solar activity and stock markets revisited
What can Galileo Galilei tell us about today’s volatile financial markets?
In 1610, shortly after viewing the sun with his new telescope, Italian physicist Galileo Galilei made the first European observations of sunspots. The sunspot number is calculated by first counting the number of sunspot groups and then the number of individual sunspots.
According to NASA, monthly averages of the sunspot numbers show that the number of sunspots visible on the sun waxes and wanes with an approximate 11-year cycle.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, some have predicted that 2012 will bring a maximum solar activity in sunspots after sunspot activity reached a 100-year low in mid-March 2009 (which coincides with a cycle low in equity markets). And the concern was that a stock market low may happen in 2012, which coincides with either a sunspot low or high depending on the cycle.
However, according to the latest predictions by NASA, we may not reach the maximum activity until May 2013.
“The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 89 in May of 2013. We are currently almost three years into Cycle 24,” Nasa writes.
“Predicting the behavior of a sunspot cycle is fairly reliable once the cycle is well underway (about 3 years after the minimum in sunspot number occurs).”
Solar activities and market cycles
Can nature’s cycles enrich our finance and market theories?
Market predictions based on the alignment of the sun, moon and the earth and other cycles could help investors stay disciplined and profit in economic storms, says Daniel Shaffer, CEO of Shaffer Asset Management.
Shaffer writes that sunspot activities show that the sun has an approximate 11-year cycle and as of March 31, 2009, sunspot activity has reached a 100-year low (this, interestingly, coincides with a cycle low in equity markets, reached sometime mid-March in 2009).
But a low in solar activity seems to be followed by a high. Scientists are predicting a solar maximum of activity in sunspots in 2012 that could e the strongest in modern times, according to Shaffer.
“The concern is that something weird is going on and that the current extreme low in the sunspot cycle, similar to the stock market, can be followed by an unusually high sunspot cycle leading to a solar maximum, or in other words, a peak in sunspot activity,” he writes in his latest book.
“Our analysis is currently indicating a stock market low in the United States in approximately year 2012, which coincides with either a sunspot low or high depending on the cycle. ”
The final frontier market
The present may be pretty bleak for investors, but that has not stopped one firm from looking decidedly at the future – privatised space travel. Fortis Investments reckons space tourism will one day become all the rage with travellers willing to fork out thousands upon thousands of dollars for the adventure.
In the latest issue of Fund Expert magazine, Fortis looks at the nascent industry and reckons that the price of a space trip – roughly $200,000 to begin with – should come down substantially as a result of competition. There is already some – including Virgin Galactic, which is aiming for launch by next year, and Rocketplane, which should go up the year after. They will start modestly, just sticking their noses out of the atmosphere.
The new industry, however, eventually should mean a boom in new employment, requiring commercial astronauts, flight attendants, tour operators and so on. But the flight operators may also be licking their lips at the prospect of getting government military and scientific research contracts. Fortis – whose Brussels headquarters coincidently is located on Avenue de l’Astronomie — reckons that a NASA flight currently costs the U.S. government $1.3 billion a pop. So outsourcing would be attractive.
To boldly go, in effect, looks set to become more than just Star Trek’s mantra and the world’s most famous split infinitive.
Virgin Galactic are showing great vision, some people dismiss suborbital flights as trivial but they are a crucial step in the commercialization of space. They will contribute to establishing a new private space industry and lay the platform for orbital activity. Let’s face it, not much has happened in manned spaceflight exploration since Captain Eugene Cernan stepped off the moon in 1972, so we need these fresh approaches to reinvigorate space research.
For those interested in the Sun and the Sun-Earth connection (+ Northern lights) my new popular science book has been released.
“Our Explosive Sun – A Visual Feast of Our Source of Light and Life”.
Our Explosive Sun includes 143 color illustrations and photos of the Sun, several of which were made especially for the book and have never been published before. Additional material, available via Springer Extras, includes a large number of animations and video material. A PowerPoint presentation of the book is a useful resource for teachers.”
More info, electronic version and sample pages:
http://www.springer.com/astronomy/extrat errestrial+physics%2C+space+sciences/boo k/978-1-4614-0570-2?changeHeader
Best regards
Pål
http://www.solarmax.no/Aurora/Contact.ht ml