ASX Trader: Why the next market crash might already be on the calendar

Buried in a dusty ledger from 1875 lies a chart so accurate it has foreshadowed every major market collapse for over a century and it’s pointing to another storm on the horizon, writes ASX Trader.

Buried in a dusty ledger from 1875 lies a chart so accurate it has foreshadowed every major market collapse for over a century and it’s pointing to another storm on the horizon.

From Cornfields to Cycles: How a farmer predicted market booms and busts

In the 1870s, an Ohio farmer named Samuel T. Benner lost nearly everything during the financial panic of 1873.

But instead of walking away defeated, he picked up his ledger, studied past market cycles and began tracking patterns in commodity prices, business activity, and stockmarket behaviour.

The result was something extraordinary: the Benner Cycle, a chart that mapped out years of financial panics, prosperity, and depressions with eerie accuracy.

More than 150 years later, Benner’s work is still making waves among traders, analysts, and historians alike.

Is another stock market crash on the cards? Photo: Canva

What is the Benner Cycle?

The Benner Cycle is a predictive model that attempts to forecast economic and stockmarket highs and lows.

Benner didn’t have AI or Bloomberg terminals, just a pen, paper, and data going back to the early 1800s.

His conclusions were simple but powerful.

He identified recurring time intervals:

• Years of panic tend to occur every 8–9 years

• Years of good times (highs in business activity and markets) follow a longer 16 to 18-year rhythm

• Years of low prices tend to follow 7-year or 11-year patterns

He combined these insights into a chart that cycles through boom, bust, and recovery with uncanny consistency.

The Benner Cycle

The darker line represents major cycles. The lighter lines represent minor cycles.

A → Panic Years: Market panics lead to irrational buying or selling, causing extreme price fluctuations. This is the top of the bull markets, i.e. time to sell.

B → Good Times: According to Benner’s analysis, there are specific periods of high prices that are optimal for selling stocks, assets, and values.

C → Hard Times: This is the bear market. Buy and hold stocks, goods, and assets until the good times, then sell.

A forecast built on time, not headlines

Benner’s model wasn’t based on news or politics.

Instead, it focused on the idea that markets and economies move in rhythmical waves, driven by deeper human and systemic forces - like credit cycles, innovation, speculation, and mass psychology.

His original chart, which plotted data from 1875 onward, successfully predicted the market crashes of 1884, 1891, 1903, and even 1929.

And here’s the kicker: updates and extensions of the Benner Cycle seem to align with major events even in the 20th and 21st centuries, from the Dot-Com Bust (2000) to the Global Financial Crisis (2008) and even the COVID crash (2020).

Why is it still relevant?

At a time when algorithms dominate trading floors and investors chase every CPI print or central-bank press release, the Benner Cycle is a reminder of something timeless:

Markets may change, but human nature does not.

People still get euphoric at the top, fearful at the bottom, and greedy somewhere in between. Benner’s forecast taps into this emotional ebb and flow - without needing a single earnings report or inflation number.

What does the Benner Cycle say about today?

If you project Benner’s cycle into the current decade, here’s what many analysts highlight:

• 2023–2025: Recovery and rising prices

• 2025–2027: Possible market peak

• 2034–2036: Another potential downturn or financial panic

Of course, no cycle is perfect.

Markets are influenced by countless variables - from geopolitics to technology but the Benner framework offers a long-term lens that helps investors zoom out, stay grounded, and spot repeating rhythms.

A tool for the thinking investor

The Benner Cycle isn’t a magic bullet or a get-rich-quick scheme.

It’s a historical model, one that invites us to think beyond the daily noise and understand the market as a living, breathing organism with its own heartbeat.

For long-term investors, it’s a conversation starter.

For technically minded traders, it’s another chart to overlay and test.

And for those curious about economic history, it’s a window into how one farmer’s pain became everyone’s potential gain.

Looking Ahead: Real estate’s 2026 defensive play

The Benner roadmap lines up neatly with another well-worn pattern - the 18-year real-estate cycle, which forecasts a property-market crest in 2026.

I’ll dive deeper into that rhythm in the next column, but the takeaway today is simple: 2026 is shaping up as a year to play defence.

The real estate cycle.

Think of it like elite‑level sport: championship teams don’t rely solely on dazzling offence, they lock down on defence when it matters most.

Markets work the same way.

We’ve enjoyed a strong offensive run through the post‑COVID recovery; now it’s time to protect the goal.

That means building cash reserves, tightening risk management, and being disciplined enough to wait for the next high‑probability shots.

You can’t win titles without mastering both ends of the court and you can’t thrive in the markets without balancing attack with defence.

Originally published as ASX Trader: Why the next market crash might already be on the calendar