The Majority Must Be Wrong

QUESTION: I asked GOK who thinks the stock market will crash. It gave a list of people all expecting a crash. It also noted that Buffet was bearish and J.P. Morgan was calling for a 20% drop. The reasons were “High valuations, particularly in tech and AI, are compared to historical bubbles (e.g., dot-com, railroads). Recession fears, driven by tariffs, high interest rates, and consumer debt, are seen as potential catalysts. Ongoing conflicts (e.g., Middle East, Russia-Ukraine) and trade policy shifts add volatility.”

It even said:

“Samuel Benner’s Historical Chart (Referenced on Medium):

Prediction: A 150-year-old financial cycle chart by Samuel Benner, cited in a Medium article, has historically predicted major crashes, including the Great Depression, dot-com bust, and 2020 COVID crash. It suggests warning signs for a potential crash in 2025.”

You seem to be standing alone. What do you think about the Benner chart?

SY

ANSWER: That’s good. The majority is always wrong. Just as Rogoff said, the forecasts at Davos are always wrong. Most of these people forecast markets based on personal opinion, and they tend to be very myopic. They do not look at the world because they believe they can forecast in isolation.

The claim that Benner’s Cycle predicted the Great Depression is false. The chart that was published in the Wall Street Journal altered Samuel Benner’s cycle, which was based on agriculture. It predicted a high in 1927, not 1929, and the low in 1930, not 1932. Claims that Benner’s work calls for a crash in 2025 are flat-out wrong. His target years would be 2019 and 2035, based on his data, not the altered, fake news published by the WSJ in 1933.

Benner was a farmer. Applying his cycle to the economy today is no longer effective, any more than the Kondratieff Wave. Both were based on the economy, with agriculture being the #1 sector. As the Industrial Revolution unfolded, those cycles remain relevant for commodities, but not the economy. Agriculture, when Benner developed his model, accounted for 53% of the economy. Today it is 3%. If they were alive today, they would have used the services industry. Capital flows are still pointing to the dollar, given the prospect of war and sovereign defaults outside the USA.