Just came across an old but fascinating market theory that's been on my mind lately. There's this historical framework called the Benner Cycle - developed back in 1875 by Samuel Benner, an Ohio farmer who spent years analyzing economic patterns. What's wild is how it maps out specific periods when to make money, and honestly, some of it still tracks today.

So here's how it breaks down. Benner identified three repeating cycles that basically tell you when to be aggressive and when to sit tight. First, there are the panic years - roughly every 16-18 years. These are the years when crashes happen and you definitely don't want to be holding. Then you've got the boom years, the prosperity periods that come around every 9-11 years or so. That's when you're supposed to be selling and taking profits. And finally, the buying opportunities - those low-price years that cycle every 7-10 years when smart money is accumulating.

Looking at his actual predictions, the panic years he marked were 1927, 1945, 1965, 1981, 1999, 2019, and then 2035 coming up. The boom years where you should be exiting positions include 2026 - which is literally right now - along with 2035, 2043, 2052. And the dip-buying opportunities showed up in 2023, with the next major one expected around 2030.

What caught my attention is the 2026 timing. According to Benner's framework, this is supposed to be a peak year for selling and taking profits. Then 2035 gets interesting because it appears in both the boom AND panic categories - suggesting a potential transition year or reversal point. The cycles suggest you should be capitalizing on these periods when to make money by buying low around 2023-2030 and then rotating out around these peak years.

The practical playbook is pretty straightforward: accumulate during the downturn years, hold through the recovery, then exit during the prosperity peaks before the next panic cycle hits. Obviously this is historical theory and markets are complex, but it's worth tracking these markers. Some of these cycle timings have proven eerily accurate over the decades, which is why this framework keeps getting revisited by traders and analysts.