Full Moon Influence - Will Financial Normalcy Return?
In case you were out and about today, there was a fantastic full moon that caught my eye and gave me pause. Okay, it didn't look quite like this lovely photograph, courtesy of The National Aeronautics and Space Administration ("NASA"), but it sure looked magnficent to this astronomy layman's eye. The superstitious say that a full moon encourages crazy behavior. Listening to the ongoing debates about the jumbo U.S. stimulus program of late makes me wonder if Washington isn't moonstruck. Talk about a runaway train. Yet free-spending Congressmen and women are not the only "luneatics." A Connecticut colleague says that people are doing illogical things now that he has never seen is his 40-year career as a corporate contracts attorney. According to "Some See a Rat in the Year of the Ox for Investors Seeking Advice," reporter Jonathan Cheng writes that wealthy clients are turning to feng shui as a way back to prosperity (Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2009). Well, best of luck to them. Maybe it couldn't hurt.
Editor's Note:
- Several research papers have examined the relationship between lunar cycles and stock returns. See "Are Investors Moonstruck - Lunar Phases and Stock Returns" by Kathy Yuan et al (September 2001), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=283156 or "Lunar Cycle Effects in Stock Returns" by Ilia D. Dichev and Troy D. Janes, The Journal of Private Equity, Fall 2003, http://www.iijournals.com/JPE/DEFAULT.ASP?Page=2&ISS=8300&SID=320053.
- Psychology Today's Marissa Kantor writes that science tends not to support the notion of a moonbeam influence. See "Full Moon Crazy."
