Showing posts with label Wheat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wheat. Show all posts

Friday, September 8, 2023

The Art of Forecasting Wheat Prices Using Harmonic Cycles | L.H. Weston

Numerous attempts have been made during the past century to find a fairly reliable method for determining, long in advance, the probable price of wheat and grain in general [...] We have a wheat record that runs back, upon unimpeachable authority, for several hundred years, the one given in this booklet beginning in the year 1270 and running up to present time, with years as the unit of time, and it would indeed be strange if, with such a record, we could not pick out the useful cycles in it, providing any such cycles really do exist [...] That there are recurring cycles of movement in nearly all, if not, indeed, absolutely all natural phenomena, there is now no longer any reasonable doubt. No scholar of the day, no scientist, no investigator of these times, would for a moment argue against this well established fact.
 

[...] In the following pages I give the recorded mean price of wheat for each year in England from the year 1270 to 1909, in both a table and a diagram. Also, in a diagram, the monthly mean price of wheat at Chicago and Cincinnati from 1844 to present date. Special charts are also given to illustrate the explanations regarding the method of forecasting by means of cycles. By means of these tables and charts I show in this work how a forecast of the wheat market can be made up for over 40 years. In fact, I chart the forecast in advance over 10 years, for the benefit of readers and students. It is done just as proposed above, namely, by first proving that the harmonic cycles really do exist in the records, and then carrying them on into future years. The calendar year is used as the unit of time (or the calendar month) and therefore the forecasting, as taught, is necessarily of the long swing movement. 
 
 
 
[...] On page 27 is given the table of composite and harmonic values in the 49-year cycle. That composite is, as before stated, the result of eleven cycles added together, while the harmonic values are merely the smoothed curve of this same composite, and both are charted together on page 26. 

 
[...] This result is given in the Composite Chart of the 49-year cycle and it is the one used as the basis of all forecasting. If we examine the composite chart with some attention we will find that there are just about eight places where tops come out and likewise there are eight bottoms. Eight into 49 goes 6.125 times, so it seems very much as though the famous 7-year cycle of the ancient Jews was in reality about six and one-eighth years instead of 7. It is the eighth harmonic that gives the best results in the 49-year cycle, instead of the seventh.

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

The Heartbeat of the Sun│Valentina V. Zharkova et al.

Valentina V. Zharkova (2016) - We will see it from 2020 to 2053, when the three next cycles will be of a very reduced magnetic field of the sun. Basically, what happens is these two waves, they separate into the opposite hemispheres and they will not be interacting with each other, which means that resulting magnetic field will drop dramatically nearly to zero. And this will be a similar condition like in the Maunder Minimum.
 

What will happen to the Earth remains to be seen and predicted because nobody has developed any program or any models of terrestrial response – they are based on this period when the sun has maximum activity — when the sun has these nice fluctuations, and its magnetic field [is] very strong. But we’re approaching the stage when the magnetic field of the sun is going to be very, very small. 

 
See also:
 

Friday, April 13, 2018

Critical Degrees and Change of Trend | George Bayer (1937)


Source:
Detecting the Change of Trend by Means of Critical Degrees. In:
George Bayer (1937): Time Factors in the Stock Market; Carmel, California; pp. 69-72. 

S&P 500 Index vs George Bayer’s Critical Degrees of Mars
@ 0° @ 5° @ 17° @ 25° of each Zodiac Sign | April 17
(Tue) High ?

Enlarge

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Wheat vs George Bayer Rule #14 │ July 14 or 17 Low (Fri or Mon)


VENUS MOVEMENTS IN GEOCENTRIC LONGITUDE USING A UNIT OF 1°9’13” 
This rule was found by measuring from the high of March 31, 1937 in Wheat. It is rather complicated for practical use, since exact measurements must be made with degrees, minutes and second [...] We use the single unit 1°9’13” [1.153611 degrees], also five times this unit or 6°55’18” [6.92166 degrees] or [...] 25 times the original 1°9’18” unit which value is 34°36’30” [34.60833 degrees]. All the measurements are to be used for geocentric longitude only. How I arrived at this 1°9’13” value I do not recall [...] During the period a planet moves retrograde we have to DEDUCT our increment, i.e. the values we use. When the motion of the planet is forward we have to ADD them. Be sure not to fail on this else no results can be expected. 
[George Bayer (1940): Stock and Commodity Traders´ Hand-Book of Trend Determination, p. 23 f., Carmel, California]
Update: July 18, 2017 07:02 AM: Wheat +1.78%

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Sunspot Cycle Length vs Temperature Anomaly │ Jasper Kirkby

The sunspot cycle length as a measure of the Sun's activity:
Variation during the period 1861 - 1989 of the sunspot cycle length (solid curve)
and the temperature anomaly of the Northern Hemisphere (dashed curve).
The temperature data from the IPCC.

Jasper Kirkby (1998) - The sunspot cycle length averages 11 years but has varied from 7 to 17 years, with shorter cycle lengths corresponding to a more magnetically-active Sun. A remarkably close agreement was found between the sunspot cycle length and the change in land temperature of the Northern Hemisphere in the period between 1861 and 1989 [update HERE]. The land temperature of the Northern Hemisphere was used to avoid the lag by several years of air temperatures over the oceans, due to their large heat capacity. This figure covers the period during which greenhouse gas emissions are presumed to have caused a global warming of about 0.6°C. Two features are of particular note: firstly the dip between 1945 and 1970, which cannot be explained by the steadily rising greenhouse gas emissions but seems well-matched to a decrease in the Sun's activity, and secondly the close correspondence between the two curves over this entire period, which would seem to leave little room for an additional greenhouse gas effect.

[...] The observation that warm weather seems to coincide with high sunspot counts and cool weather with low sunspot counts was made as long ago as two hundred years by the astronomer William Herschel who noticed that the price of wheat in England was lower when there were many sunspots, and higher when there were few. See also HERE  

Data: SILSO Royal Observatory of Belgium.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Sunspots and the Price of Corn and Wheat | William Stanley Jevons

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882)
William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) was a British economist and philosopher who foreshadowed several developments of the 20th century. He is one of the main contributors to the ‘marginal revolution’, which revolutionized economic theory and shifted classical to neoclassical economics. He was the first economist to construct index numbers, and he had a tremendous influence on the development of empirical methods and the use of statistics and econometrics in the social sciences. Jevons also analyzed business cycles, proposing that crises in the economy might not be random events, but might be based on discernible prior causes. To clarify the concept, he presented a statistical study relating business cycles with sunspots.

Daniel Kuester & Charles R. Britton (2000) - William Stanley Jevons summarized his thoughts on the effects of weather on economic activity in three chapters of his book Investigations in Currency and Finance (1909). An in-depth examination of these essays reveals some very interesting conclusions. In the first essay entitled “The Solar Period and the Price of Corn” (1875) he first investigates the striking similarity between the length of many historical business cycles and the length of the average length of the sunspot cycle. Jevons finds that the prices of most agricultural products vary dramatically over an eleven year cycle. He cites English agricultural price data from the years 1259-1400. The prices of wheat, barley, oats, beans, peas, and rye reach a relative minimum in the second year of the cycle, an absolute maximum in the fourth year of the cycle and an absolute minimum in the tenth year of the cycle before recovering in the final year of the cycle and the first year of the new cycle. There does appear to be a rather obvious and consistent trend in prices over these eleven year periods. Jevons discovers that the data (English wheat prices from 1595-1761) available to him in the Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) confirm similar although less marked trends in agricultural prices.

Jevons does not discount other significant factors that might cause the rather predictable nature of these business cycles. Technological advancements, wars, and other factors independent of agricultural and weather cycles can and do exhibit great influence over the economic well being of a nation. Also consumer confidence or a lack thereof could cause significant variations in spending and employment. However, Jevons believes that these consumer attitudes may also be related to the sunspot theory and the corresponding droughts and bumper crops which may result. “If, then the English money market is naturally fitted to swing or roll in periods of ten or eleven years, comparatively slight variations in the goodness of harvests repeated at like intervals would suffice to produce those alterations of depression, activity, excitement and collapse which undoubtedly recur in well- marked succession.” Jevons believes that if it were possible to accurately predict the sunspot cycle and the corresponding bumper crops and droughts then it would also be possible to predict impending economic crises.

In the second essay “The Periodicity of Commercial Crisis and Its Physical Explanation” (1878) with “Postscript” (1882) W.S. Jevons continues his study. In this essay he attempts to find empirical evidence to support his claim that business cycles follow predictable patterns which can be tied to the length of the sunspot cycles. Jevons claims that the relationship between weather patterns and business activity display a stronger relationship in primarily agrarian societies such as India and Africa. This claim makes this subject more meaningful in studying the relationship between weather patterns and economic activity in arid and semi- arid lands.


One piece of empirical evidence which W.S. Jevons believed would strengthen his sunspot business cycle theory actually has weakened this theory somewhat in retrospect. “There is more or less evidence that trade reached a maximum of activity in or about the years 1701, 1711, 1721, 1732, 1742, 1753, 1763, 1772, 1783, 1793, 1805, 1815, 1825, 1837, 1847, 1857, 1866. These years marked by the bursting of a commercial panic or not, are as nearly as I can judge, corresponding years, and the intervals, vary only form nine to twelve years. There being in all an interval of one hundred and sixty five years, broken into sixteen periods, the average length of the period is about 10.3 years.” Jevons points out that it is reasonable for the business cycles to vary somewhat in duration as it is reasonable to expect that there will be different lags between droughts and economic downturns based on inventories available and on the variations in trade patterns and ability to obtain imports quickly.

Potentially the most troubling conclusion that Jevons reached was that a sunspot cycle and the corresponding changes in agricultural yield and national productivity would follow a predictable pattern of approximately 10.3 years. Most astronomers now believe that the sunspot cycle does indeed last approximately 11.11 years which is somewhat troubling and is something that Jevons’ son attempts to address. This potential difference in sunspot duration is a primary reason this subject has not been studied as much as might be expected. However the findings of García-Mata and Shaffner provide some credence to Jevons’ theory. “Summing up, we can say that from a statistical point of view there appears to be a clear correlation between the major cycles of non-agricultural business activity in the United States and the solar cycle of 11+ years.” These authors also claim that it is reasonable that there could be some variation in the duration between sunspot cycles and that there is evidence that these cycles do correspond with business activity.


Christopher Scheiner's 1626 representation of the changes in sunspots over time (1630, recordings
from 1611). Scheiner, a Jesuit astronomer, eventually published the definitive work of the 17th
century on sunspots, in which he accepted Galileo’s argument that sunspots "move like ships" on
the surface of the Sun. Scheiner and Galileo agreed that sunspots counted against the Aristotelian
doctrine of celestial incorruptibility. Earlier Jesuits had been open on this point. Clavius argued
for the corruptibility of the heavens after the nova of 1572. Scheiner here publicized the fact that
the Jesuit theologian Robert Bellarmine had argued for the igneous nature of the stars and the
corruptibility of the heavens even before 1572 on the basis of biblical exegesis and the tradition
of the Church Fathers. Cardinal Orsini paid for the printing of this lavish work (Rosa Ursina - The
Rose of Orsini
, 1630).

The third essay on sunspots and the business cycle was entitled “Commercial Crisis and Sun-Spots Part I” (1878) and “Part II” (1879) completed W. S. Jevons thoughts on the relationship of weather and business activity. In this essay he continues to discuss the existence of a solar cycle of 10.45 years as being wholly consistent with his findings and being a better predictor of economic variables than the now widely used duration of 11.11 years. Despite this potentially unfortunate conclusion Jevons elaborates on the potential relationship between solar and weather cycles and economic activity. He concludes that solar patterns should be studied to determine if a causal relationship does indeed exist between solar patterns and economic activity. If so, then policies should be enacted to reduce the magnitude of the contraction/recession parts of the business cycle. Jevons further elaborates on the importance of the solar cycle on consumer confidence and spending. “From that sun which is truly ‘of this great world both eye and soul’ we derive our strength and our weakness, our success and our failure, our elation in commercial mania, and our despondency and ruin in commercial collapse.” Jevons also finds more empirical evidence that corn prices in Delhi reach maximum and minimum in a similar eleven year pattern which has been exhibited in Europe. Once more this theory seems much more applicably to arid and semi-arid regions such as India.

Sunspot illustration from Scheiner's Rosa Ursina, 1630.
William Stanley Jevons’ son H. Stanley Jevons continued his work on sunspots and published “Changes at the Sun’s Heat as the Cause of Fluctuations of the Activity of Trade and of Unemployment” in Contemporary Review in 1909. He reissued it in a monograph entitled The Sun’s Heat and Trade Activity (1910) in which he further examined and elaborated on the subject. H. S. Jevons believed that his father had some excellent ideas in relating the sunspot theory to the length of business cycles although he does acknowledge some of the criticisms which have been leveled at the work W.S. Jevons did. He states that the sun’s activity has some effect on economic outcomes and while it is not the only variable which should be considered when formulating economic policy it is worth considering when formulating economic policy.

H.S. Jevons acknowledges that his father was in error when he claimed that he solar cycle would only last approximately 10.45 years. He claims that W.S. Jevons attempted to oversimplify his findings and he ignored some events which created economic booms and busts which had nothing to do with arid land’s agricultural productivity. This is what led him to the false 10.45 year business cycle predictor. However he found that wheat production in the United States displayed significant variation during the nineteenth century and reached its peak approximately every 11.11 years. He found a direct relationship between solar activity and wheat production in the United States. H.S. Jevons believes that the eleven year sunspot cycle is actually a combination of three shorter sunspot cycles which were just over three years in duration. There would be a period of drought approximately every 3.5 years and a period of cold damp weather approximately every 3.5 years. This great harvest would precipitate a trade boom according to Jevons. He finds data that suggest the production of pig iron and agricultural produce in the United States were closely related and followed the sunspot cycle closely. He also states that on occasion the business cycle will only correspond with two of these shorter sunspot cycles explaining the variation in business cycles between seven and eleven years. This can explain the error that W.S. Jevons did not understand about the variation in the length of business cycles. H.S. Jevons provides several suggestions as to how this information about solar activity can be useful. He believes that if output and therefore trade can be expected to decline in the near future that there should be wage cuts to attempt to ensure full employment. This suggestion is not reasonable today but if we are going to engage in interventionary fiscal and monetary policy the potential to predict shortfalls in productivity and potentially consumer confidence can have meaningful implications for expansionary monetary policies being enacted. This is particularly useful if there are actual psychological ties between solar activity and consumer’s attitudes which sounds far fetched but may occur. Jevons also recommends less domestic reliance on crops would reduce the variation in economic prosperity. While crop production is still important in many arid and semi-arid lands, this is not as meaningful to the economy as it was when Jevons wrote.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Sunspots - The Real Cause of Higher Grain Prices | Tom McClellan

Tom McClellan (Jul 27, 2012) - Sunspots are a big driver for wheat prices. Various pundits are putting out stories blaming the drought in the plains states on global warming [...] A better explanation for the drought, and the ensuing spike in grain prices, is that this is all part of the normal 11-year sunspot cycle. But to find that relationship in the data is what the story is about. The first point to understand is that sunspot activity has now been scientifically linked to changes in cloud formation. When the sun is more active, the charge particles streaming out from sunspot activity help to sweep away cosmic rays that might otherwise hit earth's atmosphere, where they play a role in cloud formation [... | HERE + HERE] Once you get past that more difficult scientific hurdle of understanding that cosmic rays and clouds are related, it is pretty easy to understand that less cloud formation is related to less precipitation, and thus poorer growing conditions for rain-irrigated crops. That is what we are seeing with this year's drought, and it has been pushing up grain prices accordingly. Looking across the last hundred years of price data on wheat, it can be difficult to see the relationship between the sunspot number and wheat prices. Part of this comes from the fact that there are other factors which sometimes act upon crop yields and thus grain pricing. But a big factor is that the units we use to measure wheat prices, i.e. US dollars, can vary themselves, causing the relationship with sunspots to sometimes be disguised by what the dollar itself is doing. 



If we look at the history of these two sets of data before the modern era of floating currency exchange rates, we can better see how they were correlated. This chart shows raw wheat prices, un-adjusted for the value of the dollar. The sunspot number data is shifted forward by 2 years to reveal that bottoms and tops in the sunspot number tend to be followed a couple of years later by bottoms and tops in wheat prices. This relationship got into some trouble in the middle part of the chart, when President Roosevelt's New Deal price fixing artificially inflated wheat prices. The intention in the 1930s was to benefit farmers by keeping wheat prices up. That effort switched during WWII to the government putting a cap on all prices, including wheat, to support the war effort. Rationing of food, fuel, and other items took over for market forces. Additional trouble came in the 1970s, when the Arab Oil Embargo pushed up oil prices in 1973-74, reducing acreage under cultivation. Then later in that decade, the rising value in the dollar pushed down the dollar price of most commodities compared to prices in other currencies. So using dollars to see the normal cyclical relationship in price data became problematic.


All of this explanation brings us (finally!) back to the lead chart above. In [the above] chart, I have adjusted the dollar price of wheat, multiplying it by the US Dollar Index, which was created back in 1971. This mathematical step produces a unit-less measure of the value of wheat by factoring out the dollar's movements. Doing this allows us to better see how the peaks and troughs in wheat prices have been related to the sunspot cycle. I want to emphasize again that the sunspot number is shifted forward in that chart by 2 years, to reveal its leading indication for how wheat prices will behave. The conclusion from this is that the upward move in the value of wheat right now is just following the swoop upward in the sunspot number that began in 2009. We should expect to see generally rising prices for wheat and other grains until about 2 years after the sunspot cycle has peaked, a peak which has not even happened yet.

On the Insignificance of Herschel’s Sunspot Correlation | Jeffrey J. Love

William Herschel started to examine the correlation of solar variation and solar cycle and climate. Over a period of 40 years (1779–1818), Herschel had regularly observed sunspots and their variations in number, form and size. Most of his observations took place in a period of low solar activity, the Dalton minimum, when sunspots were relatively few in number. This was one of the reasons why Herschel was not able to identify the standard 11-year period in solar activity. Herschel compared his observations with the series of wheat prices published by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.In 1801, Herschel reported his findings to the Royal Society and indicated five prolonged periods of few sunspots correlated with the price of wheat. Herschel's study was ridiculed by some of his contemporaries but did initiate further attempts to find a correlation. Later in the 19th century, William Stanley Jevons proposed the 11-year cycle with Herschel's basic idea of a correlation between the low amount of sunspots and lower yields explaining recurring booms and slumps in the economy. Herschel's speculation on a connection between sunspots and regional climate, using the market price of wheat as a proxy, continues to be cited. However, according to a study of Jeffrey J. Love of the USGS the evaluation is controversial and the significance of the correlation is doubted:


Jeffrey J. Love (Aug 27, 2013) - Our finding is that Herschel’s hypothesis is statistically insignificant [...] All of the data Herschel discussed in his 1801 paper were collected prior to 1717, during the Maunder Minimum and long before his paper was published. His identification of five durations of time with few sunspots and inflated wheat prices and five other durations that might have had sunspots and which had deflated prices [Herschel, 1801, pp. 313-316] would be an unlikely realization of binary statistics, but it is not clear whether or not Herschel was inspired to state his hypothesis after inspection of these data. Having said this, Herschel acknowledged that predictions based on his hypothesis “ought not be relied on by any one, with more confidence than the arguments ... may appear to deserve” [Herschel, 1801, p. 318]. Today, we have considerably more data than were available to Herschel; these were collected both before and after he stated his hypothesis, and they can be used for both retrospective and prospective testing.  For  London wheat  prices  both before 1801 and, separately, after 1802, binary significance probabilities and Pearson correlations and their effective probabilities are [...] indicative of statistical significance. While solar irradiance may affect global climate, from our analysis of data of the type considered by Herschel, we conclude that historical wheat prices are not demonstrably useful for inferring past sunspot numbers, and, conversely, sunspot numbers are not demonstrably useful for predicting future wheat prices.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

SPX vs Mercury 0° and 180° Jupiter and Saturn | George Bayer

Upcoming events:
2017 Jan 16 (Mon) 17:50 = JUP 000 MER [H]
2017 Feb 09 (Thu) 00:46 = SAT 000 MER [H]
2017 Mar 13 (Mon) 12:10 = JUP 180 MER [H]
2017 Mar 24 (Fri) 01:49 = SAT 180 MER [H]
2017 Apr 16 (Sun) 14:49 = JUP 000 MER [H]
2017 May 08 (Mon) 11:23 = SAT 000 MER [H]
2017 Jun 10 (Sat) 05:41 = JUP 180 MER [H]
2017 Jun 20 (Tue) 11:12 = SAT 180 MER [H]
2017 Jul 15 (Sat) 14:08 = JUP 000 MER [H]
2017 Aug 05 (Sat) 09:55 = SAT 000 MER [H]
2017 Sep 07 (Thu) 10:14 = JUP 180 MER [H]
2017 Sep 16 (Sat) 20:34 = SAT 180 MER [H]
2017 Oct 13 (Fri) 15:51 = JUP 000 MER [H]
2017 Nov 02 (Thu) 08:19 = SAT 000 MER [H]
2017 Dec 05 (Tue) 13:59 = JUP 180 MER [H]
2017 Dec 14 (Thu) 05:58 = SAT 180 MER [H]
2018 Jan 11 (Thu) 19:57 = JUP 000 MER [H]

Monday, June 22, 2015

Monday, March 3, 2014

George Bayer Forecasts - Food for thought

Nobody is perfect: Monthly forecasts of George Bayer from December 1936 to March 1937

Saturday, October 19, 2013

SPX vs George Bayer's Rule # 1

SPEED OF MERCURY IN GEOCENTRIC LONGITUDE
... Periodically the speed comes to a stand-still. At such times the planet moves from a direct motion into a retrograde motion or from a retrograde to a direct motion ... It is advisable to plot this Mercury speed ... through an entire year and note the effect of such changes. We obtain tops or bottoms ... When the previous movement is down, Wheat must be bought on weakness of the day; if the market moves upward prior to change of Mercury’s speed, short positions must be taken on strength during the day mercury changes its speed.
[George Bayer (1940): Stock and Commodity Traders´ Hand-Book of Trend Determination. Carmel, California; p. 13]



HERE




On Friday the S&P 500 closed on low volume and with the narrowest intra-day trading range since September 27th (more HERE)


Sunday, March 24, 2013

SPX vs George Bayer's Rule #40 - Latitude of Venus

VENUS HELIOCENTRIC LATITUDE DIVIDED INTO PARTS
Here is the rule: Changes of trend for minor moves occur at the following Latitude points of Venus:
0°00’ =       0.000 degrees
0°13’ = +/- 0.217 degrees
1°50’ = +/- 1.833 degrees
2°17’ = +/- 2.283 degrees
2°30’ = +/- 2.500 degrees
3°00’ = +/- 3.000 degrees
3°17’ = +/- 3.283 degrees
3°23’ = +/- 3.383 degrees
[George Bayer (1940): Stock and Commodity Traders´ Hand-Book of Trend Determination. Carmel, California; p. 42]

2013-02-16 03:22 (Sat) = VEN Lat @ -02°30'
2013-02-25 10:05 (Mon) = VEN Lat @ -03°00'
2013-03-05 18:15 (Tue) = VEN Lat @ -03°17'
2013-03-12 02:53 (Tue) = VEN Lat @ -03°23'
2013-03-18 01:04 (Mon) = VEN Lat @ -03°23'
2013-03-24 08:40 (Sun) = VEN Lat @ -03°17'
2013-04-01 15:32 (Mon) = VEN Lat @ -03°00'
2013-04-10 20:14 (Wed) = VEN Lat @ -02°30'

Thursday, August 9, 2012

SPX vs George Bayer's Rule #40 - Latitude of Venus

VENUS HELIOCENTRIC LATITUDE* DIVIDED INTO PARTS
* = latitude in heliocentric ecliptical coordinates
This rule is intended to make you find the very small moves in Wheat lasting only a few days.
However, since we nearly always have to do with bottoms, tops, and gaps-either one and the changes explained here come one after the other, we must be in a position to watch the actual performance of Wheat at very close distance.

We turn to page 167 and up in the Nautical Almanac of the year 1937 or to page 187 in the year 1940. In the center of the page we have our column; Heliocentric Latitude of Venus.

We note the values vibrate between 3°23 and 0°, going from plus to minus to both extremes. 0° is the center of the vibration.

I have discovered that the following values within this vibration give changes, on the plus side as well as on the minus side. They miss occasionally one of the values, but, as said, we must be at the board to watch the sales and prices. My notes say: there are 17 values in the entire cycle movement, 8 on each side of the zero point. In my tests I found that one miss occurs (i.e. nothing happens) in one entire cycle.

Here is the rule: Changes of trend for minor moves occur at the following Latitude points of Venus when Venus passes over it;
  
0°00’ =       0.000 degrees
0°13’ = +/- 0.217 degrees
1°50’ = +/- 1.833 degrees
2°17’ = +/- 2.283 degrees
2°30’ = +/- 2.500 degrees
3°00’ = +/- 3.000 degrees
3°17’ = +/- 3.283 degrees
3°23’ = +/- 3.383 degrees
[George Bayer (1940): Stock and Commodity Traders´ Hand-Book of Trend Determination. Carmel, California; p. 42]