Technical analyst Charles Nenner, who sees a correlation between sunspots and the stock market and other types of activity, told CNBC Tuesday that there would be a major military conflict starting at the end of 2012 or in early 2013.
“If you look in history, there are certain wars that lead to a bull market and certain wars that lead to a bear market,” said Nenner, who is founder and president of the Charles Nenner Research Center.
“It just depends where the cycle is. If the cycle is turning down [ward] and on top of that you have a military conflict, people are very much afraid and they make a negative interpretation of reality. So the connection between the sunspots is if the sunspots activity is low, then the mood is low and every reality that people come up with, they make a negative interpretation.”
In an interview Monday on CNBC Europe, Nenner said there would be a significant crisisin three years.
Nenner is known to be outspoken and somewhat unconventional in his views. Indeed last summer he predicted the Dow would plummet to 5,000. Nevertheless, he has a following in the investment community after he correctly predicted the top for the Dow in 2007, and has a reputation as a solid money manager.
Sunspots are dark areas of irregular shape on the surface of the sun and their short-term and long-term cyclical nature has been established in the past century, according to the Galileo Project, a science website administered through Rice University.
Nenner said sunspot activity can be tracked using the NASA website. According to Nenner, if there is a high intensity of sunspots, markets rise; if their intensity lowers, markets go down because sunspots affect people's moods.
Nenner said also that deflation would continue to a problem going forward, and that in 2011, the economy would improve for a few months and then backslide.