Eclipse and Mr. Market

Graham's infamous Mr. Market persona is evidently even more insane than Ben Graham may have assumed.

In the three days around the date of an eclipse, three of the four stock indices exhibited lower-than-average returns. The depressive effect of the eclipse was slight—around a seventeenth of 1%—but it was there. Moreover, if an eclipse took place on a weekday, when the stockmarkets were open, its effect was larger than if it occurred on a Saturday or Sunday. And the greater the magnitude of the eclipse—that is, the bigger the percentage of the sun covered by the moon, or of the moon covered by the Earth’s shadow—the more likely it was to have a demonstrable effect on stock returns.