MYSTIC REGIME
Mood and markets: an honest reading of the research
Our product claims exactly one thing: that reflecting on your own state is useful to you. It does not claim that moods move prices, and this page is not here to imply that. But a real, peer-reviewed literature on mood and markets exists — and it is more interesting, and more contested, than either believers or debunkers usually admit. Here it is, both sides included.
What has been published
Yuan, Zheng & Zhu (2006). Are investors moonstruck? Lunar phases and stock returns
Journal of Empirical Finance
Across 48 countries, equity returns tended to be lower around full moons than around new moons — consistent with psychology research linking lunar phases and mood.
caveatFollow-up work found the pattern weaker or absent in several markets, and one study of Chinese equities found the opposite phase leading. Direction is not settled.
Kamstra, Kramer & Levi (2003). Winter blues: a SAD stock market cycle
American Economic Review
Seasonal patterns in returns across nine markets line up with seasonal affective disorder: lower returns in fall, recovering through spring, with the effect stronger at higher latitudes.
caveatThe pattern has been debated since publication; seasonal regularities are notoriously fragile out of sample.
Krivelyova & Robotti (2003). Playing the field: geomagnetic storms and the stock market
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta working paper
Returns tended to be lower in the days around geomagnetic storms, which psychiatry research links to measurable mood effects in some people.
caveatA working paper, not a journal article; effect sizes are small and the mechanism is debated.
Hang & Wang (2022). Long live Hermes! Mercury retrograde and equity prices
SSRN working paper
Reports that across 48 equity indices, returns were lower during Mercury retrograde periods — roughly a few percent per year — and frames it as a mood/attention effect, not astrology.
caveatContested and unpublished in a journal: Batalova et al. (2016) found no reliable Mercury retrograde effect in US data, and anomaly-style findings are known to weaken under replication.
What this does not establish
- It does not validate astrology. These papers test statistical regularities in large samples. They say nothing about planets shaping personality, and nothing about any individual.
- It does not support any decision. Even where a pattern is real in aggregate, its size is a rounding error next to ordinary costs and noise — and published market anomalies are known to shrink after they become widely known.
- It definitely does not validate this product. Our daily scores come from a fixed, versioned formula over ephemeris positions. We claim they are interesting mirrors for self-reflection — nothing more, and we make no claim that they correlate with any market anything.
Why we cite it at all
Because the honest version of this field is more defensible than the confident one. “Markets are made of people, and people have moods” is the part that survives scrutiny. “This planet will move that price” is the part that never has. Our product lives entirely on the surviving half: a daily mirror for your own state, never a forecast of anything.
For entertainment purposes only. Not financial advice.