sourceHow strong is this historical connection between major economic downturns and the sunspot cycles? We can learn more about this connection of sunspots to economic downturns by directly graphing them together as shown above (ed.). Quite clearly, the Chart (ed.) shows us that there is a rather strong connection between major recessions and the peaks of the sunspot cycles.
In as much as these cycles, and many like them give long term trends, and explain the past very well, I prefer to look at the aspects at the very short term, as shown at the stockstars blog. There is a daily reading on the solar activity there.