There are times when information gleaned from coin collecting can help you with something else in life such as history. Back in 2009 we made a possible connection between stock market performance to coin mintages in our forums.
To provide a short summary, we decided to use dime mintages as a baseline and compare it to the performance of the Dow. The general idea was that if the economy was starting to get depressed the order for coinage would decrease and if times were good then demand for coinage would increase. Sure enough back in 2009 we saw a possible trend. But, identifying a trend after a major stock market crash is in itself not that impressive. Anyone looking in hindsight can make oddball connections so I am revisiting the theory to see how it has panned out over the last few years (good years) to see how the trend is going.
As annual mintages increased from 2010 to 2012 there were also annual increases in the Dow. It appears the trending works in up years as well as down years. Yet the real proof is still yet to be had as we still need to predict a significant stock market fall or even a rise. So where are we for 2013? As of June 2013 the U.S. mint has produced 1.12 billion coins and is at a pace to handily beat the 2012 figure of 1.6 billion coins.
If the trend theory holds up then the Dow should close out the year up versus the end of 2012. Now we have our first forecast and considering there are some financial experts claiming the market is overvalued and due for major correction it will be even more interesting to see how this forecast works out. If it does work out it still does not prove out the trend between the two. Beyond forecasting an up year it will also need to forecast a down year. This is definitely getting interesting :))
Please note that this all theory and speculation and should not be used for making financial decisions.