Forget the hemlines and follow the lobsters! When it comes to predicting fluctuations in the Dow Jones, lobsters have Wall Street’s bull by the horns.

By David Svenson

In the Roaring Twenties, when Wharton Business School’s George Taylor proposed his “Hemline Effect”–that as hemlines rise, so does the economy–he could also have taken a trip to the docks for similar insight. Because sales figures for fresh lobsters share an uncanny ability to predict market changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

download this story as a .pdf