Review and Preview

If you are not confused yet about what is happening in financial markets, then you are not paying attention. Last week there were more divergences. We’ve got divergences upon divergences, which mean half the community of market analysts will see signs for being bullish and the other half cause for being bearish, and both politicians and market commentators can take their pick as to which trend to acknowledge backing up their case, er… bias.

Let’s take a couple of examples from last week’s market activity. On Tuesday, May 1, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared to its highest price in 4 years. After making a 3-month low just three weeks earlier on April 10 (nearby to Mars turning direct), this would appear to be a bullish chart pattern to most market watchers. But also on May 1, neither the S&P nor NASDAQ futures were able to take out their recent highs of late March and early April, which created a case of intermarket bearish divergence. Still, they looked healthy and as if they would make new highs – until Friday. And then everything changed as the NASDAQ fell to its lowest price since early March. The DJIA plunged 168 points and the S&P futures fell 23-1/2 points. The decline in the DJIA is within a normal 38-62% corrective pullback of the move up from April 10, which would seem bullish. But in the NASDAQ, the pullback was closer to 100%. Those with a bearish bias would see the NASDAQ as bearish and those who with a bullish bias would see the DJIA as undergoing a normal corrective decline. Financial astrologers would be wondering: what is Neptune doing? Neptune is not doing much, but Mercury is in opposition to Saturn as we head into the weekend of a Taurus-Scorpio full moon. Monday and Tuesday finds the Moon in Sagittarius too (the “Sagittarius Factor,” and maybe big range days). This can be stressful and a sign of worry and apprehension. But the “magnet” pulling prices down is Venus about to turn retrograde on May 15. We are within days of that cosmic event now, which is close enough for it to have an impact on market behavior. Once this energy reaches its climax that is due within two weeks of May 15, history says there is an approximately 75% probability of a big reversal.

Another example of this wild, whacky, and weird cosmic environment showed up in the precious metals. Gold and Silver were recovering nicely from their sell-off lows of April 25 the prior week. By Tuesday, May 1, Gold was up to 1672. By Friday it was trading below 1630 again, testing those lows of April 25. Silver took out those lows, and in fact fell to its lowest level since January, while Gold held well above its 1613 low of April 4. But by Friday’s close, both metals were up rather nicely on the day. Hence we have an intermarket bullish divergence set up developing here. But will any of these markets really reverse before we get closer to Venus changing directions on May 15, despite these potentially bullish signals? We will discuss this more in the “Longer-Term Thoughts” for this week.

Short-Term Geocosmics

    The most outstanding geocosmic signature looming on the horizon is still Venus turning retrograde on May 15. Stock markets have a 73% correlation to completing an important cycle low or high within 12 trading days of this event, and usually much less. We note now that the Ten-Year Treasury Notes are soaring to a new contract high as of Friday, May 4, but the same is not true with the 30-Year Treasury Bonds. This is significant because 1) the Fed is about to end “Operation Twist,” where it buys wheelbarrows full of long-term U.S. Treasuries, thereby supporting the advance in treasury values, and 2) Uranus is coming ever closer to the first passage of its waxing square to Pluto (June 24), which Financial Astrologers might look upon as a “party crasher.” Plus there are a slew of important Venus signatures coming up (see “Longer-Term Thoughts”). It would seem there might be some intense fireworks happening between May 15 and late June, for this is like a match being set to a fuse of dynamite …er, fireworks.

Longer-Term Thoughts

    “The difference between you and me is that you want fewer rich people and I want fewer poor people.” – Nicholas Sarkozy, French president, in a debate with Francois Hollande, his Socialist party opponent in this week’s elections (Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2012).

Let’s discuss Venus this week. After all, Venus is going to be quite prominent in the weeks ahead, due to its 6-week retrograde motion that will be in effect May 15 through June 27, and also due to its very rare occultation to the Sun on June 6-7 (that’s like Venus eclipsing the Sun).

Venus turns retrograde about every 19 months, so it is somewhat infrequent – about as often as the Moon’s North Node transiting through each sign of the zodiac. But every 8 years it goes retrograde and direct in approximately the same degree of the zodiac. For instance, this year Venus will turn retrograde at nearly 24° Gemini on May 15. Eight years ago it turned retrograde at 26º Gemini on May 17, 2004. As a side note, the Dow Jones Industrial Average formed a primary cycle trough on May 12, 2004 at 9852, and 5 days later on May 17 it made a successful re-test of that low (i.e. double bottom) at 9862, and then prices rose sharply into a primary cycle crest in late June when Venus turned direct six weeks later. As documented in “The Ultimate Book on Stock Market Timing Volume 3: Geocosmic Correlations to Trading Cycles,” Venus retrograde and direct periods are two of the strongest historical geocosmic correlates to primary or greater cycles – or major reversals – in stock prices.

This powerful correlation should not be surprising to students of Financial Astrology. In the study of astrology, Venus rules money - as well as love. And of course in the reality of today’s times, no money, no love (actually, it should be the other way around). Or according to a popular Chinese saying, no money, no life! But Venus moves so quickly through the signs that long-term trends involving Venus are hard to identify. It is a short-term transit, and therefore its value is mostly in terms of short-term reversals. Oh, we can look at slow moving planetary transits to natal Venus in a nation’s chart and forecast the trend of that particular nation’s economy and currency. Venus in the USA’s chart, for instance, is in the first degrees of Cancer, which has been besieged by both Pluto and Uranus from 2008 through 2011, and that correlated to quite a suppression in the value of the U.S. Dollar in comparison to other world currencies. But how do you use Venus to track longer-term financial trends in the greater world? For that you need a long-term Venus phenomenon. And the key for that may be the Venus occultation.

That’s right. Venus is moving toward a very rare occultation with the Sun on June 6, 2012. That is, Venus will move directly between the Earth and Sun on that day, creating the appearance of a small black spec on the surface of the Sun. If Venus was bigger, it would block out the Sun as seen from Earth, just as the Moon does during a total solar eclipse. Except that this Venus occultation is much rarer than a solar eclipse. Solar eclipses happen about twice a year. And Venus occultations take place in pairs that are eight years apart over a long period of time. The last instance of a Venus occultation of the Sun took place in 1874 and 1882. This is the last one to occur this century. According to Steven van Roode (http://transitofvenus.nl/), “But a transit of Venus (occultation to the Sun)… occur(s) in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years. The last pair was in 1874/1882, the current pair is 2004/2012 and the next pair is scheduled for 2117/2125. So, this year’s transit of Venus is your last chance to see this phenomenon.”  Let’s see… the last one occurred in 1874-1882 and before that it was in 1761 and 1769.

Hmmm, according to our studies, the first case of a long-term cycle low in stocks used in our studies occurred in 1761-1762. That was the starting point from which all of our longer-term stock market cycles (the 72- and 90-year types) commenced. And the 1874-1882 occultation pair? That overlapped the longest economic depression in the United States (1873-1879), which was also the last time that Uranus and Pluto were in a waxing square aspect – the same aspect that starts June 24. 2012 and lasts until March 17, 2015.

Since Venus rules money, and occultations (or eclipses) oftentimes signal a dramatic change of the status quo, the Venus occultation period of 2004-2012 may be a direct correlation to the world’s debt, which has simply been exploding since 2004 (when this pair of Venus occultation to the Sun began). And this leads us right into the current and sudden shift of political and economic strategies in Europe, dovetailing with the swoon in equity prices last week.

European austerity measures as part of the solution to its debt crisis are on the verge of being given up already. Recent economic data shows a large number of European countries – including the United Kingdom – are in or near a recession. Over the past several months, many of these nations have increased taxes on top of their already very high taxes and have recently begun to cut back spending in order to meet strict budget projections. This is what austerity is all about. It’s about making sacrifices. It’s about a long-term commitment to rid the waste in spending. It’s about Pluto in Capricorn.

But what they are finding out is that higher taxes combined with less spending together do not lead to greater revenues, something that dozens of studies have demonstrated in the past. It also leads to a rebellious and socially restless population that votes out its leaders who promised to fix the situation, and who probably realize that the only way to fix the problem is to - guess what? – implement austerity measures just like this! But it is not popular. So, in typical political reaction, critics of the “non-austerity” measures will promise relief, and usually only in the form of greater spending again, but not lower taxes.

So rather than lowering taxes, which would encourage businesses to hire and consumers to spend, they have decided to alleviate the pain and sacrifice (and enhance their chances of being elected or re-elected) by spending more money that they don’t have and thus increase their national debts, in the hopes that this will indeed lead to new jobs and more tax payers. ECB President Mario Draghi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are trying to maintain the support for these austerity measures (i.e. advising nations to reign in their spending and get in place a more responsible fiscal policy to bring down their debt). But they are losing support, as is Sarkozy. To put it simply, many countries are giving up their original aim to reduce debts by accepting austerity measures. They have raised the white flag on controlling debt and instead they will monetize, or inflate their way out (of course, they won’t say this, but that is the logical conclusion of this policy).

Longer-term, this shift will probably be great for Gold, but not good for European currencies. And really, was there any doubt that the political (but not economic) gurus would surrender the good and necessary fight and take the easy way out, which will only lead to a further massive debt explosion and probably inflation, maybe even hyper-inflation? Not likely with Uranus square Pluto, 2012-2015. Not likely with Saturn also still plodding forward to its conjunction with Pluto in 2020. Remember the last time Saturn was in its waning phase to Pluto? It was 1966-1982. And you might remember what the last years of that period was like in terms of inflation.

But there is hope. From December 26, 2012 through September 22, 2013, Saturn and Pluto will form a waning sextile, which is considered a harmonious aspect, while at the same time they are in mutual reception to one another (i.e. in each other’s ruling sign). An opportunity for a long-term solution may be agreed upon and the plan could work out over an 8-year period (Saturn conjunct Pluto). But it will involve austerity, for the debt crisis cannot be solved by continuing to spend much more than you bring in.