Astrology, Covid-19 and the markets

Astrologers above a certain age are obsessed by the October 19 1987 stock market crash, where the Dow fell 20% in one day. From that date on, we’ve been frantic to find the next crash, and many of us naively thought that a crash is a single, catastrophic event. In reality, stock market crashes tend to be slow-motion events – a death by a thousand cuts. Furthermore, central banks are better able to control the markets than they were in 1987. If they see markets stalling, they can do things like lower interest rates and pump liquidity. This means that astrologers have to be very careful about predicting stock market falls.

Right now market sentiment is falling, and some people think that we have already had a crash. In reality, shares were over-valued, and they’ve slipped a bit. Of course there is also the Covid-19 issue, and you don’t have to be an astrologer to forecast that it will have a negative impact on the stock market. Indeed, it is already having a negative impact.

So is astrology of any use? When considering stock market movements, the Jupiter-Saturn cycle is of critical important. The conjunctions and oppositions can mark important turning points, and right now we are heading into a conjunction. You can see the conjunction in the following graphic:

The graph hasn’t come out very well – if you want a properly sized copy, send me an email. It shows the movement of Jupiter (in green) and Saturn (in blue), in 2020. At the beginning of the year they are getting closer to each other, reaching peak closeness in May 2020. They then go retrograde, and go further apart. Then as the Autumn progesses their direct movement continues, and the conjunction becomes exact at the end of December.

The last Jupiter-Saturn conjunction was at the end of May 2000. Just prior to the conjunction, in March, the dot com bubble popped. The NASDAQ peaked on March 10 2000. On that day, Jupiter was at around 4 degrees 30 Taurus and Saturn at around 13 15 Taurus. So the two planets were about 9 degrees apart. As I write, on March 6, Jupiter and Saturn are only eight degrees apart.

Yet so far there hasn’t been a crash. Indeed, when I look at financial websites, many people are seeing a buying opportunity. This is the mentality that investors have developed since 2008. The market has always gone up, and every dip has been an opportunity to buy. You can see this from the following graph of the the Standard & Poor stock market index:

The recent pull back is just a blip. To get us into a bear market the S & P would have to retreat to around 2700 – see the upper red line. To give us a 50% retrace, of the whole move from 2008 to 2020, you have to go down to the 2000 mark – see the lower red line.

Astrology aside, it would seem that the Covid-19 virus is enough to stop the Standard & Poor in its tracks. However, we should never underestimate the ability of central banks to pump the markets. Particularly now, when Donald Trump is standing for re-election. He knows that his presidency lives and dies by the stock market.

If you want to know what lengths central banks will go to to keep the markets up, think of Jules Vernes’ book “Round the World in 80 Days”, which was set in the late Nineteenth Century. It is a few years since I read it, but the hero, Phileas Fogg, had to cross the Atlantic Ocean super quickly in order to win a bet. Unfortunately, the steamer he was on was too slow, and the captain told him that the boat first had to go to a port in France before going to its final destination in Liverpool, England. Fogg was going to lose the bet. Or if you are Donald Trump, the stock market is going to crash and you are going to lose the election. So what do you do?

Phileas Fogg solves part of the problem by buying the steamer from the captain. He can now take the steamer directly to England, without having to stop off in France first. He then orders the ship’s crew to go as fast as possible. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough coal. Fogg solves this new problem by telling the crew to use the ship itself as fuel. Everything wooden on the boat is put into the furnace, meaning that the ship is destroyed so that it can reach its destination. That is how Trump and the central bankers are going to try to save the economy. They are going to tear it apart. Of course Trump doesn’t care, provided he wins the November 2020 election.

However, will the plan work? Since 2008, the market has managed to breeze past every crisis. However there is now a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, at a time when stocks are fully valued, when Covid-19 is almost certainly going to send the world into a recession. No, the plan is not going to work, and the falls in the market we’re seeing are only the beginning. There will be recoveries, but I am confident that the Standard & Poor is heading back to the 2000 mark over the next year or two.

What about the shorter term? Covid-19 is not going away. And next week we have two astrological events happening very close together. Mercury goes direct on Tuesday March 10 at 3.48 am GMT. And the previous day, on March 9, at 5.48 pm GMT, there is a Full Moon. When a Mercury station coincides with a lunation, there is very often fireworks in the market.

So how I do express this without giving the impress that I am hedging my bets? I can outline two scenarios. The optimistic scenario would say that the market started falling with Mercury going retrograde on February 17. Here is the chart:

The S & P did actually go up a little after February 17 – the vertical line is Mercury going stationary retrograde. But by and large, we can see the market movement in terms of Mercury going retrograde, and Mercury’s station will lead to a sharp recovery, and perhaps new highs over the Summer. Of course the market will still crash, but later. This kind of event happened in October and November of 1987. Mercury went retrograde on Friday October 16 1987, and on Monday October 19 the market sold off 20%. But that was it. The market stabilized within days. There was no immediate recovery, but the worst was over pretty quickly.

However, this time round we have Covid-19 and a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. My feeling is that a combination of Mercury Direct and a Full Moon on March 9 and 10 will be serious, and that recent falls in the market aren’t just a one-week wonder.