Money and markets

How the next recession will happen: An astrological view

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Economists struggle to understand the ebb and flow of markets and attempt to find reasons why a market will expand and contract.  Astrologers have better tools.  They’re not perfect enough to depend on for day to day trading – there are too many variables.  One’s own planetary cycles, the peculiarities of each individual company, the global atmosphere and how each individual nation is affected by planetary cycles.  But what we can do is observe the larger planetary cycles to predict a general atmosphere of expansion and then contraction.

While Pluto was in Sagittarius the housing and financial markets expanded beyond recognition.  The size of an average home went from 1800 to 2600 square feet, with a price to match.  The stock markets in the US and elsewhere soared.  Although Alan Greenspan (and I) warned of “irrational exuberance” – Greenspan because of a conservative view of economics, me because of Pluto in Sag – there was a feeling, fueled by the optimism of Sagittarius, that the economies of the world could continue to expand indefinitely.  But the image shown here demonstrates the movement of markets according to the ebb and flow of optimism and pessimism, and this can be seen in observable astrological cycles.

Pluto moved into contracting Capricorn back in 2008 and we all know what happened next.  Everyone was shocked but astrologers – we were ready.  And we are sounding the warning again.  As I said back in January in my talk on the Astrology of 2019, expansive Jupiter has been in its own sign of Sagittarius all year which has kept consumer confidence, and the confidence of economists, artificially inflated.  Between May and July Saturn (restriction) and Pluto (destruction and regeneration) nearly collided, both […]

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By |2019-10-13T11:31:00-04:00October 23rd, 2019|Money and markets|1 Comment
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Mania and depression in the financial markets

Earlier in December I wrote about the stock market roller coaster of the past year, and since then it’s gotten even crazier, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average careening from 23,693 on December 19th to a low of 21,721 on December 26th, and zooming up over 1000 points yesterday, the biggest single increase in history.

I lay the blame for this erratic volatility partly on the last gasp of Uranus, planet of disruption, traveling through the fiery sign of Aries for the last time through the end of February.

Meanwhile Jupiter (the planet most closely associated with the stock market) and Mercury (thoughts and ideas) are both in the highly optimistic sign of Sagittarius, so even when the markets drop investors are seeing this as an opportunity to “buy the dip” rather than a depression.  But with Saturn and Pluto both in the highly realistic sign of Capricorn, this optimism is not likely to be permanent.  With Uranus colliding with fast moving Mars in mid-February we are likely to have continued volatility for the next couple of months.  Then when Uranus moves back into the security-minded sign of Taurus in early March and Venus enters dour Capricorn along with Saturn and Pluto, I believe that we will see a pretty serious pullback of financial markets.

I am not a financial advisor, but I do believe that caution is the name of the game here.  With such a predominance of earthy energy in 2019, and Jupiter’s entry into Capricorn along with Venus’s return in December, solid investments rather than media darlings are going to be the survivors if financial markets begin to collapse.

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By |2018-12-27T09:16:26-05:00December 27th, 2018|Money and markets|6 Comments
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The astrology of the 2018 US stock market rollercoaster

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll remember that the financial collapse of 2008 coincided with the entry of Pluto, planet of destruction and regeneration, into the contracting sign of Capricorn after spending 13 expansive years in optimistic Sagittarius.

At the end of December 2017, Saturn (tests, challenges and the reality principle) moved into its own sign of Capricorn which tends to make people somewhat cautious and risk-averse.  The first big dip of the year took place between February 1st and 5th under a challenging aspect from Venus to Jupiter.  Venus and Jupiter are known as the two “benefic” planets, even when a challenging aspect between the two occurs, but in this case the overindulgence of Venus and Jupiter was countermanded by the cautious nature of Saturn in Capricorn, causing a pullback in the optimism that tends to cause stock prices to rise.

Stock prices were back up into positive territory between mid-February and mid-March but dropped back into the negative when Mars (action) entered Capricorn and Jupiter (expansion) turned retrograde in the middle of March.  Stock prices remained quite volatile but never really developed any upward traction until the 9th of July when we began to see steady improvement in the markets after Jupiter turned direct.

It’s difficult to make predictions where human nature is concerned, and the stock market is largely a reflection of human reactions to news.  When people are optimistic, they buy into markets (stock market, housing market – whatever market!) which increases prices, and when they are fearful they tend to sell.  Sometimes expansive periods of Jupiter are associated with greater optimism and higher prices, and sometimes we see a peak of prices and then profit-taking which results in lower prices.

At any rate, once Jupiter turned […]

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By |2018-12-18T17:13:36-05:00December 17th, 2018|Money and markets|2 Comments
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Are economists the new astrologers?

A controversial article has been circulating through the financial news for the past year or so that equates economists with astrologers because, its author argues, both are pseudosciences.  Ironically, the argument given is that economists were not able to predict the 2008 economic crash:

The failure of the field to predict the 2008 crisis has … been well-documented. In 2003, for example, only five years before the Great Recession, the Nobel Laureate Robert E Lucas Jr told the American Economic Association that ‘macroeconomics […] has succeeded: its central problem of depression prevention has been solved’.

The irony is that astrologers DID predict the 2008 crisis, and were not surprised when it occurred.  Unfortunately though, while astrology can reveal the general climate of what the future may bring, there is no way to predict specific events either in our personal lives or in a global economy. Since the 2008 crisis both economists AND astrologers have predicted a correction, or a crash – yet the global economic condition continues to expand.

I like this quote from Paul Krugman in the article cited above:

‘As I see it,’ he wrote, ‘the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.’ Krugman named economists’ ‘desire… to show off their mathematical prowess’ as the ‘central cause of the profession’s failure’.

Math is an abstraction, but can it be used to predict human behavior?  I think astrologers often make the same mistake.  We have these marvelous symbols, “beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics,”  and now an abundance of ancient techniques to predict the future.  And yes, a few times those techniques for prediction have succeeded – but so will flipping a coin 50% of the time.

When astrology […]

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By |2018-09-03T09:41:10-04:00September 3rd, 2018|Money and markets, Predictions|0 Comments
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Money gets a new look under Uranus in Taurus

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about a referendum in Switzerland regarding the very nature of money.  You will probably hit a paywall, but here is the relevant portion:

A decade after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the world is still debating the causes of the financial crisis—down to the meaning of money itself.

In buttoned-down Switzerland, that debate is taking the form of a nationwide referendum set for June 10. Voters are being asked to consider fundamental questions rooted in the crisis: what is money; who creates it; and how safe is it? And they’ll have a chance to blow up one of the foundational features of global finance: the ability of banks to create money with just a few keystrokes.

That’s right, if a bank gives you a loan, it can pretty much create the money on the spot. It’s something that banks do every day around the world. It means that all money isn’t created equally, and the cash that pops out of an ATM machine isn’t the same as the numbers on a bank statement.

But if the Swiss referendum passes, all money creation there would have to be done directly by the country’s central bank.

Taurus represents all that is solid in our world – tangible, earthbound, things that we can touch.  Along those lines, it governs personal possessions and the accumulation of wealth and financial security.  As Uranus travels through Taurus, these ideas are likely to be disrupted and paradigms shifted.

The global financial system is pretty much based on ideas and trust, and this of course leads to financial collapse from time to time.  In my house, I rarely see actual money changing hands.  Income is automatically deposited into […]

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