Preview for the week beginning June 28, 2010

Review and Preview

The Summer Solstice of Monday, June 21, in a square aspect to Uranus, stopped the new bullish trend in equity markets right in its tracks. The very sharp rally off the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of June 8 ended abruptly on June 21, as the transiting Sun began to fill in the empty part of a grand square involving Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto last week. It was as if the script for last week’s market behavior was written by a Financial Astrologer.

The market pattern of a new cycle high on Monday, and then down into Friday, did not occur in just in one region. It happened in all regions of the world, from Asia, the Pacific Rim, Europe and America. Precious metals started the same way with a peak on Monday and then a sell-off. But then Gold and Silver found a temporary bottom on Wednesday, just in time to rally sharply again into the “Sagittarius Factor” (Moon in Sagittarius) which was in effect Thursday and Friday. European currencies and Crude Oil followed the same track as Gold.

The translation of the Sun to the planets involved in the Cardinal Climax last week is reminiscent of Venus doing the same thing recently, May 18-25. You may remember at that time too the market sold off for an entire week, finally bottoming right at the end before commencing a new rally. Let’s see if the same market pattern is repeated now in equity indices.

Short-Term Geocosmics

This will be a pre-holiday week, ahead of the USA Independence Day celebration on July 4 (markets are closed July 5 in the USA). Almost as if by cosmic design, there will be no major geocosmic signatures in effect between the lunar eclipse of June 26 and Uranus turning retrograde to start the following week on July 5. They are taking a cosmic holiday.

In pre-holiday weeks, volume usually contracts as the week rolls on, and oftentimes this will coincide with rather quiet markets. But with Uranus going stationary on July 5, we cannot assume the markets will be quiet after all, for whenever Uranus is highlighted, we note bizarre and unexpected events oftentimes happen within one week. In the mundane world, this will continue to be a period of possible earthquakes, tornadoes, and high winds. In markets, this too can correlate with reversals and/or breakouts of important support and resistance areas.

Uranus is extremely important to markets right now because it is in conjunction to Jupiter and opposition to Saturn. Jupiter and Saturn pertain to the two dominant emotions influencing the trading and investment community: fear (Saturn), and greed (Jupiter). Uranus with either of these signatures can correlate with extreme price movements in financial markets. As discussed in this year’s “Forecast for 2010 Book,” it was my view that this set up could portend excessive speculation and a “bubble” in financial markets. My first thought was that it would be in stocks, which would be the case if the market was confident and greedy. But if instead market participants are acting out of fear, it would be more likely to happen in Gold and even Treasuries. So far it seems that fear is dominating greed. Precious metals and Treasuries are running up. But there is still time for it to shift. And if anything can coincide with a shift in collective psychology, it would be a strong Uranus period. Thus Uranus retrograde on July 5 may reveal an important clue to this cosmic puzzle and how it will manifest in financial markets, as we continue the race to the heart of the Cardinal Climax, July 23-August 8. Then we will be fully engulfed into this new portal, this new reality, asking: “How did we get here?” and, “How do we get back?”

Longer-Term Thoughts

“Then, in the turmoil and confusion of the postwar (Civil War) South, Congress found itself forced to intervene at the local level – the individual level – in ways that fell far outside the American political tradition. Before the war, the federal government had not reached down very far; it had delivered the mail, inspected steam engines, and helped capture runaway slaves, but not much else. Now it taxes individuals, extended aid to freed people, defined citizenship, specified rights, prescribed penalties for violating those rights, and soon would impose military administration of most of the South. In this crisis, Americans awoke to the power of the central government… The way was opening for a new political paradigm in which those on the radical side would embrace government action to defend equality.”
►T.J. Stiles in “The First Tycoon,” Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 2009.

Another major government initiative (“The Financial Regulatory Reform” bill) passed Friday morning, June 25, the last business day of the week before the lunar eclipse, which conjuncts Pluto in Capricorn. “Reform” is the domain of Pluto, and “Government” is the domain of Capricorn. Thus it is no wonder that since Pluto moved into the Capricorn in 2008, we have entered a New Era of government regulations, the likes of which have not been since …. the last Cardinal Climax of the early 1930’s. This trend is likely to continue through most of this new decade, for Pluto remains in Capricorn through 2023, and the last quarter of the Saturn-Pluto cycle is now in force through January 2020.

As discussed many times in this column over the past ten years, the waning phase of the Saturn-Pluto cycle (2001-2020) is historically a time when government spending and deficits increase, along with government taxes and interest rates, as the economies of nations undergo more frequent and increasingly more severe recessions. The only way to break this cycle is to break the policies that consistently lead to these outcomes. The Federal Reserve Board and other Central Banks are doing their part to counteract it, as they have kept a lid on interest rates ever since the first ingress of Pluto in Capricorn in January 2008.

Still, we went through the Panic of late 2008 through early 2009. The recovery of late 2009 through early 2010 might have been even stronger had the government adequately performed in counteracting its role in these historical trends, which they did not. In fact, governments are playing the historical role almost exactly the same as they have played it in past under this phase of the Saturn-Pluto cycle. Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon CEO and Chairman of “The Roundtable” (a group of CEOs of the largest companies in the USA), was quoted in Friday’s Wall Street Journal as saying, “By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the market place and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses…. In our judgment, we have reached a point where the negative effects of these policies are simply too significant to ignore.”

Well, Mr. Seidenberg, I am afraid that according to my understanding of geocosmic principles (Pluto in Capricorn, the last quarter phase of the Saturn-Pluto cycle), we are not even halfway through this New Era trend of greater government regulations and involvement into even more sectors of economic life. Yet with Uranus now also moving into Aries, an equally great danger to economic life will be the new increased competition for profit that will result from these new government regulatory reforms. With increased competition AND increased government regulations, the climate will become overripe for certain people to cut corners to gain an advantage. This simply means that the climate of corruption, bribery, and ruthlessness is apt to be on the increase too, unless there is an equally strong initiative towards training leaders and employees in business, banking, and government of the importance (and benefits) of ethics in both business and regulatory compliance.

Without that, who are we kidding? The stronger you make the laws and the more severe you make the punishments, the more you increase the risks, temptations, and payoffs to work around the newly imposed barriers. It is like every other law that is designed to prevent bad behavior: if you don’t get at the root of this behavior (i.e. lack of awareness of the damage of bad behavior, and/or lack of awareness of the benefits of behavior with integrity), you just create a new class of criminals who are willing to break those new laws. Then more money in taxes will be needed for law enforcement officials who design new ways to go after the new criminals who break the new laws that fail to change the old underlying problem. It is the same governmental remedy that has failed in such things as the war against drugs, and before that the war against alcohol in the 1920’s. Prohibition and regulation are not the answer. It won’t solve the problem. In fact, it usually makes the problems worse, unless there is also greater awareness, understanding, and rewards (“benefits”) for behavior along the positive themes of Capricorn, which are honor, honesty, and integrity.

This is all about Pluto in Capricorn, and Saturn in waning square to Pluto. Soon it will also be about Uranus in Aries too, which could coincide with a mass movement to break free of government regulations and create new governments that they see as more relevant to their own local needs and conditions. With Jupiter conjunct Uranus and both in square to the Pluto in Capricorn, and Jupiter pertaining to foreign people, the issue of immigration reform may be next. In many respects, this may be like the social climate just prior to the American Civil War.
 

Announcements

The remaining copies of the Forecast 2010 book will be available for € 25.00 (plus postage), beginning this week, June 30. The books are still very valuable, with half a year’s Critical Reversal dates left to go (they have been super hot in the past three months). We now offer a complimentary copy of this year’s book to any new or renewing subscriber of a one-year subscription to the MMA Cycles Report, our new MMA European Cycles report, or any subscription to a MMA daily or weekly report, as long as books are still available.

Disclaimer & State of Purpose

The purpose of this column is not to predict the future movement of various financial markets. However, that is the purpose of the SMT (Schogt Market Timing) & MMA (Merriman Market Analyst) subscription services. This column is not a subscription service. It is a free service, except in those cases where a fee may be assessed to cover the cost of translating this column from English into a non-English language.

This weekly report is written with the intent to educate the reader on the relationship between astrological factors and collective human activities as they are happening. In this regard, this report will oftentimes report what happened in various stock and financial markets throughout the world in the past week, and discuss that movement in light of the geocosmic signatures that were in effect. It will then identify the geocosmic factors that will be in effect in the next week, or even month, or even years, and the author's understanding of how these signatures will likely affect human activity in the times to come.

The author (Merriman) will do this from a perspective of a cycle's analyst looking at the military, political, economic, and even financial markets of the world. It is possible that some forecasts will be made based on these factors. However, the primary goal is to both educate and alert the reader as to the psychological climate we are in, from an astrological perspective. The hope is that it will help the reader understand these psychological dynamics that underlie (or coincide with) the news events and hence financial markets of the day.

No guarantee as to the accuracy of this report is being made here. Any decisions in financial markets are solely the responsibility of the reader, and neither the author nor the publishers assume any responsibility at all for those individual decisions. Reader should understand that futures and options trading are considered high risk.