Stocks gained 3% last week to new 2009 highs on improved prospects for a quick recovery. Most of the week's gains came on Monday's session with some levelling off afterwards, as the Dow closed at 8763 and the S&P at 940. In Mumbai, anticipation of economic reforms in July's Union Budget helped push stocks higher as the Nifty closed at 4586 and the Sensex at 15,103. Much of the early week bullishness came off as expected on the Venus-Jupiter-Neptune alignment as benefic Venus was the trigger to release the optimism of Jupiter. The Mars-Rahu square could be implicated in Wednesday's decline, but the pullback was more muted than expected. And Friday's Sun-Saturn square was only malefic enough to force a mostly flat outcome. Even if Jupiter is now separating from Neptune, their proximity seems to be close enough to be overriding other potentially offsetting influences.
We can see a couple apparently positive aspects forming early this week. Venus trines Pluto on Monday, while Mercury moves into alignment with Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus on Tuesday and Wednesday. Of these two aspects, the Mercury would seem to be more reliable to produce an up day or two. Later in the week the picture gets murkier, although there are no clearly negative aspects. Nonetheless, if there is going to be profit taking this week, I think the late week is a better candidate. Another clue that we could see some kind of correction starting perhaps midweek and beyond is that Mercury and Mars will be moving at the same velocity -- 44 minutes of arc per day as of Wednesday. The malefic influence of Mars may be transmitted to the trading impulse of Mercury and push prices lower. The timing of this influence is fairly close to the Mercury-Jupiter- Neptune aspect, so it's conceivable that there will be some balancing out. And given the tenacious optimism of Jupiter and Neptune, it's hard to picture a big decline here, the separating aspect notwithstanding.
