Stocks in New York continued to swoon last week on the growing alarm over the government's inability to fix the banking system, as the Dow fell to its lowest level in 6 years closing at 7365. The S&P did not break below its November lows (752) however, and closed Friday at 770. Mumbai was also sharply lower last week as the major indexes fell 8%. Indian markets have fared considerably better than American markets since the original Fall decline and are still trading above their January lows. On Friday, the Sensex closed at 8843 and the Nifty at 2736. My sense that last week's five planet alignment involving malefics Mars, Rahu and Ketu was going to be problematic for the market was largely borne out by the 6-8% decline. While I was somewhat unsure what the immediate impact of this pattern might be, I thought that proximity of the Mercury-Saturn aspect later on in the week would be enough to push prices down generally. Certainly, the markets have been hit by a new wave of bearishness in the wake of the lunar eclipse of Feb 9. Eclipses are famously bearish for stocks and the recent down move has proven this notion correct yet again.
I'm more optimistic about this week, however, as the Aquarius New Moon on Tuesday looks decidedly better than the previous one in Capricorn. Given that the New Moon chart governs the next 4 weeks, this means we may well be near an interim bottom here. Mercury conjoins Jupiter on Tuesday which ought to provide some support although with Mars moving into closer quincunx aspect to Saturn on the weekend, any gains made this week are unlikely to get very far. So the week may be fairly mixed with some more selling early on with more buyers coming back by midweek. I'm not ruling out a down week, but any declines should be fairly modest.
Gold finally reached $1000 on Friday which was in keeping with expectations. Monday may be a possible high as the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction will conjoin with the natal Jupiter in the GLD chart. I'm not sure that gold has much higher to go here, although the next couple of months could conceivably go either way. The summer looks more decidedly negative as the nodes will afflict several key points in the GLD chart. Until then, it may be a tug of war between the positive effects of transiting Jupiter on the natal Venus and MC and the Saturn square to natal Mars in the Futures chart.
