Last week's market action reminds us of the importance of applying current transit positions to the relevant natal charts. Same transits -- very different results. In New York, markets were mostly unchanged as the Dow closed at 8277 and the S&P at 887. In Mumbai, a totally different story as stocks went into orbit on Monday after the surprisingly large election win by the Congress-led UPA which was announced over the weekend. Stocks rose 15% for the week with the Nifty finishing at 4238 and the Sensex at 13,887. The neutral New York outcome was largely in keeping with expectations although the gains arrived a little early with the Sun-Mercury conjunction at 3 Taurus. This was close enough to trigger the benefic energy contained in the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction (2 Aquarius) and take markets higher, if only briefly after which the bears moved in the rest of the week. Mumbai took flight because the very same transit alignment was activating some extremely favourable natal placements in the NSE and Sensex charts. For more details on how this may have unfolded, please see the Mumbai's Magnificent Monday page on my website.
This week features a couple of interesting aspects. Jupiter moves into exact conjunction with Neptune on Wednesday. While this is one of the key sources of bullish energy in these past two months, I'm less convinced that the exact conjunction can generate more gains. That's because slow moving planets usually require activation from past moving planets, as we saw from the Sun-Mercury conjunction last week. The Moon forms a trine aspect to this conjunction late Monday, so that could boost some world markets (US markets will be closed for Memorial Day) On Tuesday and Wednesday, we have another potential triggering planets as Mars (2 Aries) will move into an exact aspect with the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction. Unlike Mercury, Mars is a malefic planet so that increases the possibility that net effect may actually be negative. By Friday, Mercury will move into a close harmonic aspect with Venus so that may well provide some food for the bulls. So we have a very mixed picture this week with a real question about market direction. With the bearish Sun-Saturn square due next week, I'm inclined to think that US stocks will continue this phase of consolidation and retracement here. Indian stocks are perhaps somewhat better candidates for profit taking.
