Stocks resumed their winning ways last week on favourable GDP and consumer data. Markets in New York rose 3% as the Dow closed Friday at 8500 and the S&P at 919. Mumbai added another 5% as the Sensex ended the week at 14,625 and the Nifty at 4448. While this positive outcome did not come as a complete surprise given the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction on May 27 coincided with a potentially strong Mars activation, I had thought there might be a little more profit taking. We can take some solace in the fact that the ebb and flow of the market seemed to follow the planetary forecast as early and midweek declines occurred roughly near the Mars aspect and markets recovered strongly by week's end as Venus approached its aspect with Mercury.
This week may be more challenging since the malefic aspects appear to outnumber the benefic ones. Early in the week, Venus (2 Aries) will occupy the same place Mars did last week and thus increases the likelihood of a release of bullish energy contained in the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction. It should be noted, however, that Jupiter is now moving past Neptune so the bullish effect of these planets of hopeful optimism may be slipping. Just how fast the power drains from this synergistic combination is uncertain, but we can wonder aloud here if the whole is no longer greater than the sum of its parts. By midweek we will see the malefics come to the fore as Mars squares Rahu and to make matters worse, this will be within range of Pluto's degree. These planets often symbolize excessive or even out of control energy that one finds in athletic competitions and violent or military conflicts. While it doesn't always correspond to bearishness, it probabilistically inclines the market to decline. (!) The end of the week also does not favour the bulls since the Sun squares Saturn. As we saw in April, these passing Saturn aspects don't always manifest when they "should" in terms of exactitude, but given the possible diminishing effect of Jupiter and Neptune now, it may be helpful to be aware of the extra negative potential here even if we don't act on it.
Jupiter stations on June 15 so that may coincide with a significant turning point since after that date, it will again be moving towards Neptune. If this recent two month rally can be attributed in part to the Jupiter-Neptune applying conjunction, then it's very possible that stocks will rise once Jupiter is again moving towards Neptune after the 15th. That said, Jupiter is not going to drift too far away from Neptune in terms of longitudinal arc (just 37 minutes), so we may be guilty of hair-splitting here. Nonetheless, the applying-separating dynamic is one of the few somewhat consistent principles of astrology. It's not a fool proof Newtonian law, but it works more times than it doesn't. In the world of astrology, that's about as good as it gets.
