Fueled by a seemingly unending stream of positive economic reports, stocks continued their ascent to new 2009 highs last week. In New York, the Dow rose 2%
to close at 9820 while the S&P finished at 1068. In Mumbai, the Nifty added 3% for the week and flirted with 5000 before ending the week at 4976. The BSE Sensex closed at 16,741. Commodities were mixed as crude oil rose to $72 USD while gold gave up midweek gains and ended mostly unchanged at $1007 USD. While I had anticipated some higher highs here, the absence of any significant late week pullback on the Sun-Moon-Saturn conjunction was disappointing. On the whole, the week was somewhat anti-climatic given the exact culmination of Saturn-Uranus opposition aspect. The Venus influence delivered predicted gains into Wednesday when it formed its closest angle to the Saturn-Uranus-Neptune alignment and indeed we saw the biggest gains of the week at that time. Against expectations, equities mostly held their own into the late week, however, as the Sun-Saturn conjunction only modestly damaged gold's prospects.
With the Saturn-Uranus opposition now behind us, we need to pay extra close attention to any new developing trends this week. Previous oppositions in this series have seen the bulk of the bearishness manifest after the exact opposition, so any downward moves this week would keep this correlation intact. Higher prices this week would provide significant evidence against the bearish view of the aftermath of the Saturn-Uranus aspect. With Mercury retrograding across Saturn, we would seem to be confronted with an even more bearish mixture of planetary energies than in past weeks. The exact conjunction occurs Tuesday so the early week may be more prone to selling. Of course, the Sun occupied a similar position last Thursday and we saw only a fractional decline. Nonetheless, Mercury's condition may be more vulnerable given its retrograde status. Some late week gains are likely as the Sun forms a minor aspect with Jupiter Thursday and into Friday. We should also pay attention to the approaching aspect from Rahu to Saturn. While not yet exact, the negative energy from this contact could begin to manifest fairly soon.
