Stocks continued to rebound last week as Europe showed hints of stabilizing with bond yields stepping back from the brink. In New York, the Dow closed almost 3% higher at 10,450 while the S&P finished at 1117. Mumbai also continued its winning ways as the Sensex ended the week at 17,570 with the Nifty at 5262. Gold also made news as it climbed to a new all-time high of $1260. Overall, the bulls took the reigns and took the key indexes over their 200 day moving averages, a key technical indicator. While I expected some upside last week, I thought it might be confined more to the early week and the Venus-Jupiter-Uranus alignment. Certainly, that did lift markets here but I overestimated the negative effects of the Sun's entry into Gemini later in the week. Markets were mostly flat after Tuesday, so while gains were harder to come by, the selling has yet to materialize.
It's important to note that the Sun will transit sidereal Gemini for the next four weeks until July 16. I believe that this will mean that rallies will tend to be shorter and selloffs steeper during the duration of this transit. Again, my reasoning here is based on very basic astrology: Saturn at 4 degrees of Virgo casts its full strength square aspect to Gemini and while Ketu (South Lunar Node) currently sits near the middle of the sign at 18 degrees of Gemini. This is a double dose of potential bearishness that is likely to act as a drag on optimism. Besides the powerful aspects involving slow moving planets (Saturn to Neptune; Saturn to Uranus, etc), the upcoming Gemini transit of the Sun and then Mercury demands close attention.
This week will see the Sun form square aspects to the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction early in the week. The Sun will first aspect Uranus on Monday, and then follow suit with Jupiter on Tuesday and into Wednesday. While square aspects are not the most positive angles, this trio of planets work quite well together so we should expect buyers to outnumber sellers and hence prices should rise. Mercury enters Gemini on Tuesday so that may complicate matters somewhat, although any negative fallout from this ingress may take a few days to appear. Mercury comes under the aspect of Saturn on Thursday so that increases the likelihood of a decline near that day.
All this increasingly feels like the calm before the storm.
"Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act." -- Paulo Coelho
