Stocks ended higher last week as improved corporate earnings kept the
summer rally going for another week. Despite Friday's decline on the
disappointing jobs report, the Dow added 75 points for the week closing
at 12,657 while the S&P500 finished at 1343. Indian stocks also rose as
the Sensex broke above some important technical resistance and ended the
week at 18,858 while the Nifty closed at 5660.
This bullish outcome was not unexpected as I thought that Jupiter's
optimism would carry the day. The early week gains in Mumbai coincided
quite closely with Monday's Venus and Jupiter aspects, even if they were
fairly modest. As expected, the midweek Mars-Saturn aspect tempered
Jupiter's bullishness and we saw some mild selling occur in most global
markets. Once that negative influence had passed, Jupiter took over
again and stocks and commodities moved higher on Thursday's Venus-Uranus
aspect. And as often happens, we got a reversal just as the powerful
Jupiter-Pluto aspect peaked on Friday.
With all of the main medium term Jupiter aspects now out of the way for
a while, one wonders where stocks are headed to next. The easy gains
are likely behind us now as bulls will be harder pressed to find other
sources of planetary fuel. They may well be running on fumes for a
while. And yet Saturn doesn't appear to be offering much to the bears
here either in the way of aspects, so we could see some aimless
wandering for the key indexes.
This week offers up some decent bear food in the form of Saturn's square
aspect to Venus. This makes its tightest angle on Tuesday/Wednesday,
although I would expect the Moon's position opposite Mars on Tuesday
makes that day somewhat more negative. The early week also features a
Mercury-Mars aspect that is iffy at best so it's hard to imagine stocks
making much more headway here. There could be a bias towards caution
this week that generates some selling. Of course, we should see some up
days along the way too, although they are likely to be offset by
Saturn's influence.
