Gold and silver staged strong secondary rallies into February 24

REVIEW AND PREVIEW

World stock indices continued their rally last week following the lows of February 11, within three trading days of our last February 8 critical reversal date. Several equity markets made new monthly highs, like the DJIA, which soared to 16,796 on Friday, well above the prior highs of 16,511 on February 1 and 18. The S&P March futures did the same, rising to a high of 1968.75 on Friday, well above the February 1 high of 1940. However, the NASDAQ futures did not take out their highs of early February, and all three indices sold off to close near the lows of the day on Friday, for a case of intermarket bearish divergence. This could be a sign of things to come.

However, Friday, February 26, was not a geocosmic critical reversal date, which offers hope to the bulls. That was the trading day immediately preceding the Sun/Neptune conjunction in Pisces on Sunday, February 28, which is a powerful Level 1 geocosmic signature. However, it is only the start of a time band containing other important geocosmic reversal signatures that center on the next weekend, March 4-7, when the USA payroll reports come out.

Gold and silver staged strong secondary rallies into February 24, just before heliocentric Mercury left Sagittarius on February 26. They did not take out their new cycle highs, made on February 11. Just like stocks, gold and silver fell on Friday, suggesting the Mars-in-Scorpio high (and secondary high) may be in, as discussed in our recent February 15-16 MMA Special Report on Gold, and our weekly and daily reports on gold, as traders locked in fantastic profits on this run of over $200/0z that started in mid-December. Now we prepare for the post Mars-in Scorpio activity, which is usually a decline. Will it be a simple corrective decline in a new bull market? Or will gold bugs be hammered again? We could know by the end of this week.

SHORT-TERM GEOCOSMICS

This week begins March Madness for financial markets and world politics, and shortly afterwards for USA college basketball. The former starts this Tuesday, March 1, as 11 states will hold their primary elections towards the nomination of the candidates who will represent the two parties in the November USA presidential election. Do not expect the rhetoric to be benign or factual. We are still in the middle of the Saturn/Neptune square. You cannot believe what you read or hear, and character does matter under this configuration.

Our focus will on the trend status of many markets stating this week. Equities have been bearish since mid-2015, with lower cycle highs and lows. Now that could change. We expect many markets to reverse their long-term trends this year, ideally between March and June.

March begins with a bang, as the fiery Sun makes its translation to the approaching Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune mutable T-square. That wild combination can be very unstable. But the fiery sun is tempered because it is in the water sign of Pisces, which just adds confusion and uncertainty already dominant in world markets today. We could also see world leaders and presidential candidates getting themselves into some very hot water.

This powerful solar translation set up takes place February 28-March 8, and the idea is that world stock markets and many commodity markets will undergo a very sharp reversal. Price swings may be large for two reasons. First, geocosmics point to the Sun conjunct Neptune (Feb 28), and especially the Sun in opposition to Jupiter (March 8), as Level 1 signatures. That means they have a 67% or greater historical correlation to primary cycle highs or lows within 10 trading days. In cases like this, we closely watch the midpoint days as the most critical, which just happens to be on March 4 when the employment reports come out (our second reason to expect huge price swings). This might be the most important employment report of the year in terms of stocks and commodity market trends. The Sun/Jupiter opposition is one of those special reversal signatures all on its own, much like Venus retrograde and direct. It falls in the top five of the most reliable and powerful geocosmic reversal signatures, with a correlation of 75% to primary cycles within 10 trading days. Usually, gold does not like Jupiter aspects like this. Stocks can go either way – explosions to the upside if the underlying trend is turning back to bullish, or panic and hysteria in which equities drop sharply.

March 4-7 is also important because Mars will leave Scorpio on March 5 through May 27, when it will retrograde back into Scorpio. Not only do the early degrees of Sagittarius correspond to challenges in gold prices, but also the entire period of Mats in Sagittarius and Capricorn represent a period when there is unusually increased danger, military confrontations and political crisis in the Middle East, especially surrounding Israel.

Therefore, we cannot underestimate the importance of this Friday’s Labor Department report in the USA (March 4). At the time of the report’s release, the Moon will be in Capricorn square to Pluto. That sounds more disappointing than optimistic. The number of new jobs may fall a little short of estimates again, or if they meet them, investors might focus on the Fed staying the course to raise its short-term rates in mid-March. Anything before then might just be noise, as the band tunes up its instruments for the launch of the big Jupiter show of March 4-8. The consequences could last well into the end of the month, when Jupiter squares Saturn on March 23, followed by Saturn turning retrograde on March 25.

LONGER-TERM THOUGHTS AND MUNDANE ASTROLOGY….

… will resume next week. In the meantime, I leave you with a kernel of wisdom involving Aquarians in love. “I love you. But don’t take it personally.” - Richard Hardy, musician and astrologer (a big hit at the Grammy awards this year.), at the ISAR board meetings last week.

Richard’s band, Shakti Tribe, will provide the entertainment for the ISAR 2016 event taking place October 13-16, 2016 in Costa Mesa, California. For those interested in attending, keep in mind that the best discount rate to attend will end this Monday, February 29. Please go to isarastrology.org/2016ISAR for further info on the most exciting astrological forecasting gathering event of 2016, as renowned astrologers will make their forecasts of the next president of the USA. This event takes place three weeks before the election. In three of the last four cycles, the candidate who was ahead with 3-4 weeks to go, did not win. This should be interesting, as each of these forecasters have an impressive record of accuracy for predicting elections. Panels of six have not missed – 100% - in the last two election cycles of 2008 and 2012. Now we find out if they are just liberal, or instead, just very, very good.