DJIA made a new primary cycle high

REVIEW AND PREVIEW

The Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls grew by 201,000 in August while average hourly earnings rose 2.9 percent for the month on an annualized basis, evidence that the long-awaited rebound in wages may be starting to show. Economists polled by Reuters had expected payrolls to increase by 191,000. The unemployment rate held steady near a generational low of 3.9 percent.

The journey from Mars turning direct the prior week on August 27 to Saturn turning direct this past week on September 6 has been hard on most world equity markets.

It was an especially difficult week for stock indices in Europe. The German DAX, for instance, fell to 11,888 on Friday, September 7. It is nearing its primary cycle low of 11,726 made on March 26, which was its lowest mark since February 2017. The story was similar in the Netherlands AEX and London FTSE. The Zurich SMI was down all week too, but not as dramatically as the others.

In Asia and the Pacific Rim, the Australian ASX index plunged from a 10-year high on August 30 at 6481 to a low of 6211 so far on Friday, September 7. The Japanese Nikkei made a new high for this primary cycle also on August 30 at 23,032, but by Friday, September 7, it was falling hard to a low thus far of 22,172. The Hang Seng of Hong Kong fell to 26,669, a level not seen in over a year. China’s Shanghai Index is holding above its yearly low made on August 20, but not by much. Only the NIFTY Index in India is holding up well. It closed at 11,584, not far from its all-time high of August 30, also nearby to Mars turning direct.

In the USA, the NASDAQ and S&P made new all-time highs on August 29-30, while the DJIA made a new primary cycle high then, but was still nearly 500 points off its all-time high of January 26, 2018. The DJIA held up fairly well last week, but the NASDAQ sold off rather sharply all week.

However, of most interest to us right now is the drama unfolding in Gold and Silver. On Tuesday, September 4, just two trading days before Saturn turned direct, Silver plunged to test the $14.00 mark for the first time since its 7-year cycle low in December 2015. Gold, on the other hand, fell to 1195 on the same day, well above its yearly low of 1167 registered on August 16, for a case of bullish intermarket divergence. This prompted us to put out a Special Gold alert to subscribers on Tuesday, as Silver was making that low, which followed our Special Gold and Silver Update issued the week before, outlining the steps we wanted to see before issuing a Special Alert. The alert is now on as described in that report.

 

SHORT-TERM GEOCOSMICS AND LONGER-TERM MUNDANE THOUGHTS

“I do not believe in freedom of the will.  Schopenhauer's words ‘Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills’ accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me.  This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper."  Albert Einstein.

Ramesh Balsekar, the outstanding Advaita sage, taught that if one really accepted, on a very deep level of understanding, that there is no free will it would allow that individual to be free from guilt and prevent him or her for judging or blaming others.  Einstein, based on the quote above, seems to have reached the exact same conclusion. – Len Oppenheim, “Observations from the Middle End, len@lenopp.com

The all-time high of the S&P and NASDAQ indices on August 29-30, right after Mars ended its 2-month retrograde trek on August 27, remained intact last week. In the case of the NASDAQ Composite, the decline has been more serious than in the DJIA or S&P, as prices fell from 8133 to a low, so far, of 7873. That’s a decline of only 3% in five trading days, but the important point to market timers is that it started from a convergence of powerful geocosmic signatures. Not only did Mars turn direct then, but shortly before that, the third and final trine between Jupiter and Neptune ended (August 19). Furthermore, the closest of a fourth passage involving the Saturn/Uranus trine also ended in the last week of August, just as the high occurred.

The concern to financial astrologers now is whether the Saturn station of September 6 will stop this decline and be followed by a new rally to new highs, for when markets decline into a strong Saturn signature, it often represents the end to that decline. Or, were the Jupiter/Neptune, Saturn/Uranus, and Mars direct correlations to the crest on August 29-30 stronger, and the start of a decline that will gain momentum as we head into Venus retrograde on October 5? We will probably know the answer to that question by the time Mars makes its third and final waning square to Uranus on September 18. This latter signature is a wild one, often correlating with primary and even 50-week cycle troughs or crests within 13 trading days. The high of August 29-30 was at the beginning of that time band.

We have been under this Mars/Uranus square since mid-May, and it has lived up to its hype in terms of chaos and disturbances in national and international geopolitics (think Turkey, Venezuela, Argentina, Iran, Canada, China, and the USA). It has not been an easy path for the leaders of either of these countries due to pressures put on them by U.S. President Donald Trump, the epitome of these Uranian dynamics. To his supporters, he is seen as a brilliant strategist and maverick who is making huge changes in favor of America. He is righting many wrongs the USA has had to endure from poor financial deals in the past with other nations of the world. But to others, his behavior and methods are a very thin line between brilliance and abnormality, even amorality. He had a lot of bad press last week.

I am in Europe most of this month, and this is not popular ground for Mr. Trump. When I ask why, I get some very interesting replies, such as from one tech executive who explained it to me this way: “No one faults Trump or anyone else from wanting to win. But he doesn’t want to create win-win situations for everyone else involved, which would be constructive. To him, winning isn’t really winning unless someone else loses. And that’s the problem. He isn’t satisfied with winning unless it hurts someone else, and it’s hard to get behind someone like that.”

The goecosmic correlation between Mr. Trump’s current publicity woes and his chart is transiting Saturn, which is highlighted this week because it is turning stationary direct. Over the past several weeks, Saturn retrograde has been in opposition to his natal Mercury and square his natal Neptune. As reported before in this column, Saturn in a hard aspect to one’s natal Neptune can be one of the more challenging times in a person’s life, especially where integrity, ethics, and trustworthiness are concerned. It is a time when one’s reputation is often attacked, rightly or wrongly. It is a time when one often feels misunderstood, misrepresented, maligned, and worse, betrayed and deceived. Neptune moves slowly, so this is something that many people born in 1943-1947 may be experiencing at this time. With President Trump, it is exaggerated because Saturn is also presently in opposition to his natal Mercury, which rules the press and communications of all types. Last week’s New York Times op-ed by an anonymous senior official in Trump’s administration revealed that there were many Trump appointees who were actively undermining the president’s agenda. And then excepts from Bon Woodward’s new book “Fear” described senior aides as blasting Trump’s White House as dysfunctional and “…claims that chief of staff John Kelley called Trump an idiot and that the president was unhinged and that he’s gone off the rails,” according to the Washington Post. That sounds a lot like transiting Saturn making a T-square to one’s natal Mercury and Neptune.

The U.S, economy may be doing well, but the personal attacks on the president’s persona via articles in the media last week are stunning. And just in time for the mid-term elections coming up November 6. It makes you wonder about the timing. Is it political or cosmic? It may be both. But more important, to us, is how this will affect financial markets. When Nixon was faced with a similar hatred for and from the press, his presidency was brought down and the U.S. stock market collapsed nearly 50% from an all-time high January 1973 to a low in December 1974. Coincidentally, that high was also during the last 45-year Saturn/Uranus waning trine cycle, a geocosmic signature that just ended again the week of August 31, 2018, as the S&P and NASDAQ made their new all-time highs. It could get very volatile this week too, with Venus in opposition to Uranus on September 12. That is, both Venus and Mars will be making hard aspects to Uranus September 12-18 and you know what that means: support and resistance areas may be broken, for Uranus has no respect for either, whether in love or financial markets.