NASDAQ made a new all-time high last week

REVIEW AND PREVIEW

Chinese acquisitions and investments in the U.S. fell 92 percent to just $1.8 billion in the first five months of this year, consulting and research firm Rhodium Group said Tuesday.

Counting divestitures, net Chinese deal flow to the U.S. during that time was a negative $7.8 billion, the report said. The decline follows a sharp drop in the second half of last year as pressure from both Beijing and the Trump administration curbed a recent surge in cross-border investment.

The United States should stop the scattershot, pointless nonsense on tariffs and go the other way, and hard. It should drop all tariffs, even if the rest of the world doesn’t follow… Studies show that countries with freer trade have both higher per capita incomes and faster rates of productivity growth. Economists have also long understood that barriers to trade, while pitched as a way to help domestic workers, always heavily penalizes domestic consumers. – Veronique de Rugy, “A Case for Unilateral Tariff Disarmament,” The New York Times International, June 21, 2018.

No matter how you cloak it, equity markets of the world do not like this ongoing game of tariff threats that appear to be heading more and more towards a full-blown trade war. President Trump ratcheted up more tariff threats last week, and as expected, stock markets swooned – again. Instead of coinciding with a stock market crest, it appears more and more likely that the Venus/Mars opposition on the summer solstice of June 21 is going to coincide with a low. In fact, it is more than just Venus (agreements) and Mars (disputes) in opposition (threat to partnerships and alliances). It is Venus in the midst of a fixed grand square (stubborn, fixed, and no one wants to back down) with Jupiter and Uranus too. There is a lot at stake here, and once again it looks like a game of “chicken” to see who will budge first, but the fixed grand square isn’t showing any signs of budging by anyone yet.

It doesn’t stop with Venus in the grand fixed square, for Neptune is also highlighted, as it has now turned stationary retrograde (June 18) and in a semi-square with Uranus. Therefore, no one is certain of where this is really headed. There seems to be no end game by which those who are engaged in this game can easily get out. It causes Financial Astrologers to wonder: what will the correlation to all of this be when Mars turns retrograde in Aquarius this week, on June 26? Will Mars retrograde mean that those who have initiated this war of words and threats begin to retreat? That is possible. On the other hand, since Mars is in the eccentric and “think-they-know-it-all” sign of Aquarius, does it mean that the aggressors come on even stronger in their belligerence and demands, trying to strong-arm others to bend to their wills even more? That is possible too.

We may see behaviors start to shift by (or shortly after) the full moon in Capricorn at the end of this week, June 27-29. That full moon is also conjunct Saturn (Sun/Saturn opposition), just a day after Mars turns retrograde. We already see a heavy Venus grand square in force, combined with a strong Neptune, stationary. To that, the cosmos will now add a heavy Saturn/Capricorn influence with a powerful Mars stationary. This brings to mind the pressure cooker reaching an extreme boiling point. Then this offensive dynamic gradually recedes, as the Moon begins to wane over the following two weeks, and Jupiter starts to assert his dominance. The mood probably becomes lighter, although there is a possibility that everything becomes even more exaggerated, and morphs into hysteria. I am thinking that we may get a break, and conscientious acts of kindness and efforts exhibiting goodwill may become noticeable.

How will this affect financial markets? Well, any market making cycle lows into this period (June 20-27) is susceptible to bottoming and beginning rallies. This is not a time to panic. Let others do that if they so choose. This can be a favorable time to look for opportunities, new trends, which could continue into the Jupiter/Neptune and Saturn/Uranus trines of mid- to late August. The only wild card in the deck is Mars square Uranus, which lasts until mid-September and can still correspond with unexpected events and announcements that drive the markets (and investors) crazy, especially around August 1 +/- one week.

One market of great interest that may have reversed last week is the Euro. It dropped to a new cycle low and the Swiss Franc did not, for a case of intermarket bullish divergence. Gold did the same in relationship to Silver. And the NASDAQ made a new all-time high last week, but other stock indices did not. In fact, they fell. So, we have several cases of intermarket bearish and bullish divergence occurring within the allowable orb of our three-star June 20-21 critical reversal date as discussed in last week’s monthly MMA Cycles Report.

We will return to our normal format next week. This weekend, I am in England giving an all-day workshop and webinar on Cycles (Rhythmic and Cosmic) and their relationship to financial markets. The recording of this even could be available this weekend. If all goes well, you will receive a note to this effect from MMA. If you are interested in this topic, this is a very thorough workshop, with many new ideas and research studies, you will not want to miss.