Weekly Column: Couple of important squares looming ahead

Review and preview

The U.S. economy grew at a solid 2.9% annual rate last quarter but entered this year with less momentum as rising interest rates and still-high inflation weighed on demand. The October-to-December period capped a year of economic slowdown with growth of 1% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared with a year earlier, down sharply from 5.7% growth in 2021. – Sarah Chaney Cambon “U.S. Economy Grows at Slower Pace,” Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2023.

The U.S. took action Thursday against Russian private military group Wagner Group, designating it as a significant transnational criminal organization over its actions in combat operations in Ukraine on behalf of President Vladimir Putin. – Mengqi Sun, “Wagner Group Designated by U.S. as Transnational Criminal Group,” Wall Street Journal, Jan 26, 2023.

Most world stock indices performed very well last week. Several made new highs for this year. Some even took out their highs of December, while others simply re-tested their highs made during the triple planetary stations of January 12-22. Thus, the test for the underlying primary trend continues to be a battle between the bulls and the bears. The bullish case is in need of taking out the highs of mid-December. The bearish case requires resistance in pushing back before that ceiling gives in.

Bitcoin also continued its multi-month rally, surging to a high of 23,821 on January 26, its highest level since August. This fits with the timing bands indicated for the long- and intermediate-term cycle lows outlined in the Forecast 2023 Book and our Bitcoin subscription reports.

Gold continued its impressive 2-month rally, but also found resistance just slightly below 1950. The low of early November, just after Mars turned retrograde, was 1618.30. Now, Mars has turned direct as of January 12, and the idea is that the counter-trend rally of Mars retrograde may be over unless the nearby contract can close above last week’s high. The battle for trend rages on here as well.

Speaking of battles – a real one rages on between Russia and Ukraine. Russia complains NATO countries are supporting Ukraine, while at the same time the Great Bear hires mercenaries to fight battles it can’t wage effectively. If Wagner is a mercenary fighting unit available for hire, why doesn’t the U.S. and NATO just outbid Russia for their services and end this primitive brutality? Declaring them a transnational criminal group isn’t going to get the job done. If they fear Wagner will betray them, there are other mercenary groups that would fight Wagner for the right amount of money. Just sayin’ ….

Short-term geocosmics

In Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” Mike Campbell is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he famously answers. “Gradually and then suddenly.” This is a fine description of the risk the country is running. – William A. Galston, “A Debt-Ceiling Breach Would Be Disastrous,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2023.

The keyword isn’t “debt ceiling.” It’s the ceiling’s fantastic figure—about $31.4 trillion. In his Martin Luther King Jr. holiday speech, by tradition an opportunity for healing, Mr. Biden called the Republicans “fiscally demented.” Is it the view of this president that $31 trillion of debt doesn’t matter, that $400 billion for interest payments doesn’t matter, that a federal budget close to bursting through $6 trillion doesn’t matter? Joe Biden promised normalcy. This spending isn’t normal, and the American people know it. – Daniel Henninger, “Debt-Ceiling Madness,” Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2023. 

As mentioned last week, we now know what might cause a financial panic indicated by the Mars-Jupiter-Pluto T-square in the last half of May as described in the Forecast 2023 Book. The longer Congress and the President delay resolving this issue, which is projected to continue into June, the greater the likelihood of a panic in the stock and Treasury markets.

Many of the world’s stock indices seem to be doing well as we leave the triple planetary station period of January 12-22, involving the ever-unpredictable Uranus direct of January 22. Some markets have broken out to new cycle highs, but most still remain below the highs of their first half-cycle crests of December 13, and others even remain below their highs of January 13-18, creating several intermarket bearish divergence triggers. These can be alleviated if their rallies can continue this week.

As we enter the new week and Groundhog Day (February 2), we see a couple of important squares looming ahead. The Sun will square Uranus on February 4, while Venus will square Mars the next day. Both are disrupters. The Sun/Uranus square can disrupt financial markets, especially those that pertain to interest rate gyrations like Treasuries and currencies. Venus/Mars squares can disrupt one’s plans for intimacy. I’m not sure which is worse: disruption of my financial plans or my intimacy plans. I hope the groundhog can shed light on this dilemma. Otherwise, I will probably suffer on both fronts and go back into hibernation for a few weeks. I don’t want to live with my shadow for six more weeks. 

Longer-term thoughts (and opinions)

Kyle Davies and Su Zhu are back. They’re the co-founders of the collapsed Singapore-based hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which was ordered to liquidate last June after defaulting on a $2.4 billion loan from Genesis Global Capital—and have they got a deal for you. Messrs. Davies and Zhu are peddling a new exchange for trading stocks, crypto and—wait for it—claims on crypto companies that went bankrupt. Just as theirs did last summer…it takes a special kind of hubris for the founders of a hedge fund that lost billions to offer to help its former customers (among others) recoup fractions of the losses those same founders caused. As the saying goes, a pig always finds the mud. – Gregg Opelka, “Crypto’s New Bankruptcy Racket, “ Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2023. 

A young banker asked a retiring banker what the secret of success was, to which the older banker responded, “Good judgement.” The rookie then asked, “How do you get good judgement.” The older banker said, “Experience.” To which the youngster asked, “How do you get experience?” And the retiring banker said, “Bad judgment.” Good judgement involves evaluating circumstances, weighing the positives and negatives and considering alternatives. – Harvey Mackay, “Here Comes the Judgment,” Arizona Republic, January 16, 2023. 

It seems my opinion pieces are eliciting more positive feedback than my short-term market comments lately. So, in the hope that these longer-term comments continue to inspire thoughts beyond the next week’s geocosmic market conditions, I will share some more that I think relate to the huge shifts in the cosmos (corresponding to changes in world societies, governments, and financial markets) taking place from March 2023 and into 2026. But not this week. I just had the first of two eye operations for lens replacement therapy. The next eye is up for invasion in two weeks. Hence my concern about seeing only my shadow for the next six weeks. I can’t see very well at the moment. It’s a drag. Everything on the computer screen looks like a shadow.

So, for the next couple of weeks, you are going to get more than the usual number of quotes that I find pertinent to today’s social, political, and economic conditions. I will let others do some of the thinking while I rest and try to rehab myself back into clarity. If all goes well (and why shouldn’t it now that the retrogrades have found their way forward), I should be able to see better than ever. Maybe I will even spell better. But first, I have to figure out how to avoid disruption of my financial and intimacy plans for the next two weeks.

Hello shadow, and welcome groundhog! At least I am not going to be a pig in the mud.