Weekly column: The Aries vortex and economic transformation

Review

As outlined in last week’s column, market volatility certainly did NOT let up this week. Markets that were particularly volatile were the stock market and metals. Both stocks and Gold rallied strongly on Monday and Tuesday before falling sharply on Wednesday following a hotter-than-anticipated CPI number. However, by the end of the day, both were back to nearly unchanged. The difference is how they ended the week. Stocks continued to build on Wednesday’s recovery and rallied right into Friday’s close. On the other hand, gold crashed and burned, falling over $74 from its early Friday morning high. Silver was even more dramatic, climbing over 4.5% on Friday to a new multi-month high, only to give it all back and settle lower on the day. Even Copper put in a massive bearish outside daily reversal lower.

Across the pond, the German DAX and London FTSE made new all-time highs again, but they were still unconfirmed by the Amsterdam AEX. In Asia, the Hang Seng and Shanghai SSE continued their bullish trends with the Nikkei also having a positive week. The NIFTY was the holdout with a lower weekly close.

In other markets, Bitcoin and Ethereum were range bound not providing much insight on direction. Crude Oil dropped a new weekly low of 70.22. This is now the 4th week of decline off of the January 15 top and into the time band for a possible low. The real winner of this volatile and chaotic week might be the Wheat market. Wheat posted over a 4% gain on Friday alone. It also closed back above the $6 level for the first time since October of last year. After being in a bear market for over two years, the grains might just be returning to vogue.

Short-term geocosmics

The skies are relatively quiet this upcoming week after a volatile week involving Mercury and a Full Moon in T-squares to Uranus. That is until next weekend, when the first leg of this “retrograde chaos” period comes to an end, with Mars turning back direct on February 23. But the marathon continues with the baton quickly being passed to Venus, who starts her retrograde motion on March 1. One market I will be paying close attention to is Gold during this time. Depending on whether last week was a primary cycle crest or not in Gold, we could be making an important high or low in this time period. However, Gold isn’t the only market that could have a reversal. Venus affects many markets, including financials, currencies, and soybeans. Any of these markets are candidates for a reversal within 10 days of March 1.

Long-term geocosmics

Clearly, if Elon Musk really cuts US$2tn from the federal budget, that will reduce funding pressures considerably. The initial market impact would likely be a big rally in Treasury bonds and a rally in the US dollar. But there also would be a severe deflationary shock for the real economy, which, in the first instance, would surely be negative for equities.

—Chris Wood, “Why The Failure of DOGE Is Our Base Case,”, The Grizzle Research and Quant Report, [email protected], February 11, 2025.

The Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE” for short, has become a hot topic in recent weeks. Elon Musk and his team have been unearthing frivolous, wasteful, and corrupt spending in various departments of the US government. Some of the line items being reported are indeed quite shocking. However, it wasn’t until Musk and his team invaded the US Treasury that the gloves started to come off. Personally, I find what Musk and DOGE are doing to be refreshing and, quite frankly, necessary. Why shouldn’t a government with the power to audit its citizens not be held to the same standard? Having said that, I can appreciate the concerns and arguments being put forth over how it is being done and by whom.

This theme of government accountability, waste, and corruption seems to take hold in certain Western economies, starting with Argentina’s Milei and his “chainsaw” and now the United States with DOGE. This is happening as Neptune moves ever closer to leaving its ruling sign of Pisces and into a conjunction with Saturn at 0 degrees Aries in February 2026 (they will come within a degree of exactness this summer). The time surrounding this event has been referred to as the “Aries Vortex” by this column’s regular author, Ray Merriman. As an admitted “armchair astrologer,” this makes sense to me on a very basic level. Neptune can be deceptive, secretive, hidden, and filled with propaganda. Saturn is all about accountability and responsibility, a disciplined taskmaster, and a purveyor of justice. It seems Neptune’s veil of deceptive secrets is being lifted as it leaves Pisces, and Saturn’s “rubber meets the road” characteristics are taking over.

However, as Jupiter enters the fray by forming a square with both Saturn and Neptune this summer, we have to be able to accept the potential consequences of this proverbial “squaring up of the financial books.” The government is the largest employer in the United States. Making it more “efficient” likely means a lot of public sector workers could find themselves out of a job. In fact, layoffs and employee buyouts are already transpiring in certain government departments. Also, unless these expenditures deemed “wasteful” or “unnecessary” by DOGE are redirected to meaningful uses in the economy, they could become a strong deflationary force to be reckoned with. How will the stock market respond to rising unemployment and potentially less liquidity in the financial system? We may have our answer to this soon as we are due for a sharp decline to a three-year low in the stock market this year. This possibility is something Ray will be covering in this weekend’s Annual Forecast Webinar (see below).

The coming Saturn/Neptune conjunction also has a strong correlation to droughts over major grain-producing regions of the world. Needless to say, a severe supply-reducing event like a drought can have a very positive influence on grain prices. This script may be playing out now that long-term lows for the grain markets look to have formed back in August 2024.