What’s Happening With The Stock Market????

Amazing downturn these last few weeks on Wall Street. It goes down when the bailout bill does not pass. Then it goes down when the amended bailout does pass. Then it goes down some more for who knows what reason. From a high in the 14,000 range, it has fallen to below 9,000. What is going on astrologically?
For one thing, the period of Mercury retrograde has not helped us to deal with the mortgage crisis, the foreclosure crisis, the credit crunch, or any of the other negative news. Mercury is finally going direct this Wednesday, Oct. 15. It will be none too soon. But of course Mercury goes retrograde three times a year, so we cannot lay everything at his dainty winged feet. He’s only the messenger, after all.
I like to go back to fundamentals as laid out by Barbara Koval, especially in her book, Time & Money: The Astrology of Wealth. Let’s look first at her chart for the birth of the New York Stock Exchange: founding on May 17, 1792, New York, NY, about 10 am Eastern. Ten degrees Leo rising, with Uranus at 15 degrees Leo, and 29 degrees Aries at the Midheaven. Mars at 18 Virgo and the North Node at zero degrees Libra in the second house; Jupiter and Neptune at 22 and 27 degrees Libra in the third; Pluto at 23 degrees Aquarius in the seventh; Moon and Saturn at 19 and 26 degrees Aries in the ninth house; Venus at 5 degrees Mercury retrograde at 23 degrees and the Sun at 27 degrees Taurus in the tenth.
Drat! Wouldn’t you know that Mercury would be retrograde in the birth chart of the major stock exchange of this country? Would that account for the continual cycles of boom and bust that this country has suffered?
Koval says that transiting Pluto was square the stock market ascendant when the market dropped 500 points in 1987. Currently, Pluto is trining the stock market Midheaven -- clearly, trines are not always nicey-nicey. But look at planets and points at late degrees in the stock market chart -- the MC at 29 Aries, Saturn at 26 Aries, Sun at 27 Taurus,
Neptune at 27 Libra.
What did I say in my article about planets in late degrees about these signs?? Late Taurus points promise financial ups and downs. Uff da. Late Aries points are signs of those who gain fame and fortune by being pioneers -- and certainly, it is very possible even now to get to the top with a lot of hard work if you have a new, innovative product. Libra, what the heck is Libra doing here? Well, let’s see, Neptune here rules the eighth house of pooled resources, which describes the pooling of funds in the market thru buying stocks. It also presaged the enormous growth in the stock market when pooled mutual funds and pension money became popular vehicles for investment.
Sun, Mercury and Venus in Taurus have given it lasting influence in growing wealth and assets, and denote its connection to banking. But Mars in the second house, Moon in Aries, and an angular Pluto put an accent on debt and also on speculation rather than investment. What is disturbing with this chart is that the ruler of the tenth house is in the second -- which Koval takes to mean that the banks are in control of wealth here. Then she says: “If the banks fail, so does the system.” Uh oh.
Koval also frequently defines Uranus not as shocks to the system or upsets and so forth; she defines it as foreign funds. And Uranus moving through Pisces in this chart’s eighth house of pooled resources is pretty accurate in describing the ocean of foreign investment in our markets; it’s the major reason Wall Street has kept afloat these past several years. It does not seem like the Chinese or Europeans will pull out immediately.
Uranus will not exit the eighth house till it reaches 2 degrees 53 minutes of Aries.
Transiting Saturn is also closing in on the chart’s natal Mars at 18 Virgo in the second house. Not a good sign. Transiting Neptune is approaching natal Pluto, the wipeout planet, at 23 Aquarius. This is not a good sign either. Possibly one of the reasons that drops in the market often occur in the fall, is that the transiting Sun passes over the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction. Jupiter magnifies everything it touches, and here it magnifies the evaporation (Neptune) of money.
Contacts of transiting Sun to other transiting planets tends to bring a bit of a high to the market. Right now, the transiting planets feature Saturn in Virgo, the retrograde Mercury in Libra, Ceres also in Libra, then Mars (debt) and Venus (cash) in Scorpio (which should bring a mild uptick), and Pluto in Sag. The Sun does not contact a strong upward force till it meets up with Jupiter in Capricorn in January.
It may shock you to know that the Dow had not broken the 3,000 mark by 1990. Is a Dow at five times that level -- flirting with the 15,000 range -- even supportable? Was it ever supportable? Or was it just a Neptune dream, the Neptune that drives the market upward based on nothing but hope and faith in tomorrow?
It would be crushing if all the market growth fueled by the technological advances of the 1990s, the invention of mutual funds and index funds, the advent of cheap do-it-yourself trading services, and access to international investment markets were wiped away in one fell swoop by the presto-chango, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t transit of Pluto -- the wipeout planet, the one who makes you a millionaire and then a pauper just so you don’t get a big head. Pluto is like the gold in the film “Treasure of Sierra Madre”. Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston and Tim Holt work like dogs to dig out the ore from the high sierras, and in the end the wind blows it all back to the mountains from which it came.
Cie la vie. Ciao, Fortune. Hello, bankruptcy.
[I really should not end on such a low note. Markets go up, markets go down, they go up again. That's how it is. Unfortunately, markets are getting more volatile due to computer programmed trades and instant transmission of trading information. But stop a minute and recall how the 500-point drop of 1987 was soon erased and the market sought new highs. Things will turn around again. But we all need to be vigilant that we buy well-run companies with no accounting funny-stuff.]

More Astronomy News about Saturn, Mars, and Solar Winds

Saturn magnetizes its moon Titan (from New Scientist)
After 31 close fly-bys of the moon, the Cassini spacecraft finally flew through Titan's upper atmosphere at a time when the moon had edged out of the influence of Saturn's magnetic field.
The encounter, which took place on 13 June 2007, showed that Titan's atmosphere actually retains a memory of the magnetic field of the plasma that surrounds Saturn. This memory might last for as long as 3 hours.
"It's surprising that it stays there that long," says team member Andrew Coates of University College London. "Over long time scales, this could really help us understand how planetary atmospheres evolve."
Titan's temporary emergence fully exposes the moon to the solar wind. But the temporary magnetization of the moon's atmosphere, which produces a draped sheath of magnetic field lines, might protect it from substantial losses.
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14717-saturn-magnetises-its-moon-titan.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

NASA Phoenix Lander Sees Falling Snow on Mars
NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. A laser instrument to gather data on how the surface and atmosphere interact, detected snow from clouds about 2.5 miles above the site where the Lander came to rest. The snow vaporized before reaching the ground, blasting hopes that we might get video of little Martian children making snowmen.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/09/nasa-mars-lande.html

No ‘Solar Hurricanes’ Lately - Could Lack of Solar Winds Affect Us on Earth?
The Ulysses mission has discovered that the Sun has reduced its output of solar winds, bringing their level to the lowest ever since recording began. "The Sun’s 1.5 million km-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble around the Solar System and can influence how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our Solar System, where it meets the galaxy," said Dave McComas, Principal Investigator for the Ulysses solar wind instrument and senior Executive Director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "Ulysses data indicate the solar wind’s global pressure is the lowest we have seen since the beginning of the space age."
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/09/could-change-in.html