The 4 aspects of the apocalypse

Randall Ashbourne, an associate of Astrological Investing, posts a weekly market report on his web site, theidiotandthemoon.com The following is this weekend's Eye of RA report: Week beginning April 22, 2013

Nerves of steel will be required over the next couple of weeks as four market-moving aspects take control of the markets.

Despite the shift from fiery Aries into earthy and stable Taurus by the Sun, Venus and Mars, fast and volatile moves in different directions are likely.

I'll show you the historical performance of these aspects in a moment and it'll be obvious why we all need to exercise care and caution.

Each one of the aspects is capable of producing a significant High or Low in markets. But, when they occur as a tight grouping together, the Highs and Lows have a strong historical tendency to be relatively major in intermediate terms ... and in some cases, a multi-year change of trend.

Now, apocalypse is probably too strong a word. But, I have a 5th House, unaspected Sagittarian Sun, so quiet and reserved understatement tends not to be a character trait. And at least I got your attention.

The aspects begin with Venus, in Taurus, opposing Saturn, in Scorpio, on Monday (USA time). The Full Moon later in the week is a lunar eclipse FM and with the Moon conjuncting Saturn.

Next weekend, the Sun opposes Saturn; and at the end of the following week, Mars, the mover of markets, also opposes Saturn ... meaning that "drive" is hurtling towards a collision with a brick wall.

We'll also be taking another look at gold this weekend for those of you holding positions in the metal itself, or in relevant mining stocks.

But first, we'll look at the historical performance of the four astrological events I mentioned a moment ago. In the chart below, a weekly of the SP500, Mars oppose Saturn events are marked with a red bar; Venus oppose Saturn is pink; Sun oppose Saturn is blue; and lunar eclipses are green bars.

Each single one is important individually, but I have circled the 6 previous occasions when these four have arrived as a group ... and their impact on stock prices has been sudden and dramatic.

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Two of the 6 played an important role in determining the bottom of the past two Bear crashes. One was present at a temporary stall in the early 2000s Bear; and the remaining 3 marked important turning points within intermediate corrections during Bull runs.

It's not then a true apocalypse scenario ... but it just might feel that way if you're caught on the wrong side of the sudden turns. And not one of these events was an insignificant, ho-hum period in the markets.

Next we'll take a close-up look at what happened on daily charts during the last appearance of this tight grouping in early 2011.

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The series began with Sun in opposition to Saturn marking out a top ... a fall then into Mars oppose Saturn ... a rise into Venus oppose Saturn ... and a sharp drop into a new low at the green lunar eclipse. We could be in for a wild ride in the next couple of weeks, especially with 3 of the 4 due to play out this week.

Now let's turn our attention to gold again. And I won't bother stepping politely this weekend. This appears to have been pure larceny. The big banks, most notably two of those which own the US Federal Reserve, had amassed enormous Short positions in gold.

Unfortunately, the broad world market didn't agree and price was shuffling sideways rather than tanking. At the same time, there had been a run on physical gold depositories. For some obscure reason, investors didn't trust the system and had begun moving their bullion into private vaults. Oh, tsk*tsk. This was a big problem for the banks ... not only was price not sliding dramatically, they were in dire danger of default if people kept rolling up with armoured vans to move their physical gold.

A co-ordinated worldwide raid was launched. Over in London, the computers which handle sales of physical gold crashed, supposedly because of the number of people trying to place trades. Far too many of which were Buy orders! Gee golly, the computers at the American dealers which handle paper gold did not crash - even though they, too, were suddenly inundated with orders.

Meanwhile, they all stayed open over the weekend to send out margin calls ... but not open enough to allow anyone to transfer money to meet the margin calls by the market opening on Monday. It was theft on a massive scale ... and just as with the various other incidents like the flash crash and the Fat-Fingered Freddy "mistake", absolutely nothing will be done about it.

If it were, we might find out the real reason why the US Federal Reserve can't actually supply Germany's 300 tons of bullion for 7 years.

The banks are playing a very dangerous game. They desperately need real amounts of physical gold - and, of course, they want it cheap. Their problem is ... drive the price too low and physical gold will dry up fast because a lot of small mines have a very high cost of production and will be forced to shutter, rather than lose money.

In any case, the price of gold continues to respond, quite precisely, to the planetary charts I introduced this year in Forecast 2013. Let's start with a close-up of the daily action.

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After the forced margin-call selling on Monday, the bounceback began with a false break below a secondary Pluto line, when price touched a Sun line. In technical terms, this does appear to be - probably - a temporary bounce before another drop. That drop is likely to produce an even bigger bounce, possibly even a change in the overall downtrend.

We'll go now to the weekly chart. The most significant price levels are the primary Pluto lines - 1518, 1363 and 1160. Also significant are the primary Sun lines. Primary Sun support is provided in the coming week at 1300.

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Okay, that's it for this edition. I will try, next weekend, to update Weekly Planets charts for Canada and the major Asian indices; it has been a few weeks since we last looked at them.

Be aware of at least the potential for things to go crazy over the next two weeks. The particular set of astrological aspects to Saturn, combined with a lunar eclipse, very rarely fails to produce fast moves in different directions - and are often exact on the day, as I tried to illustrate with the second chart in this edition.
Safe trading - RA

Astrological Investing's associate, Randall Ashbourne, author of the eBook, The Idiot and The Moon, and The Idiot and the Moon, Forecast 2013, writes a free weekly column titled, The Eye of Ra on his web site in  which he explains the potential impact of astrological aspects and the current state of technical conditions. Ashbourne's charts are revealing illustrations of exactly what has occurred in the market and the probability of what to expect.
Important reading:  Randall Ashbourne's The Idiot and The Moon, Forecast 2013 , Jupiter's cycle and its effects on Wall Street and a posting of the weekly Eye of Ra report in this blog, titled A look at the Venus Retrograde effect
(Disclaimer: This article is not advice or a recommendation to trade stocks; it is merely educational material.)
Copyright: Randall Ashbourne - 2011-2013

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