Review
A late-afternoon rally lifted the Dow industrials and S&P 500 to daily gains after the Friday morning release of the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge. The personal-consumption expenditures price index rose 2.7% in April from a year ago, in line with economist expectations.
— Patricia Kowsmann and Ryan Dezember, “S&P 500, Dow, Rise After PCE Inflation Data: Dow Climbs About 575 Points,” Wall Street Journal Online, May 31, 2024.
Ether soars 27% in May after SEC clears path for spot ether ETFs.
— MacKenzie Sigalos, Jordan Smith, and Talia Kaplan, www.cnbc.com, May 31, 2024.
Last week’s market behavior reflected the dualistic nature of Gemini. As the NASDAQ went up, the DJIA fell. When the NASDAQ fell, the DJIA went up. It was a similar tale of related markets going in opposite directions with Gold and Silver. Usually, markets in the same sector move in the same direction, but that may not be the case when the Sun, Venus, and Jupiter are in the mutable sign of Gemini, and even more so when the Moon also travels through the mutable and dualistic sign of Pisces, which was the case on Thursday and Friday.
Many of the world’s stock indices followed a path outlined by our solar/lunar studies on the DJIA. That is, important highs formed under the Sagittarius Full Moon of May 23. The S&P, for instance, made its all-time high then. Several indices then made a secondary high last week, on May 28, when the Moon was in Aquarius. The NASDAQ, for instance, made its all-time high then. Both of these lunar signs, along with the Sun in Gemini, have a correlation to isolated highs with greater than average historical frequency. Most markets then dropped to the week’s low on Friday with the quarter Moon in Pisces. By the end of the day, they had rallied.
The danger is that this type of pattern occurring this late in a 4-year cycle is often seen when longer-term cycles are topping out. Much will depend now on how high a rally due this week will go. If the market is to remain bullish, then global stock indices need to rally to new yearly highs soon. If they start to fall again and take out the lows of the past week before making new highs, that could be a sign of trouble. The New Moon in Gemini is due this week and is normally bullish. Thus, if the markets are not bullish when they are expected to be bullish by these studies, then that means they are probably turning bearish.
Gold and Silver were both down last week. Both had made long-term highs on May 20, right on MMA’s three-star critical reversal date (CRD). For Gold, it was an all-time high. For Silver, it was at its highest level in over 12 years. Silver retested this high on Wednesday, May 29, just as the solar/lunar studies suggested as a high possibility. But by Friday, both Gold and Silver were making new weekly lows, again as the solar/lunar studies suggested. However, both are in the later phase of their primary cycle, so the pressure is to see lower prices, perhaps into the Saturn and Neptune retrograde period of June 28-July 2, unless they can first take out their highs of the past two weeks.
Bitcoin continues to consolidate near its all-time high as it seems to be tracing out a bullish and inverse head and shoulders chart pattern. Ethereum, however, is now nearing its yearly high as new ether ETFs in the crypto are ready to be offered for public trading. In the meantime, Crude Oil continues to struggle with slightly higher highs followed by slightly lower lows over the past month. Maybe it, too, is waiting for the Saturn and Neptune retrogrades to break out one way or the other.
Short-term geocosmics
Following those remarks, reporters in the room asked Biden again about the Trump verdict. “Mr. President, can you tell us, sir, Donald Trump refers to himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What’s your response to that, sir?” one reporter asked Biden as he was walking away. Biden then turned around and cracked a grin at the media before heading out of the room.
—Greg Norman, “Biden Says Trump ‘Should’ Have Opportunity To Appeal Conviction, Grins and Ignores Questions,” Fox News, May 31, 2024.
Donald Trump in 2016: “She (Hillary Clinton) should not be allowed to run….If she wins, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and, ultimately, a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt.”
— Republican Voters Against Trump @Accountable GOP, posted on ‘X,’ May 31, 2024.
You would think that transiting Jupiter entering Donald Trump’s Gemini Sun sign would bring him good news. But for the second time this year, juries in New York courts found him guilty of charges. For Democrats, this is a case of “Do the crime, pay the time,” and “No one is above the law.” For Republicans who support Donald Trump, this entire trial was “rigged” and “corrupt,” something you would expect to see in a communist country or banana republic. The vast divergence in response is yet another characteristic of Gemini. Where is the middle when the noise is overwhelmingly loud on the extremes?
From a geocosmic perspective, this week’s Trump verdict is very interesting. First, the trial occurred as Mars transited over Chiron and the powerful eclipse point of April 8. That eclipse path went right over the heartland of the United States. In olden times, total eclipses over a region were thought to portend the death or defeat of the leader. In this case, one has to wonder: which leader? Donald Trump or Joe Biden? The trial of President Biden’s son is expected to start next week. Will the tables turn, which is a characteristic associated with Gemini and its ruler, Mercury? Second, transiting Jupiter is in its detriment in Gemini, so maybe the good fortune and luck associated with Jupiter on one’s natal Sun, in the case of Donald Trump, is not so strong when it is in its detriment.
I also find the verdict this week correlates well with the U.S. chart of July 2, 1776, at about 11:50 AM, as used in each of the annual MMA Forecast books. This chart places Saturn (rules) rising in the sign of Libra (law and courts). As MMA editor Beth Woody wrote this week, “I wish I had $100 for each time I hear that phrase “rule of law” in the news now. In interviews, these brilliant legal commentators keep saying that this “Rule of law” is America’s strength. And on hearing this each time, I realize this is the energy of the USA’s chart, Saturn in Libra in the first house. It is all being tested now.” It is also interesting that Jupiter and the other Gemini planets are now entering the 9th house of “legal judgments” in the U.S. chart.
Shorter-term, we find an interesting arrangement of planets in the heavens this week. Nine of the ten celestial bodies are compressed together in a 90-degree area and lining up, starting with Saturn in mid-Pisces and ending with the Sun and Venus in Gemini. In addition, with the Sun, Venus, and Jupiter (to be joined by Mercury next week) so close to one another in an air sign, this would normally augur a period of optimism and cheer. That was probably true for Democrats last week. However, that could reverse and become a period of cheer for Republicans by the end of next week due to the media attention on the court cases involving the nation’s former and current president.
In the days ahead, you will hear much about a two-tiered justice system. But don’t be surprised. This is the season of Gemini, the twins, with two heads scheming in opposite directions. This is not a season to take victory laps. With Gemini, emotions and trends can reverse quickly. However, all this energy associated with Jupiter and Venus in an air sign may offer a short-term boost to financial markets. Have fun, and enjoy it while it lasts. But listen well and keep your ears peeled for the sound of that gong referred to last week.
Disclaimer and statement of purpose: The purpose of this column is not to predict the future movement of various financial markets. However, that is the purpose of the MMA (Merriman Market Analyst) subscription services. This column is not a subscription service. It is a free service, except in those cases where a fee may be assessed to cover the cost of translating this column from English into a non-English language. This weekly report is written with the intent to educate the reader on the relationship between astrological factors and collective human activities as they are happening. In this regard, this report will oftentimes report what happened in various stock and financial markets throughout the world in the past week, and discuss that movement in light of the geocosmic signatures that were in effect. It will then identify the geocosmic factors that will be in effect in the next week, or even month, or even years, and the author’s understanding of how these signatures will likely affect human activity in the times to come. The author (Merriman) will do this from a perspective of a cycles’ analyst looking at the military, political, economic, and even financial markets of the world. It is possible that some forecasts will be made based on these factors. However, the primary goal is to both educate and alert the reader as to the psychological climate we are in, from an astrological perspective. The hope is that it will help the reader understand the psychological dynamics that underlie (or coincide with) the news events and hence financial markets of the day. No guarantee as to the accuracy of this report is being made here. Any decisions in financial markets are solely the responsibility of the reader, and neither the author nor the publishers assume any responsibility at all for those individual decisions. Reader should understand that futures and options trading are considered high risk.
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