Weekly column: The influence of Uranus and the full Moon on financial markets

Review

The U.S. economy added 143,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate edged down to 4%….. The gain in jobs marked a drop from November and December and was less than the 169,000 jobs that economists had expected for January, according to a Wall Street Journal survey. But the job counts for November and December were revised upward by a combined 100,000. The unemployment rate was below the 4.1% that had been expected.

—Jeanne Whalen and Justin Lahart, “Employers Added 143,000 Jobs in January, and Unemployment Edged Down to 4%,” www.wsj.com, February 7, 2025.

It was another chaotic week with sudden, somewhat sharp reversals in many financial markets last week. This is typical during the Sun sign of Aquarius, and especially in the midst of powerful Uranus signatures. The prior week witnessed the New Moon in Aquarius on January 29, followed by Uranus turning direct on January 30. Friday, February 7, was a Gemini Moon day with the Sun in Aquarius, or an air/air combination, which can be volatile, especially on Friday with the monthly payroll report coming out. As if choreographed by the cosmic conductor, U.S. stock indices made the weekly highs on Thursday-Friday, then sold off rather sharply into Friday’s close. Gold and Silver did likewise.

On the global front, the German DAX and London FTSE made new all-time highs last week, unconfirmed by the Amsterdam AEX and Zurich SMI. In Asia and the Pacific Rim, the Australian ASX made a double top on Friday to its all-time high recorded the week before. The Hang Seng of Hong Kong and Shanghai SSE were also bullish, whereas prices were range-bound in the Nikkei and NIFTY indices.

In other markets, Crude Oil dropped to the 70.00 area on Friday, down three weeks after a crest on January 15 at 79.39. Bitcoin put in a trading cycle low at 91,439 on February 3, testing its major cycle low of 89,613 made on January 13. Ethereum, on the other hand, fell to 2415 last Monday, its lowest price in three months and a possible intermediate-term cycle trough.

Short-term geocosmics

“The market is trying to predict and trade off a very unpredictable situation and person. You could look like a hero one minute, only for the market to turn on a sixpence, and you look like a zero the next.”

— Antony Foster (Nomura trader), “Trump Trades Are Misfiring,” Bloomberg’s Market Daily, February 7, 2025.“

 The market volatility, along with the geopolitical uncertainty and disruptions, may not let up next week. We are still under the spell of “retrograde chaos,” and Tuesday finds a Full Moon, making a fixed T-square with Uranus on Wednesday. Mercury makes that same square with Uranus on Monday, so the week is likely to start off with more bombshells (figuratively speaking). Financial markets may be caught by surprise, leading to sudden and sharp price fluctuations both ways. This is not a favorable market for those who are not nimble. Market analysts may be more wrong than right in their calls. Therefor, our strategy will be to continue to buy all sharp declines and take profits on sharp rallies that follow in 1-8 days. This is a favorable market climate for aggressive short-term traders but requires patience for the longer-term position types. There is still a trend, but no longer any straight lines with modest corrections.

Longer-term thoughts

The long-term consequences[of tariffs] remain. Foreign countries have less reason to trust that the US will honor trade treaties, reducing the incentive to make concessions.

—Dr Paul Donovan, “Retreat Repeat,” UBS morning audio comment, www.ubs.com/cio, February 4, 2025.

“Crisis is the new normal.”

—Dr. Christof Niederwieser

The onslaught of so many sudden changes is getting exhausting already. Yet this is precisely the nature of the “retrograde chaos” (November 25, 2024-April 12, 2025) discussed on our January 26 webinar “What The #$%^&” Is Happening?” We will update and apply this back-to-back period of retrograde personal planets (Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Mercury again) to financial markets in our February 16 annual Forecast webinar. Through all of these “start-stop-restart-stop again” retrograde interruptions, we must keep our focus on the long-term cycles and trends, ready to enter when sudden and sharp declines erupt.

Tied into the collective psychology of this “New Aira” period of 2020-2032 is the common misunderstanding of what people really want. Every candidate for government campaigns on the promise of “change,” as if that is what people really want. But they don’t want change solely for the sake of change. I believe most people really want stability. They want the government to make a change that leads to stability so they can make plans without surprises from disruptive government interventions to those plans, despite the false claim that they (leaders) have a “mandate” to do just that. But more realistically, the populace does not want a system that too frequently changes laws, tax codes, voting districts, voting rules, culture, traditions, customs, foreign policies, treaties, and agreements with trading partners and allies. The change most people want is for a stable system they can rely on for the purpose of personal planning for years, not months. Just as Democrats misread this over the prior four years, Republicans may be doing the same now that they are in power. Change that does not provide stability is not the ticket for support.

Yet, stability is not likely to happen as we enter the “Aries Vortex” of 2025-2027, and it will probably not be very evident before we come out of the first stage of the “New Aira” of 2020-2032. Thus, one must find ways to anticipate and then embrace the concept of change in the hope that, eventually, it will lead to stability and allow for success and security based on well-thought-out planning.

Understanding the unfolding taking place in the macrocosm (geocosmics) can be very valuable. That is, all the outer planets in the solar system are changing signs from late 2024 through early 2026, something that hasn’t happened in 300 years and, before that, another 300 years. Our current world leaders – and those to come in the next 1-2 years – are agents of that change, whether due to their direct decision-making or reactions to those decisions that cause the pendulum to keep swinging back and forth until it finds its sweet spot of balance. Right now, that sweet spot seems far away as the pendulum swings back and forth at the extremes in 2025-2026 (“Aries Vortex”). In turn, equity markets are apt to fluctuate wildly, with more than one 10% or greater selloff, which is something that hasn’t happened since the last quarter of 2022. We will watch for one coming up shortly.