Comment

Stocks held up rather well in the face of growing nervousness surrounding the global financial recovery and closed down only slightly last weekweek. After Tuesday’s relative strength, markets turned mostly cautious as the Nifty closed below 5000 at 4958 while the Sensex finished at 16,693.

While the absence of any further advance above 5000 offered some solace, I had expected more in the way of downside movement given the raft of apparent negative planetary energy.

The early week bullishness coincided unexpectedly with Mercury’s conjunction with Saturn, although Wednesday did see some erosion of prices. I had also anticipated some kind of late week strength on the minor aspect of Sun and Jupiter but that only manifested in Thursday’s marginal gain, although we did see a significant intraday rise from the gap down open.

In the wake of the Saturn-Uranus aspect, we remain in a state of empirical uncertainty since the market has neither made new highs, which would falsify our call for a pullback, nor has it significantly reversed direction, which would confirm it.

With Monday’s holiday closure, this week will see more bearish challenges for stocks as Mercury ends its retrograde cycle in close aspect to Mars after the close of Tuesday’s trading session.

While Mercury’s current retrograde cycle has seen the market rise through its period of backward motion, the Mars influence often adds another layer of tension to Mercury. Readers may recall that the dip in prices at the end of August and beginning of September coincided with another exact Mercury-Mars aspect. And given Mercury’s close proximity to Saturn — just 5 degrees away — the combination of all three influences may make investors skittish and more inclined to sell, especially earlier in the week.

Of course, these factors may be not sufficient to take prices lower on an individual basis as their presumed influence is only probabilistic.Together, however, they may be more efficient expressions of negative sentiment. Some positive relief is possible by late Thursday or early Friday as the Moon transits Aquarius and comes under the benefic influence of Venus. We should note, however, that the fleetingness of this favourable influence may not be enough to make a lasting dent in the formidable wall of negative energy.

In the light of this week’s Mercury-Mars aspect and the strengthening of Rahu’s influence on Saturn in October, caution is still the watchword. Markets are more likely to correct than move higher, with a substantial move down still very much on cards.

As expected, crude oil declined sharply last week on growing inventories and fears of a slow recovery as it closed at $66 on the Futures contract. As we suggested in last week’s column, crude broke through support at $68 on Thursday and could not even fulfill our modest expectations as it failed to climb back to $70 by week’s end. This week looks equally bearish as Mercury will end its retrograde cycle in close quarters with Saturn.

There is a genuine chance of a significant breakdown towards $60 here. Gold tumbled below $1000 last week on dollar strength and lowered inflation fears. This bearish outcome was in keeping with our forecast as the Sun’s transit deeper into Virgo weakened bullion’s planetary significator.

The downward trend is unlikely to change this week as the Sun will persist in its currently afflicted condition. As noted last week, however, some of gold’s decline will be due to dollar strength so depreciation may be more muted in rupee terms.

The writer is a neo-Vedic astrologer specialising in predictive astrology