(19 July 2026)  US stocks were mostly lower last week as the semi-conductor sell-off intensified on worries about AI-spending and profitability.  While the NASDAQ fell by 4% on the week, the rest of the market experienced only a modest decline.   Despite the 6-week pullback in high-flying technology shares, the NYSE Composite is still less than 1% from its July 6 all-time high. The decline was a bit unexpected given the apparent bullish signature of the rare Jupiter-centered alignment, in addition to other ongoing influences.  The so-called Barbault basket in which Jupiter aligns with Uranus, Neptune and Pluto on July 21 echoed similar alignments in 1911 and 1966.  This very limited data (n=2) hinted at a bullish market bias from this alignment, although such a small dataset precluded any normal statistical assessment of probabilities. One of the components of this multi-planet Jupiter alignment was the 60-degree Jupiter-Uranus sextile.  Our backtest of 13 previous cases suggested that it was bullish during its 60-day test period. The updated cumulative trend chart actually shows the current alignment is tracking fairly well to the mean...