(18 October 2026) Stocks declined last week as inflation pressures and the prospect of additional interest rate hikes raised doubts about the economic viability of the AI build-out.  The tech-heavy NASDAQ slumped 5% while the S&P 500 fell 2%.  Interestingly, the broader indexes actually rose modestly on the week as investors rotated out of the AI trade. Is this the start of a larger pullback?  It's quite possible since the bullish alignments are on the wane while the bearish alignments continue to intensify  We had noted the likelihood of some market weakness around the time of the 135-degree Jupiter-Saturn alignment on Oct 31.  This negative influence was more likely to prevail since the bullish impact of other alignments such as the heliocentric progressed Mercury-Venus trine essentially ended in early to mid-October. The chart below is a snapshot of all of the current alignments we are monitoring.  Each line represents the relative market impact of an alignment based on historical backtesting.  The lines track cumulative price changes across various intervals using an adjusted mean, i.e. the midpoint between the mean and median....