(8 November 2026) Stocks fell sharply last week after the Democrat sweep of the midterm elections threatened to upset the AI-driven economic growth model. Tech stocks were hit the hardest with the NASDAQ losing -5% and the S&P 500 down almost -3%. The more broadly-based NYSE Composite Index fell by -1.4%.
This decline was unexpected given the improving statistics of the alignments we are tracking. As always, there are a number of active alignments — both bullish and bearish — that we must consider for our assessment of the current market conditions. The inability to recognize the negative potential of last week’s sell-off highlights the problem of synthesis: how to combine disparate influences into a summary estimation of probability? Up to now, I have been relying on a simple additive process in which probabilities are determined through backtesting market performance of different planetary alignments. While it is useful for identifying trends, it may not be sensitive enough to account for all short-term fluctuations.
My approach to backtesting has focused upon mean and median price changes over time and data distribution (i.e. how often does a given alignment correlate with a specific outcome) both of which factor into statistical significance. This probabilistic approach can never provide certainty, but can only analyze past alignments and look for any relevant price patterns. In this way, statistical analysis attempts to quantify the inherent uncertainty of future outcomes.
No doubt debates will continue about the astrological explanation for Thursday’s sell-off. The transit of Mars across the point of the last solar eclipse on August 12 is definitely plausible and deserves further analysis. Are Mars transits to solar eclipse points always bearish for financial markets? This could be a worthy subject for a future analysis and is definitely going to be on my to-do list. Also, there was a close heliocentric alignment of the Earth, Mars and Saturn on Thursday which could have been part of the souring of investor sentiment on AI. Mars and Saturn are natural malefics and could have combined to create a pessimistic and volatile mood in the markets…
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