(25 October 2026) Markets remained volatile last week as AI skepticism continued to weigh on the megatech stocks.  With oil prices again pushing above $100 on a possible restarting of the Iran war, the NASDAQ and S&P 500 finished modestly lower while the broadly-based NYSE Composite and Russell 2000 posted gains. So far, stocks appear to be tracking the negative influence of several alignments we highlighted last week.  The SPX is trending below the bearish price pattern for the concurrent retrograde periods of Mercury and Venus (Oct 24-Nov 13) while the DJIA is barely above the long term benchmark.   Although bearish, the simultaneous Mercury and Venus...