Feb 28: Mercury retrograde conjunct Venus

(22 February 2026)  US stocks ended the week higher as markets rallied after Friday’s Supreme Court decision struck down Trump’s tariff policy. Even with the prospect of an imminent US attack on Iran, stocks are hovering just below their recent highs.

The bullish outcome was not hugely surprising given the positive influence of the recent Saturn ingress into Aries, the conjunction of Mercury and the North Lunar Node, and the approaching Saturn-Neptune conjunction.  Our backtest of these three alignments showed a bullish bias, albeit with limited confidence.  At the same time, the presence of some bearish influences made a bullish outcome far from certain last week given the Jupiter-105-Saturn alignment and the Mercury Rx-Venus conjunction.

The potentially negative influence of these two alignment were discussed in last Wednesday’s post.  Our study of the “hidden” Jupiter-Saturn alignment of 105 degrees (exact Feb 19) showed it has a bearish bias, especially during its second of three total transits in its alignment.  Due to the retrograde motions of both planets, Jupiter-Saturn alignments typically have three exact alignments in each transit series.  Our research suggests that the second of these alignments is more bearish than the other two.  However, we should quickly add that none of the intervals tested reached statistical significance, in large part due to the small sample size (n=6).  The updated cumulative trend chart is found below…

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