(14 December 2025)  US stocks slipped last week as skeptical investors moved money out of the AI sector and into value stocks following Wednesday’s interest rate cut from the Fed.  Despite the decline, the major indexes remain within 1% of their all-time highs with the small cap Russell 2000 actually making a new high on Thursday.

We had been somewhat neutral about last week given the mix of influences.  The aftermath of the Jupiter-Saturn and Mercury-Venus alignments argued for a bullish bias and the run-up to this Sunday’s Mars-Neptune square also argued for more upside last week.   This default optimism was largely borne out by the positive market reaction to the Fed’s midweek rate cut.  Friday’s sell-off arrived a bit ahead of schedule as our backtest study of the Mars-Neptune combination suggested that declines were more likely to follow the alignment (i.e. after Dec 14).  Still, it was close enough to Sunday’s exact square for us to seriously consider the possibility that a more significant pullback may now be in the offing.

The NYSE chart: Mercury-Saturn progressed alignments

In the absence of any major new transit alignments this week, we turn our attention to the horoscope of the New York Stock Exchange, dated May 17, 1792 at 7:52 a.m. LMT.  This chart is a foundational natal chart which often reflects stock market fluctuations through the interplay of current transits with its original planetary positions.   This week I wanted to focus on this chart’s progressed positions, specifically the minor progressed positions since Mercury will form an exact 330-degree alignment with Saturn on Wednesday, Dec 17.

While secondary progressions are widely used in Western astrology, the minor progressed chart is less common.  Minor progressions are derived from the natal chart so that a lunar month (29 days) is equivalent to one year (365 days).  Thus, the NYSE minor progressed planetary positions for Dec 14, 2025 are actually the transit positions for Nov 7, 1809 based on the 1792 natal chart. In this way, minor progressions reveal another layer of influences that can impact the natal chart above and beyond the current transits.

Method

To better understand the possible market effects of this upcoming Mercury-Saturn 330-degree minor progressed alignment, I compiled a dataset of all previous Mercury-Saturn minor progressed alignments from 1980 until today.  Minor progressed alignments of Mercury and Saturn are quite rare, however, and occur on average once a year although this can change in progressed years in which Mercury is retrograde.  The number of 330-degree Mercury-Saturn alignments are even rarer as they occur once every 13 years or so.

The 330-degree aspect is potentially significant since it is one of the twelve essential aspects that are based on 30-degree multiples.  In astrology, these 30-degree multiple aspects (i.e. 30, 60, 90, 120..) are considered major aspects in which the planetary energies express and combine more fully.  In financial astrology, these 30-degree multiple aspects are believed to coincide with major market moves.

But given the relative rarity of the 330-degree Mercury-Saturn alignment, I was forced to expand my sample to include all aspects that were a multiple of 30-degrees.  Admittedly, this strategy may raise objections from some who make distinctions between hard aspects (90, 180, 270) and soft aspects (30, 60, 120).  There may well be important differences in the market reaction to those aspects, but there is nonetheless a plausible logic to grouping all Mercury-Saturn aspects in order to see if there is an overall effect.

Hypothesis

Mercury-Saturn aspects are generally believed to be bearish as Saturn’s natural malefic qualities tend to dominate Mercury’s more benefic nature.  In some cases, bearish effects may occur even with supposedly constructive aspects of 120-degrees.  For this reason, it is worth examining the overall effect of all Mercury-Saturn aspects.  Generalizing them to apply to next week’s 330-degree aspect may well be a bridge too far, but we can still consider the conclusions as long as we do it cautiously.

Based on these assumptions, we should expect to see some negative market correlations from previous minor progressed Mercury-Saturn alignments in the NYSE chart.

Results

The table shows the closing prices of the S&P 500 at various intervals before and after the Mercury-Saturn alignments from 1980 to 2025. Based on the relatively slow speed of minor progressions, a 5-day interval was chosen as the basis for comparison.  The first data point was 30 days before the exact alignment (“-30d”) with subsequent data points every five days.  The price at the exact alignment is “0d”, and the price 30 days after the alignment is “30d”.  By tracking prices before and after the alignment, we can get a clearer picture of when bearish reactions are more likely to occur — before, during or after the exact alignment.

The summary statistics table below analyzes the effects of this alignment at various intervals.  The first column shows the longest window of 60 days that begins 30 days before the alignment and ends 30 days after.  It posted an average of 0.79% with a median of 1.82% compared with an expected value of 1.51%.  The expected value is pro-rated from a 9.2% average annual return from 1980 to 2024.  While the average price change was well below the expected value, the median was a bit above. This skewing of the average reflected several outsized declines such as the Covid crash in 2020.  This result is therefore not bullish nor bearish and does not reach statistical significance for any result (p<0.05).

Other intervals show a slight bearish bias, however.  Most averages and T-scores are negative, although most medians are actually positive although still less than the expected results.  This divergence between average and median highlights the fairly modest bearish effect which produced no statistically significant results.  The only other thing that stands out is that the period after the exact alignment is usually more negative than the period before. Thus the second column (“-30d 0d”) has an average of 0.98% before the alignment but the third column (“0d 30d”) as an average of -0.17%.  This ‘bullish before/bearish after’ pattern is not as strongly replicated by the medians, however.

A more interesting picture emerges when we see the cumulative trend chart shown below.  Both average and medians are generally following the expected value line higher into the day of the alignment (0d) and perhaps a bit later. But both lines decline sharply after the 10d mark (i.e. 10 days after the exact alignment).  This would equate to December 27 with the current Mercury-Saturn alignment.  Partial recovery begins after 20 days and 25 days following the exact alignment.  Without statistical significance, however, it would be a mistake to place too much weight on this chart.  But it does suggest that any bearish effects are more likely to occur well after the date of the exact alignment.

Disaggregation: the 30- and 330-degree alignments only

In order to better duplicate the current situation in the NYSE chart, we can limit our analysis to 30 and 330 degree alignments only.  While the current Mercury-Saturn alignment is 330-degrees by standard counter-clockwise reckoning, it is not unreasonable include the 30 degree alignment with it.  In both alignments, Mercury is separated from Saturn by 30 degrees.  The only difference is Mercury at 330 degrees is approaching the end of its full synodic cycle with Saturn, while in the 30 degree alignment Mercury has only just begun its new synodic cycle after moving 30 degrees away from Saturn.

The resulting sample consists of only 9 cases and its summary statistics are shown below.  Despite the tiny sample size, we see one significant result in the “-20d 0d” column.  This interval posted an average decline of -1.95% and a median decline of -1.61% compared with a positive expected value of 0.50%.  While this result is confirmatory evidence for our bearish hypothesis, the waters are muddied somewhat since the negative result occurs before the exact alignment.  This is different from the aggregated sample which showed a negative bias after the exact alignment.

The more bearish result is reflected in the cumulative price trend chart below.  The relatively negative results are evident from well before the alignment and last until perhaps 15 days after the alignment.  Interestingly, the median was more bearish than the average.  But how much faith can we put in a sample of only 9 cases?  The fact that it closely approximates the current progressed alignments (30/330 degrees) means it may be more relevant than the aggregated sample.  And one interval actually did produce a statistically significant result (and came close in another “0d 30d” which suggested a bullish aftermath to the alignment).  But the results are not solid and are merely suggestive.

Conclusions

Overall, the bearish evidence for this pairing is quite patchy.  While the broad contours of our bearish ME-SA hypothesis find some support here, there isn’t really enough to make a firm conclusion.  The 30/330 alignments seem more bearish, but here again the evidence is thin, although still quite interesting since a couple of intervals produce statistically significant or near-significant results over just 9 cases.  But as a dedicated proponent of these kind of natal NYSE progressions, I must admit these results are a bit disappointing.

Implications for this week

While Wednesday’s Mercury-Saturn progressed alignment may only be slightly bearish in its influence, it is unclear just when its influence is likely to be felt.  In a 10- to 20-day window straddling the exact alignment as suggested by the 30/330 sub-sample, or the 25-day period following the alignment as suggested by the larger aggregated analysis of all alignments?  It’s an open question unfortunately.

But given our previous analysis of the Mars-Neptune square, there is a stronger case to be made for some downside this week.  Our study of the Mars-Neptune square provided some fairly strong evidence for market weakness in the days following the exact square (Dec 14).  The bearish effects of the progressed Mercury-Saturn alignment would seem to support that notion, although they need not manifest at the same time.  In light of the fact that stocks haven’t really declined much at all in the past week, any bearish manifestation from the Mercury-Saturn alignment would appear to be still awaiting its catalyst to release its pessimistic payload.

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Disclaimer:  Not intended as investment advice.  For educational purposes only