(15 October 2018) Stocks tumbled across the world last week on worries that rising interest rates would undermine economic growth.  US stocks fell 5% on the week as the Dow and the S&P 500 traded below the all-important 200-day moving average.  President Donald Trump saw fit to lay blame for the decline on the Fed which he described as "loco" (i.e. crazy) for raising rates too quickly.  One thing’s for sure in this White House is that when something bad happens, it’s never Trump’s fault.  This is doubly true now that Trump and the GOP are facing the likelihood of loss of the House and possibly even the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections.  For the pro-business Trump, he desperately needs stock prices to be as high as possible in order to justify his claim that his policies are working and America is once again "winning".

The decline in the stocks market is in keeping with our expectations of the bearish effect of the Venus retrograde cycle.  As I noted in last week’s post, the once-every-18-month Venus retrograde cycle is more often correlated with declines, especially if the market has been rallying beforehand.  Venus turned retrograde on Friday, October 5 and will continue its apparent backward journey through the sky until November 16. 

As I suggested last week, the entire cycle isn’t always negative from start to finish.  Instead, it should be seen as a 40-day period when some kind of meaningful decline is more likely to occur, even if stocks may sometimes recover before the end of the retrograde cycle.  In that sense, the Venus Rx cycle has already fulfilled its bearish potential already, regardless if it rebounds or not by mid-November.

While US markets are modestly lower at the time of writing (Monday mid-morning), this week stocks could see a brief rebound.  Monday’s Mercury-Venus conjunction looks somewhat positive although the conjunction with the Mars node reduces the probability of gains from high to moderate.  The late week Mercury-Mars square aspect looks clearly more negative, however, so that increases the likelihood that the rebound may fail as early as Wednesday or perhaps Thursday.  Friday’s Sun-Moon-Jupiter looks more positive, however, especially if there has been some more selling in the days prior.

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