(8 February 2026) After a very volatile week, US stocks rebounded strongly on Friday although the indexes ended mixed. The tech-heavy NASDAQ was still down sharply but small caps and non-tech blue chips were generally higher, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing above 50,000 for the first time.
The volatility was not unexpected as I had noted several potential bearish influences including the Mars-Pluto conjunction and the Sun-Venus-Saturn alignment. Although both of these alignments occurred in January, our backtesting demonstrated that both would likely have lingering statistically significant negative influences which could last into early February. The ongoing bullish influence of the Jan 9 Sun-Mars-Venus conjunction and the approaching Saturn ingress into tropical Aries may well act to support the market a while longer.
We can track the progress of these alignments in the cumulative trend charts below. The aftermath of the current Mars-Pluto conjunction (the red line) is reverting to its longer term average and median. Typically, this pairing correlates with some negative returns in the days following its exact conjunction. The period 6 days after the conjunction has the greatest bearish influence although the divergence between the average and the median make this chart harder to interpret. Further downside is possible from this influence, but by no means guaranteed…
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