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Can Planets Affect Your Portfolio?

For some investors, astrologers who study the natal charts of companies and entire countries are as good a stock forecaster as technical and fundamental analysis. Will the stars align for the U.S. economy in 2012?

Investments are a bet on the future. Could that future be foretold through complex readings of our solar system? And if it can, what do the stars say about the economy in 2012?

J.P. Morgan once famously said that millionaires don’t need astrologers, but billionaires do. Are we in charge of the economic matters on earth, or are invisible forces “out there” shaping the economic and social outcomes of individual nations?

J.P. Morgan thought there was more to the market than timing, and he used astrologers to help guide him in that timing in his businesses and investments. He’s not alone.

Raymond Merriman has been at this for more than 30 years. His Michigan based company, MMA Cycles has over 7,000 subscribers, many of them from well-known investment banks and broker-dealers. They’re portfolio managers, certified financial planners and heads of trading firms primarily from New York, Chicago, Tokyo to Zurich. Some know a thing or two about astrology. Others are looking for a little extra-terrestrial advice.

“They come for my analysis on various markets based on planetary cycles, pattern recognition and geocosmic market turning points,” he said. “Most of them all understand the market, but they don’t have this kind of edge on market timing.”

Analysts like Merriman use complex planetary charts to decipher where an economy, or investment, is heading. It’s approach, like fundamental or technical analysis, can be either top down — a big picture look at the whole economy — or bottom up — which examines an individual company.

To do that kind of research, analysts need the company or country’s birth date in order to see where the planets were traveling through the solar system, and through which constellations, at the time. The people who do this kind of work call themselves astrological economists or financial astrologers. The work they do is not comparable to the garden variety horoscope.

“Astrological economics is not fortune cookie baloney,” said Robert Gover, author of the book Time & Money: The Economy and the Planets. “We go back deep into history to see where the planets were in the sky at the time of certain events. Years ago you had to come up with star charts and calculate their radiuses by using complex math. Now we have computer programs that can chart that out for us. What you see over time is that there is alot of movement up there in the solar system, and that movement can affect individual lives as much as it can effect nations.”

In January 2009, Grace Morris told subscribers to her Astro Economics Stock Market Newsletter that the S&P 500 index would bottom out around Mar. 9, 2009. It reached an intraday low of 666 points on March 6.  Morris wrote in the first part of 2010 that the market would bottom around July 13 and start moving up by Nov. 2010. She was right. The U.S. stock market was one of the best performing in early 2011, and despite a lackluster year, the S&P 500 actually settled higher. It performed better than European stock markets, and better than all of the stock markets in Brazil, Russia, India and China.



People are wary of 2012. It’s a supernatural year, not only because of the popular mythology surrounding the Mayan calendar and the I-Ching. It is also an election year, so political fighting in Washington is expected to keep the U.S. in gridlock.

“This is a crossroads year,” Morris said. “It’s not the end of the world for the U.S. economy and the planets tell us that it’s going to be good first half for U.S. stocks.”

The stars, however, are not aligning for Europe.  The euro was born on Jan. 1, 1999 at midnight in Frankfurt, Germany. Saturn is moving into the constellation Libra and that will be challenging for the euro’s Sun, Mars, Saturn and Venus position. It’s not easy for a layman to understand. From an economic standpoint, the planetary reading for the euro means the period from Sept 2103 through 2014 will be as bad or worse as the eurozone is now, according to Morris’s reading of the stars.

“If the euro survives 2014, it will come out stronger than ever,” she said.

As 2012 progresses, the planets are in constant flux.  Pluto is slowly moving through the constellation Capricorn, which is exactly where Pluto was during the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. Prior to that, the last time Pluto was in Capricorn, the Spanish came to the Americas. For the native tribes, it was an alien invasion.  Pluto entered Capricorn most recently in 2008. It’s arrival in that constellation happens roughly four times every 248 years as it orbits the sun, and its affects last anywhere from 12 to 26 years. This one lasts until 2024.

Although there is some debate within the astrological economist community as to when the U.S. was actually born, the July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, PA chart is the one most often used. 

Yet, Pluto in Capricorn could also be a good thing, said Gover. “We broke away from the British then and became the superpower we are today. One thing is certain, great change is coming. Uranus is flying through Aires on the opposite side of the U.S. natal chart position of where Saturn was on July 4, 1776. Pluto is in Capricorn moving opposite U.S. natal position of the Sun, which is in Cancer. All of this makes a pattern like an X in a box. Most astrologers call this the grand cross and it is the most difficult pattern,” Gover said.
Financial astrologers have their own language. Knowing where the planets are in the night sky, and what that means, is as close to planetary insider information as one can get. The movement of the stars through the solar system, according to Merriman, suggests a period of great social and political unrest in the U.S..

“The U.S. natal chart told us that this period would begin with a financial crisis, and it did, and that crisis would last between 2008 to 2015, maybe as long as 2020. The period we are in now is a lot like the star charts of 1963 to 1969 and 1929 to 1934, and even more so 1873 to 1878. It indicates that the very structure of government, the role of presidency, is vulnerable to demands for change,” he said.

There are some things the planets cannot predict. Human behavior is constantly changing. There are lots of variables at play. The U.S. presidency four years ago was indeed ripe for change. An Illinois Senator named Barack Obama ran on that promise.  At the 2008 United Astrology Conference (UAC) with 2000 people attending, a panel of 8 astrologers all agreed he would win the 2008 election. Another election panel is scheduled for the May 2012 UAC in New Orleans. Meanwhile, the country is still hoping for change.
Last year, Pluto and Uranus were in a hard angle to Venus and Jupiter, two important planets in the U.S. natal chart. This position is often referred to as a bankruptcy position. The U.S. credit rating was downgraded on Aug. 5, 2011. The planets are still in those positions on the chart.  Looking at the economy through a telescope suggests that the problems are not over. Only now, they are shifting to political leaders as Pluto and Uranus, known for turmoil, move to form a hard angle against the U.S. Sun, the presidential birth chart, and Saturn, the government’s birth chart.

“With Saturn moving into Scorpio later this year as Pluto stays in Capricorn, it will be a time of reckoning and not only for the U.S., but for Japan and also Europe,” warned Merriman.  “Pluto represents debt and Capricorn and Saturn represent accountability. You experience the consequences of your actions in regards to debt when the planets are in that position. The best case scenario is a sobering one where all sides agree it will be a five to 8 year process to fix these major economies. The worst case scenario is that spending continues to exceed revenue, and the credit worthiness of any of these nations is downgraded yet again. Europe and the U.S. are both vulnerable to this potential reality, and it is coming soon, before 2014.”

This month, Morgan Stanley’s head of European equity strategy, Graham Secker, warned that the recent rise in the U.S. stock market won’t last.  The planets might agree. For people like Merriman, Gover and Morris, the truth is definitely “out there”.