The election year season is officially underway in the United States, with the completion of the Democratic National Convention last week. And by the end of this coming week, the world will begin to undergo one of the potentially most dangerous geocosmic time bands of this year. The correspondence to major reversals of trends, and very large price swings in many financial markets, will be extremely high during this time frame that extends from August 6-September 28.

The first cluster of geocosmic signatures within this extended period will take place August 6-18. There will be six important signatures present, and three of these are Level 1 (strongest) types. In fact, two Level 1 signatures are present on the very first date, August 6. They are Jupiter in waning square to Pluto, and the Sun in opposition to Neptune. The first of these is a long-term geocosmic aspect, with a 13-year periodicity. The last time it occurred was July 16, 1991, and the outstanding event of that time was the kidnapping of Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Stock markets took a dive upon that news, forming a 50-week cycle low a month later. But for the two months after that, they rallied sharply.

Jupiter and Pluto can, of course, correspond to something like a political kidnapping. But it can also correspond to a multitude of other possibilities. Jupiter can represent the principle of carelessness or exaggeration, or “over reaching” one’s limits, when forming an aspect like a square. In terms of financial markets, it usually corresponds to large price swings. Pluto can represent the principles of debt, or the threat of danger to human lives, either through events of nature (i.e. fires, volcano eruptions) or man-induced obsessions (i.e. terrorist attacks, explosions). This is one reason why I think this begins a potentially dangerous period. Terrorist threats could be abundant. Explosions could be frequent. And in terms of nature, fires could be rampant, caused by carelessness or intent to destroy. It is perhaps a “crazy” time, when some people do crazy things that endanger other people. Jupiter is also religion, and Pluto is obsession or fanaticism, so it is possible that we could see religious zealotry turning into threats and destruction.

The waning square aspect is the last “hard’ aspect of a planetary cycle (fourth harmonic). Any harmonic tends to relate to the principles that were present at the time that the cycle began, which is represented by the conjunction. This particular Jupiter-Pluto cycle began with the conjunction on December 2, 1994. Students of market history might remember that as the period of the Orange County Municipal Bond default. The market’s confidence was badly shaken. But here we see another part of the Pluto principle at work, namely debt. So we have to be concerned about the possibility of banking or credit crisis somewhere in the world, within a couple weeks of August 6, since that was the principle present at the start of this particular cycle. I wonder if it means the end of the low interest-rates market environment that we have enjoyed for so many years? Or does it mean that this starts a period in which the escalating federal deficit becomes a serious area of concern, just like it was in the prior Jupiter-Pluto cycle (1981-1994)? Waning squares symbolize the realization that a cycle is ending of the nature of these planetary principles tat were present when it began, and a new cycle is about to begin (2004-2007).

In terms of U.S. stock markets, the Jupiter-Pluto waning square has an 80% correspondence to primary or greater cycles within an orb of 9 trading days. It has a C/S (combination of Consistency and Strength) value of 9.60, as defined in “The Ultimate Book on Stock market Timing, Volume 2: Geocosmic Correlations to Investment Cycles”. A value of 10.00 is the maximum rating, indicating a primary or greater cycle has happen in every instance historically.

The other Level 1 signature on August 6 is the Sun in opposition to Neptune. This has a C/S value of 9.57, which is also extremely strong. It has a 74% correlation to primary or greater cycle types within an orb of 13 trading days. A day later, August 7, Venus will transit into Pisces, an ingress that usually equates to a strong reversal in currency markets. And on August 9, Mercury will begin its three-week retrograde motion. It doesn’t look like an easy trading environment coming up. In fact, it looks like a time of great confusion, misinformation, rumors, false allegations, and uncertainty. It sounds like politics.

Many of the world stock markets turned up sharply by late last week, from cycle lows that formed early in the week. In Europe, the DAX fell to a new cycle low at 3749 on Monday, July 26. But by Friday, prices were already back up to 3895, closing only a few points below there. The FTSE of England did the same, with a new cycle low of 4283 on Monday, and a close of 4419, just a point off the weekly high intraday on Friday. The AEX of Netherlands bottomed at 320.70 on July 26, and closed the week at 330.70, with a daily high at 330.80. In Switzerland, the Swiss stock index bottomed at 5415 on July 20, then re-tested it at 5444 on July 27. It closed near the weekly highs of 5556. It was interesting to note that in each case, the bottom occurred on Monday or Tuesday, as the U.S. Democratic National Convention began. And the biggest surge upwards was on Friday, following the announcement and acceptance speech of challenger John Kerry. Perhaps Kerry is right in his claim that many of the leaders and people in Europe prefer him to be the next President of the United States.

The market pattern was not the same, however, in other parts of the world, which might prefer George Bush. In Japan, the Nikkei continued lower and lower until Thursday. But then it caught fire and rallied into the close on Friday, right at the high for the week. The Nikkei looks strong, as do the European indices, for this coming week. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng was down right from the beginning of the week, reaching its weekly low of 12,085 on Friday. The Australian All Ordinaries was a little more like Europe, bottoming on Monday at 3489, and rallying slightly to close the week at 3512.

In South America, the Argentina Merval Index formed a cycle high at 981.16 on July 22. But then it fell back to 927.79 on July 27. It recovered only slightly to close the week at 954.93. It does not look as strong as the European markets for this coming week.

Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ Composite formed a probable half-primary cycle trough last Monday, and then rallied nicely into Friday. The DJIA bottomed at 9913.90, well above its 9852 low of the 50-week cycle posted on May 12, around the time Venus turned retrograde. But the Composite took out the lows of May 12 and even of March and last October, when it fell to 1829 on July 26. The fact that the DJIA did not make a new multi-month low, and the Composite did, then both rallied, means we have a case of Intermarket bullish divergence. Perhaps this technical pattern will hold the markets up for a little while longer. The momentum indicators suggest that prices will trade higher this coming week. But then we begin the critical reversal zone of August 6-18. Stay tuned.

For those who are interested, there are still a few copies left of the second printing of the Forecasts for 2004 book available. They have now been discounted $10.00, TO $30.00, as of this month, while the last box of supplies last. The year is half over, but there are still many critical reversal dates left, which are described in this book. Those given so far have been highly accurate, as they are every year. For more information, please go to our website at www.mmacycles.com.

Disclaimer and statement of purpose: The purpose of this column is not to predict the future movement of various financial markets. However, that is the purpose of the MMA (Merriman Market Analyst) subscription services. This column is not a subscription service. It is a free service, except in those cases where a fee may be assessed to cover the cost of translating this column from English into a non-English language. This weekly report is written with the intent to educate the reader on the relationship between astrological factors and collective human activities as they are happening. In this regard, this report will oftentimes report what happened in various stock and financial markets throughout the world in the past week, and discuss that movement in light of the geocosmic signatures that were in effect. It will then identify the geocosmic factors that will be in effect in the next week, or even month, or even years, and the author’s understanding of how these signatures will likely affect human activity in the times to come. The author (Merriman) will do this from a perspective of a cycle’s analyst looking at the military, political, economic, and even financial markets of the world. It is possible that some forecasts will be made based on these factors. However, the primary goal is to both educate and alert the reader as to the psychological climate we are in, from an astrological perspective. The hope is that it will help the reader understand these psychological dynamics that underlie (or coincide with) the news events and hence financial markets of the day.

No guarantee as to the accuracy of this report is being made here. Any decisions in financial markets are solely the responsibility of the reader, and neither the author nor the publishers assume any responsibility at all for those individual decisions. Reader should understand that futures and options trading are considered high risk.