2019 Forecast Addendum

Here's a couple of astro charts to zoom in a little on some of the aspects that we'll see this year.

First is January the 14th. I already mentioned this date as a likely low for a couple of reasons and the chart only adds to that argument. On that day the moon will square Saturn, Pluto and the Sun as well as conjuncting Uranus to make a very impressive T square. This is not the chart for a mid January high.

Next is the 21st of January. The T square is still there since the Node, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto are all slow moving 'planets', however what's interesting here is that with the full moon occurring so close to the node there is bound to be a lunar eclipse that can quite possibly act as an intensifier for all of the other aspects. I'm thinking out aloud a bit with this one because I don't know enough about eclipses as yet however I do know that they often coincide with steep declines.

New Moon on the 6th of March. This is a setup for, but not a guarantee of, a minor panic.

Chart for April the 6th. I mentioned the 5th of April in my forecast due to the Node Pluto opposition. Looking at the entire chart however shows a bunch of squares going on.

Chart for April the 23rd. Sun conjunct Uranus with the moon at 135... Looks like a down day.

Chart for the 3rd of May. I mentioned the 1st of May as a serious negative due to the Node Saturn opposition. Look at everything else adding to it though, a whole bunch of T squares going on.

Chart for the 2nd of July. Again I have already mentioned the 4th of July as a major negative aspect, but the 2nd will be a solar eclipse and a possible intensifier.

Chart for the 1st of August. This is another setup for a possible panic.

Chart for the 28th of October. Again another setup for a panic.

Chart for the 26th of December. This is another solar eclipse chart, however this one is positive and suggests a rally into the end of the year, at least for a day or two!

2019 Forecast

Ok I'll try to keep this brief.

Firstly the big picture and important cycles, then the conclusions.

1. Fundamentals - Too High.
Putting cycles aside for a moment... Are markets relatively high, low, or somewhere in between? This is the easiest question of all to answer! Share market valuations have reached nose bleed levels and are still overvalued, even with the 20% declines that have been witnessed thus far.

2. Lunar Node Cycle - Down
The Lunar Node transited into Cancer on the 7th of November last year, marking the end of the 'high' part of the cycle and a gradual transition back to 'low' prices for the next 9 years. This cycle will bring a lift when the Node transits through Gemini however the general trend will be down for all of 2019 and there will also be a bunch of transits that will add to the negative pressures later in the year.

3. Saturn Uranus Cycle - Down
2018 saw the end of a Saturn-Uranus trine, a very powerful positive aspect. To find similar examples simply count back in 45 year increments... 1973, 1928, etc. This aspect is probably still in some sort of orb but it is waning and has been since September the 10th. The next major aspect for this planetary pair is a square (hugely negative of course) that will occur in early 2021. (Again you can compare this with 1974, 1931, etc.)

4. Sunspot Cycle - Down
This cycle peaked quite a while ago and will not bottom until 2020 or 2021.

5. Jupiter Uranus Cycle - Mostly neutral with a high in December
This cycle will have three transits through 135 degrees in 2019. These transits have good probabilities for marking a short term turn in the markets but should not be particularly negative. There is also however a trine on the 16th of December that should offer 60 or 70% odds for marking a high (+/- 7 days).

6. Jupiter Saturn Cycle - Neutral
There will be three transits of 30 degrees this year. This is slightly positive but not much in the overall scheme of things.


So... Conclusions:

1. The overall forecast is for a bear market in 2019 that will continue the decline over the last 3 to 6 months of 2018 (depending on which index you want to look at).
2. January will see a couple of negative aspects on the 10th (Jup/Ura), 14th (Jup/Nept) and 30th (Sat/natal Sat) so in the short term I'm expecting a minor high on the 4th of January followed by a decline until the 14th. If this proves to be correct then any rally should be sold into as a mid Jan low is VERY unlikely to end the decline.
3. February should be generally down but with no major cycle aspects to time intermediate term lows or highs.
4. March will see Mercury drop into it's inferior conjunction on the 15th, possibly timing a short term low however the Lunar Node's negative transits will start hitting in early April so the effects will likely be seen in March as well.
5. In April Mercury will be on the upswing however Pluto and Saturn are nearly conjunct at the moment and will make multiple (negative) oppositions to the Node in April, May, July and September so... even though there is an aspect on the 5th of April I wouldn't want to count on there being much of an upswing after that date.
6. The first Node Saturn opposition will be on the 1st of May. This can potentially time some sort of a low however on this occasion the aspect is going to linger with two more touches yet to come in the future so more information would be needed before betting on a rally.
7. June has a couple of planetary aspects that can time a low, especially on the 7th and 17th. However there is always a stronger negative aspect in the near future so the best trades will still be on the short side.
8. The second Node Saturn opposition will transit on the 4th of July. The downswing of the Mercury cycle will also start to be felt and will bottom on the 21st. 
9. August is a quiet month for planetary transits. Mercury will be on the upswing but August falls in the more bearish half of the year and there will also be several negative transits to the United States natal chart on the 3rd, 15th and 20th.
10. September = more negatives. Are you getting used to this yet dear reader? Saturn square natal Saturn on the 17th, Jupiter square Neptune on the 22nd and Node opposition Saturn on the 28th (very bad). This is so negative that it actually has a chance to bring in the low for the year.
11. October = more negatives, but not as negative as September. There is a Jupiter Uranus turn date on the 14th and a Saturn square natal Saturn on the 21st. 
12. November has some negative cycles, but the trend may turn up for a couple of months. The New Moon at the end of October will set up the conditions for a possible panic and the 11th of November will be the last Mercury low cycle for the year. On this basis the 11th or 12th of November is probably the last chance for a low date in 2019 and should see some sort of a rally as the negative pressures start to wane.
13. The 16th of December will be a Jupiter Uranus trine. This is nearly always a high so with everything else considered I'm expecting a rally up into this date, give or take 7 days. From there it will be time to reassess but 2019 will not end the bear market in my opinion.

2018 Forecast Review

On the 14th of May this year I posted my forecast for the rest of the year and a brief overview of 2019.

Here is what I said in that forecast:

Here is how it looks on the SPX.

Not too bad overall. The move up into mid June proved to be correct. Then a low in late June was on the early end of the forecast range. The mid August to early Sept high forecast proved to be a little bit premature, however the suggestion to load up on shorts on the 2nd of October was almost perfect. The other suggested date for shorts was the 29th of October and while it was not a good day for selling it did prove to time a very tradeable turn in the market. The call for a move down into early December proved to be correct but was actually not bearish enough.

Here is the same forecast applied to the DAX.

As you can see the SPX has been a more bullish index in relative terms most of the time, but not all of the time. The DAX moved sideways over to a mid June slightly lower high on the 15th of June and has been in an overall downtrend since then. The early June low is also present on the DAX and it made a high in mid August, in the middle of the forecast time window. The 2nd of October also proved to be a very good date for establishing short positions and the market then moved with a clear trend into early December and beyond.

Lastly it is worth also looking at the XAO.

From mid May when the forecast was made the All Ords was also higher into mid June, making a short term high on the 21st. The forecast low from late June to late July was a bit of a fizzer but the market did move higher and made a bull market high in the middle of the August/September time window that was forecast. From there the market has moved down consistently although the suggestion to place shorts on the 2nd of October was off by a day or two if compared to the other indicies.

Overall I think it's a solid 7 or 8 out of 10 for the forecast. (The best thing however has been that the expectation for a major high around August or September has kept me on the right side of the market for most of the subsequent decline.)

Best wishes for 2019!

SPX Review

I'm more than a little bit overdue for a post on the current status of the SP500. In my next post I will review my 2018 astro forecast and do a new forecast for 2019 however for now I will limit the analysis price structure, breadth and sentiment.

Price Structure:

There are a couple of things to consider here. The first chart below is a couple of days old now but it shows clear indications of both a momentum reversal as well as an acceleration down.

The next chart shows the point value of all of the major retracements in the market during the past 9 years. As you can see the current drop has exceeded every other retracement by a significant margin and again indicates that the trend has reversed. I have also highlighted the huge RSI and MACD momentum divergence at the recent high.

The two charts above paint a very clear and bearish picture that is also consistent with the astro forecast for an end to the bull market and a new 9.3 year bear market. However markets don't move in a straight line so for the shorter term perspective (which is also important) it's worth paying close attention to breadth and sentiment indicators for any warnings or useful information.


Market Breadth:

First up is a plain vanilla chart of the SPX with the NYMO, NYSI and BPNYA indicators. There are no divergences in play but the indicators may be at the low end of their range so more perspective is needed.

Next is the same chart but extended out to show a 5 year period. As you can see there is some correlation between the current readings of these indicators various market lows over the past 5 years, especially in January/February of 2016. Indicators don't necessarily work the same in bear markets as they do in bull markets and it is therefore also important to check the performance of these indicators in a bear as well.

First is the NYMO in 2008. I've marked two occasions where the NYMO exceeded the current reading and yet the market continued to fall. If you look closely at the data there are quite a few readings that are as low or at least comparable to the current reading (-100). Sometimes those readings marked the end of a decline (even if only temporarily) and sometimes they didn't. As a result there doesn't seem to be a threshold that can be used to both mark extremes and provide a useful number of signals.

Next is the NYSI in 2008. This indicator interests me mostly for the divergence signals but as you can see below the 2008 bear market produced very little in the way of useful divergence signals until almost the end of the bear market.

Next is the BPNYA in 2008. The current reading is 23% so I've marked horizontal lines at 20% and 30%. As you can see readings at this level in 2008 were not particularly uncommon and did include some lows if you look at a range, however a reading below 30 was often far too early to assist with bottom picking.

Next I would like to look at the NYAD ema20, because it shows things that other indicators just can't show. First is the current chart with the SPX. Again I like this indicator mostly for divergence signals but extremes can also be useful. At the moment the reading is -810

A check on this indicator in a bear market is also necessary. As you can see below it takes quite a lot for the indicator to get down to this level. I've marked three occasions where it was this low but where it was simply too early as a timing signal.

The last breadth chart to look at is the SPX new highs/new lows. Not surprisingly it is somewhat similar to the BPNYA chart and suggests that the current situation is similar to early 2016. More perspective is needed but unfortunately I don't have easy access to that data and given that there's only so many ways that you can crunch the same numbers I don't think that it would add any new information to the analysis here.

Sentiment:

The first chart is the RYDEX asset allocations. The trend does appear to have changed, downwards, but the indicator is in the middle of it's range and is not even close to indicating a low.

Next is the raw AAII sentiment data. Not enough bulls and an oversupply of bears, if this is a bull market you should buy now.

The next chart shows AAII as a ratio and shows it as perhaps at the low end of it's range.

Looking at the AAII data (as a ratio) in 2008 is not so clear however. As with the breadth extremes in the charts above you will find that an extreme reading can very easily be close to a low in time but not in price.

Conclusion:

1. The price structure clearly indicates that the bull market has ended AND that we can't expect some lazy 12 months of distribution before the bear market starts trending down in earnest. The bear market has started and it will pay to set up short positions sooner rather than later. This actually makes some sense given that the 2018 high has the signs of a bubble market top in terms of trajectory and valuations. It should not be unexpected then to assume that the bear market which follows will bring a fast, savage and immediate drop rather than a slow grind down to lower prices.

2. The market breadth indicators are showing levels that indicate the market is close to a low in terms of time, but not necessarily in terms of price.

3. The market sentiment indicators are telling the same story as the breadth indicators.

4. The current situation is extreme and yet anything is possible (especially given the astro forecast for next week). The most bullish scenerio is that the market rallies around 200 points before collapsing and the most bearish scenario is that the SPX will crash 500 to 1000 points next week. Anything in between is of course also possible. One thing that is almost certain however is that some huge downside is coming and the question is how to trade the markets based on that assumption.