Mercury, Saturn, and market optimism

Astrology is just a view, a way of looking at the world. You can take it or leave it, like economic forecasts and technical analysis.

Anyway, what I want to look at is the planet Mercury. It is the planet of communications and intelligence, and on Sunday November 5 2017 it went into Sagittarius, where it stays until Wednesday January 11 2018. In fact, as I write, it has just changed signs, from Sagittarius to Capricorn.

Mercury doesn't work very well in Sagittarius. It's a time of fantasy and over-ambition, not to mention crazy speculation. And I think this fits very well with what has been happening to cryptocurrencies. One worthless joke-coin after another has been been pumped, and I'm sure that fortunes have been made - but not yet lost - since early November.

However the sign after Sagittarius is Capricorn. It is a more sombre and serious sign, particularly now, when the planet Saturn occupies this sign. Indeed, we got a taste of things to come, on December 21, the day of the Winter Solstice, when the Sun moved from Sagittarius to Capricorn, simultaneously making a conjunction to Saturn. There was a flash crash in the cryptos, as reality made a half-hearted attempt to show its face.

But now Mercury is out of Sagittarius, everything has changed. The speculative mania will be severely challenged, particularly as Mercury makes a conjunction to Saturn on Saturday 13 January. So how do we deal with the situation?

My view is that one should stay out of cryptos until at least January 15. The impact of the Mercury sign-change and the conjunction to Saturn could be a passing phase, and by late January things might get back to their crazy normal. But it could be the start of a larger correction. It's tempting to think that the Mercury-Saturn conjunction will influence the wider markets, in particular the stock markets, but so far they have been impervious to everything that has been thrown at them, celestial or otherwise.