The Presidential debates of 2004 are over, and by all accounts, President George Bush gave his best accounting at the final one last Thursday evening. Going into the debate, on October 12-13, the Zogby poll has Kerry and Bush tied at 45% each, and the Gallop poll had Kerry ahead 49 to 48%. But on Friday, the day after the debate, the Zogby poll showed George Bush jumped to a 4 point lead, 48 to 44%, over John Kerry. In sympathy, the U.S. stock market rose on Friday after taking a beating into Thursday.

It seems that we have two market indicators as to who will win the election. According to a report in one of the leading business magazines, the incumbent loses whenever oil prices soar into an election. And oil prices are indeed soaring now, reaching new all-time highs close to $55.00/barrel in the futures market. And of course, our own “Pre-Presidential Election Year” cycles indicator shows that there is usually a stock market trough between October and March preceding the election. If that low is then taken out, the incumbent usually (but not always) loses. Well there was a low in March, and it was taken out in May, and then that low was taken out in August, which favors the challenger defeating the incumbent. If, prior to the election, the market can then rally to take out the high between those two lows, it may negate this indicator. That happened in 1984, when President Reagan was re-elected. After posting the PPEY low in February, the stock market rallied for a little while, then fell again to new lows in the last week of July. But by the election, the Dow Jones Industrial Averages rose 15%, and Reagan was re-elected in a landslide. That doesn’t seem to be happening this time, as the market continues to lose ground, and has not rallied above the highs of June, which were 10,471-10,487.

Are these market indicators valid? Well the stock market one has been fairly consistent since 1940, when President Roosevelt was re-elected at a time the country was concerned more about national security issues than economic ones. Like today, the market just continued making lower lows and lower highs right into the election, and Roosevelt won anyway. Except for Ronald Reagan in 1984, that has not happened since. And the crude oil correlation is not nearly as strong a correlation as the article in the business magazine suggests. In 2000, oil prices did rise sharply into mid-October prior to the election, reaching $36.90./barrel. But then by the time of the election 3-4 weeks later, the price had dropped sharply, to 31.10, a decline of about 15%. Bush, the challenger did indeed win. But in 1996, oil prices also rallied sharply into the election, from 18.72 in early June to 25.80 by the last week of October, a gain of nearly 40%! Yet the incumbent, Bill Clinton, won re-election. And in 1992, crude oil topped out in late June at 22.95. By mid-August, prices dropped about 10% to 20.78. Then posted a modest recovery rally to 22.37 by mid-October (not a new high), and then dropped sharply into the election, below 20.00. One can not consider that a case of “prices running up” into the election, as they were actually at a multi-month low the week of the election. Yet the challenger, Bill Clinton, defeated the incumbent, George Bush Sr.

So when all is said and done, I will prefer the use of pure astrology as the primary tool for forecasting the U.S. Presidential election. And even that is difficult this time for many astrologers, because there is disagreement on which charts are to be considered the most important, as different charts suggests different outcomes. Many astrologers prefer looking at the transits and progressions to the charts of each candidate. When doing that, I think most astrologers agree that John Kerry has the “easier” chart, the one that looks the more popular. Or, one might say, that George W. Bush has the chart indicating the greater stresses and challenges, the greater pressure. Looking at the two charts, it is no wonder that most astrologers predict John Kerry will win. But other astrologers, like me, tend to put more emphasis on the chart of the country, which depicts the mood or sentiment of the nation, the voters. With Saturn in Cancer, and the country being a Cancer, it would seem that the voters will vote conservatively and out of fear. As such, it seems that they will not take the risk of voting someone new to come in and take control. I know that many of the readers of this column are astrologers, and favor John Kerry. And as one reader put it, he too will vote out of fear – fear of re-electing George Bush! And so his voter goers for John Kerry for the reasons I mentioned as favoring George Bush. That’s the difficulty, of course, when making forecasts based on astrology. You see the psychological dynamic that is operative, such as fear and resistance to make a change in this case. But how does that translate into a collective (or individual) decision? Astrology is only half the equation in determining the outcome. It describes the climate, or the psychological dynamic that is powerful at any given time. But the other half of the equation is our choice – how we exercise our choice within that environment. Our free will is the other half of the equation that determines outcome. Otherwise we would all experience the same outcome under the same aspects. And in reality, that is not the case. We make different choices under the same aspects and in the same types of conditions, and therefore we experience different outcomes form one another – even under the same aspects.

But let’s get back to the markets, because they were plenty interesting last week. In Europe, the German DAX declined to 3897.50 on Friday, it’s lowest level since the cycle high of 4077.30 on October 7. However this was not as low as the low of September 28, which was right in the “Great Libra Ingress” time frame of September 22-28. The same was true in the London FTSE index, which fell to a weekly low of 4605.80 on Friday. That was down from its cycle high of 4732.90 on October 7, but still above its low of September 28. It was also true in the Netherlands AEX, which fell to 325.60 on Friday, its lowest level since the 339.40 high of October 7, but still above its low of September 28. However, the situation was different (and worse) in the Swiss stock index, which fell to 5329 on Friday, down from a high of 5624 on October 5, and below the low of September 28. Thus we may have a case of intermarket bullish divergence developing between the European stock indices, where some are making new multi-week lows, and others are not.

We note this too in the Americas, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to 9875 last Thursday, below the 9977 low of September 28. But in the NASDAQ Composite, the low of the week was only 1899, well above the 1852 low of September 28. And both of these U.S. indices rallied on Friday, thus suggesting the strong possibility of Intermarket bullish divergence. And in Argentina, the Merval index dropped to a weekly low of 1113.31 last Tuesday, but then rallied smartly to new cycle highs of 1233.78 by Friday. It looks like this market is going to soon challenge its yearly high of 1294.06, recorded back on March 22.

Another record-breaking week was noted in Australia, where the All Ordinaries soared to 3734 on October 13. The Hang Seng of Hong Kong still held close to the 13,000 level all week, while the Japanese Nikkei index fell most of the week, sinking to 10,913 on Friday, nearly 500 points off its cycle high so far of 11,410 on October 7.

But now we come to another cluster of powerful geocosmic signatures in effect October 15-26. The middle of this cluster is this week, so we may see several of these markets making important reversals. The most powerful of these signatures is Venus in waning square to Pluto on October 20, and the Sun in waning trine to Uranus on October 26. Both are level 1 types, with the former having an 81% correlation to primary or greater cycles within an orb of 12 trading days. The aspect brings tension between the principles of financial security, fairness, and balance (Venus), with that of debt and loss (Pluto). It is a time to be careful of what you say and who you might offend, such as the John Kerry remark about Vice-President Cheney’s lesbian daughter during the Thursday night debate. He thought he was giving a compliment, but he was accused of being tactless and utilizing poor judgment. The Sun-Uranus trine may correlate with a sudden news event of a positive nature. Something unexpected and hopeful m ay be reported, and if so, this would seem to favor George Bush, as these planets form a grand trine (by sign) to Cancer. Both Mr. Bush and the U.S.A. are Cancer sun-ruled people.

So, in summary, the stock market and oil market indicators favor a John Kerry victory. But unless something really dramatic happens in the news in the next three weeks, I still think the majority of U.S. voters will vote on the basis of fear and resistance to making a change, and I still interpret that as favorable to the re-election chances of George W. Bush. It would be so much easier if all the indicators pointed in the same direction.

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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.

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