What is Financial Astrology?

No matter your stage of life or circumstances, getting a grip on practical life issues—career, investments and wealth—is always a good thing. Taking a look at your horoscope from a financial perspective can help.

Financial astrology applies familiar astrological techniques and principles to questions that involve money and finances. Indeed, financial astrology is helpful for any question or interest in financial or money-related topics of life. For example, financial astrology can help with understanding the natal promise in the horoscope chart for both wealth and career—even when you might expect to have peak earnings or make a job change. When to buy or sell real estate is another good use for financial astrology.

Financial astrology also is helpful on the job—its timing capabilities can steer you toward successful meetings, product launches and email sends. If you’re in marketing, your company’s incorporation chart provides a valuable branding resource for identity and keywords, as well as fodder for the annual SWOT analysis.

The most popular application, however, is trying to forecast future price movement in the stock or commodity markets. This includes stock indexes like the Standard & Poor’s 500, individual stocks and, my specialty, the commodity markets, such as gold, crude oil and even soybeans.

Financial Astrology Pioneers

The pioneers of financial astrology emerged in the late 1800s as investing in the U.S. stock market was gaining popularity. Indeed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was first published on May 26, 1896; three years later, volume on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) had tripled.

Thus, it’s no wonder that high-profile astrologer wannabe Evangeline Adams took a look at the stock market … and forecast a bear market in the last quarter of 1899. Indeed, the market dropped 23% from mid-November to the Dec. 18 panic due to the failure of the Produce Exchange Trust Company. Her reputation soared and, ultimately, attracted high-profile clients such as financier J.P. Morgan.

Perhaps the more well-known figure in financial astrology is W.D. Gann, who got his start on Wall Street in 1902 in the cotton market. His notoriety soared in 1909 based on a call that September wheat futures in Chicago would trade at $1.20 per bu. before the contract expired on Sept. 13, 1909, a forecast that appeared unlikely as prices were 10 percent below that in the final hours of trading. Yet, that is the price where September wheat closed that day.

Gann was a prolific market forecaster, publishing newsletters, annual forecasts, books and trading courses. Analysis techniques that Gann developed remain in widespread use among traders today.

Two other prominent financial astrologers arrived in the wake of the Great Depression. The first was Edward R. Dewey, founder of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles in 1941, who began researching economic cycles as chief economist of the U.S. Commerce Department in 1930. The second was Louise McWhirter, who concluded that the U.S. business cycle was related to the moon’s nodal cycle.

Techniques for Financial Astrology

In the stock market, two charts are important to watch. The first is a company’s incorporation chart, set for when it was legally registered as a company. In the United States, that often is in Delaware, which has a long history of corporate-friendly laws and is the corporate home to 68% of Fortune 500 companies. The second is the first-trade chart, which is when the stock shares of a company first began trading on an organized exchange, e.g., NYSE or Nasdaq.

As a trader or investor, you want to focus mainly on the first-trade chart because it is most sensitive to the buying and selling of shares and the stock’s price movement. To get a feel for how astrology works in the markets, pick a stock that you like and identify the dates of major high and low prices over the past 15–20 years (at least, enough to see an entire 12-year Jupiter cycle).

Then, do a bi-wheel of those dates (using the market opening time) with the first-trade chart and note what close transits occurred, focusing on conjunctions, oppositions, squares and trines. (I keep a running spreadsheet.) If you see patterns, you can begin to forecast future price moves with upcoming, similar transits.

Pay particular attention to the five inner planets—Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars—on both the first-trade chart and transit chart. They are the ones moving fast enough to be sensitive to how planets in the sky are affecting the people who are making buy and sell decisions. That’s not to say that the other planets won’t play an important role. Indeed, they can often be part of important first-trade aspects and patterns that will be sensitive to transits. And, by transit, they can add weight to a price move ultimately triggered by a faster-moving planet.

For market analysis, I look to transits to the incorporation chart as indicators of potential corporate events or news, which are pegged “fundamental” analyses among traders. This is where you could see the potential for an executive shakeup or mergers and acquisitions.

Easing into Financial Astrology

If transit analysis seems a bit overwhelming, start with information that is easily available in any ephemeris. Still pick a stock or market that you like. But then, just watch how prices behave when the sun and other planets ingress into new zodiac signs; add the moon if you like to be really granular.

In particular, watch the year’s equinox and solstice points, when the sun enters a cardinal sign, which can portend a shift in the market’s prevailing trend. Also, note what prices do in your market when planets station retrograde or direct. Finally, you might find interesting shifts at new moons, full moons and eclipses.