Gloom sells! The public strives on predicted crashes and disasters (the word disaster means bad stars). And the ‘gloom and doomers’ make money. It’s amazing how the same authors who predicted stock market and economic crashes in the 1980s are still writing disaster books today.

The stock market began its long climb in the early 1980s, and the present climb began in March 2009. How does a financial astrologer not buy into those daily television and newspaper ads and commentators telling us to sell stocks, buy gold, buy bomb shelters and fill with food? We use the study of cycles and look at the patterns that have worked for over 100 years.

In the 1930s Louise McWhirter, an astrologer and financial analyst, wrote a book: Astrology and Stock Market Forecasting. Her economic theories were based on the Moon’s North Node position. When the North Node is at 29 degrees Leo, the economy hits a peak. Previous peaks were March 1980 (interest rates and inflation were at 18% and 21%), and October 1998 (before the dot.com bubble).

The next peak will be May 2017. Each peak is followed by a plateau period, May 2017 – November 2018; then a slow decline from above normal to normal levels, November 2018 – January 2022. The slow transition to a below-normal economy should begin after February 2022. In the meantime, the economy and the stock market should still have a very good run.

The McWhirter cycles indicated a drop into the lowest economic period would occur January 2008 – August 2009. Using this information, I wrote in my January 2008 issue of the Astro Economics Stock Market Newsletter that we were in a recession, although this was totally denied by everyone until the collapse of Bear Stearns (March 2008), then Lehman Brothers (September 2008). We again used the Node cycle to call the bottom and beginning of a new Bull Market as well as the end of the Real Estate collapse, in March 2009 and August 2009, respectively. Other cycles concurred.

There are other astrological cycles such as the Neptune 14-year cycle as it relates to inflation/deflation. When Neptune is in a fire sign, Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, we have high inflation rates as we did in the 1970s. I was able to write that inflation and high interest rates would end in November 1984 as Neptune moved into the earth sign of Capricorn. Neptune in earth signs (Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn) is a time of low inflation/low interest rates. This 14-year cycle brought interest rates to a low of 2 percent in the 1990s. Again, those ‘gloom and doomers’ since the 1990s were sure we were headed for hyperinflation when deflation was a more likely scenario. And even today, the U.S. Federal Reserve is hesitating to raise interest rates and is still not sure we have beaten deflation.