Unsolved:Planetary Stock Trading

Short description: Financial astrology text

Planetary Stock Trading is a book written by a financial astrologer and fund manager Bill Meridian. It is a manual on how to spot stock market winners by their first trade horoscopes and their astrological transits. Meridian makes use of several concepts in the book which are not common in traditional astrology, including the use of declinations, the inclusion of asteroids and hypothetical planets, and the study of first trade charts instead of incorporation charts.

General concepts

Incorporation charts versus first-trade charts

Traditionally, when predicting a company's share price, most astrologers use the incorporation dates of the company. However, Meridian finds that the first-trade dates of the shares give better results when predicting the price movements. He explains that the incorporation charts dictate how the company is doing, while the first-trade charts govern the expectations of the investors. Here is a simple combination of possible results when the two charts agree or disagree:

Incorporation vs. First-Trade

	Good Transits in First-Trade	Bad Transits in First-Trade
Good Transits in Incorporation	The company is doing well. The investors buy accordingly.	The company is doing well, but falls short of investors’ expectations. The share price is likely to fall.
Bad Transits in Incorporation	The company is not doing well, but the investors expect it to get better soon. The share price is likely to go up.	The company is not doing well. The investors sell accordingly.

Regarding the incorporation charts, Meridian notes that different states in the US have different practice. In Delaware, the exact time of the incorporation is stamped on the formal document, so the transit could be exact to the minute. In other states like California, the existence of the corporation starts at midnight of that particular day. In any case, Meridian recommends to use two charts: one with the legal time of incorporation, another with its first business opening (usually 9 am).

If a trader decides to work with both charts, Meridian suggests that he shall focus on the shared areas. For example, IBM was incorporated when the Sun was in Aquarius, and it also started trading its shares when the Sun was under the same sign. Therefore, transits to IBM's Sun (and to the sign of Aquarius in general) will be more powerful than usual. For example, as illustrated in Example 4 in the third edition, when Saturn entered Aquarius in 1991 and stayed there until 1994, the share price of IBM resulted in a slump.

Asteroids and Uranian planets

In addition to the major planets used in Western astrology, Meridian also uses asteroids and hypothetical planets. Here is a full list of the heavenly objects he uses, as well as the financial rulerships he assigns to them:

Bill Meridian's planetary interpretations

Object	Rulership
Illuminaries
Sun	Gold
Moon	Any type of walk-in business
Planets
Mercury	Communication, short-distance travel, telecommunication, telephone, footwear, trucking
Venus	Recreation, cosmetics, fashion, leisure, soft drinks
Mars	Construction, sports, defence
Jupiter	Publishing, travel, gambling, consumer goods sector
Saturn	Real estate, regulated industries such as utilities, capital goods sector
Uranus	Most technology such as computers, aviation
Neptune	Advertising, chemicals, some entertainment business, marine activities such as off-shore drilling, natural gas, oil, photography, tobacco, alcoholic beverages
Dwarf planets and asteroids
Ceres	Food, nursing homes
Pallas	Computer programming, the immune system, precision instrument
Juno	Hospitality, hotels
Vesta	The security business (lock, prevention of theft), paper securities such as bonds and stocks
Pluto	Biotechnology, financial businesses such as mergers, insurance, brokerages
Uranian planets (hypothetical)
Cupido	business related to communities and groups, homebuilding
Hades	Waste removal
Zeus	Machinery, manufacturing, railroads, automobiles, heavy industries, drilling
Kronos	Government-related businesses
Apollon	Distribution of all types
Admetus	Mining, geology, semiconductors, the process of miniaturisation, nanotechnology, disk drivers, containers, building materials
Vulcanus	Steel, aluminium, cooper, and other metals
Poseidon	Education

Meridian acknowledges that one business could be ruled by more than one planet. For example, a biotech company which deals with the human body immune system is ruled by both Pluto and Pallas, or a school for children education is ruled by boh Poseidon and Juno, and so on.

Predictive techniques

Bullish and bearish transits

Here are a list of positive and negative transits used by Meridian. In addition to traditional aspects by longitude (e.g. square, trine), it also applies to aspects by declination (i.e. parallel and contra-parallel).

Bullish and bearish transit combinations

Bullish		Bearish
Transiting	Natal	Transiting	Natal
Sun	Venus	Saturn	Sun
Jupiter	Sun	Saturn	Venus
Jupiter	Mercury	Saturn	Jupiter
Jupiter	Venus	Saturn	Uranus
Jupiter	Jupiter	Saturn	Neptune
Jupiter	Uranus	Saturn	Pluto
Jupiter	Neptune	Saturn	Nodes
Jupiter	Pluto	Saturn	Asc/Dsc, MC/IC
Jupiter	Asc/Dsc, MC/IC	Uranus	Pluto
Uranus	Venus	Neptune	Pluto
Uranus	Asc/Dsc, MC/IC	Pluto	Nodes
Neptune	Sun	Pluto	Asc/Dsc, MC/IC
Neptune	Venus	Eclipses	Saturn
Eclipses	Jupiter	Eclipses	Pluto
Eclipses	Neptune
Eclipses	Uranus
Eclipses	Asc/Dsc, MC/IC

Eclipses and stations

One shall pay particular attention to the transits made by eclipses and stationing planets. Meridian wrote, "After spending over 20 years in astrology, I can say that one can come up with a reasonably good forecast by simply observing the eclipses and the stations." He ranks their influences in the following order, although he does not explain how this order is derived:

1. Solar eclipses
2. Uranus stations
3. Lunar eclipses
4. Jupiter stations
5. Neptune stations
6. Pluto stations
7. Major aspects between outer planets
8. Mars stations
9. Venus stations

Saturn cycles

Here a Saturn cycle is defined as the ascent of Saturn from the Imum Coeli to the Medium Coeli. Meridian noted that there is a tendency for the share price to rise during this 14-year period, but it tends to peak when Saturn reaches the MC. Thus the Saturn-MC/IC transit is important to watch.

Midpoints

Not all natal points are created equal. If a planet happens to be at the center of a lot of midpoints, then transits to that point will be more powerful. A midpoint refers to the arithmetic mean of the zodiac degrees of two planets. Say, in a particular chart, Venus is at 0° Aries, Mercury is at 0° Taurus, and Mars is at 0° Gemini, then Mercury is at the midpoint of Venus/Mars.

Directions and progressions

Meridian claims that he uses both solar arc directions and secondary progressions, but his book only deals with the latter. One of the related techniques is the progressed lunar cycles. The share price tends to bottom during a progressed new moon, and peaks during a progressed full moon.

Mutable signs occupation

Meridian noted that many of the stocks that moved sharply had planets in the first 10 degrees of mutable signs. For example, Caterpillar (CAT) was first traded on 2 December 1929. In the case of CAT, the Sun, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury were all in the 10 to 13 degree Virgo and Sagittarius, which are mutable signs.

Trading tactics

General advice on investing with astrology

Meridian believes that, while no rule relating to the market is carved in stone, the following guidelines are helpful for those who want to use astrology in investing:

1. Select a small group of stocks to work with.
2. Select horoscopes that make soft or positive connections to your own.
3. Understand the concept of relative strength.
4. Trade with the trend, as the trend is your friend.
5. Different groups of stocks have different characteristics.
6. Always confirm your selection with technical analysis.

Picking a date to start a new business

Meridian thinks that, to pick the best date to incorporate a business, one should follow these steps:

1. Identify the nature of the business and find the planet(s) which rules it.
2. The best time to start the business is when the ruler planet at conjunction or opposition of a recent eclipse (with an orb of 5 degrees). By "recent" it refers to nine months before or one year after the eclipse.
3. If the above is not available, then the next best time is to start the business is when the ruler planet is at station. It does not matter whether it is station-direct or station-retrograde.
4. If either are not available, then one shall start the business only when the ruler planet is with favourable aspects.

Meridian emphasize that, although ideally one shall pick a day meeting all three conditions, the first two criteria (eclipses and stations) are the most important. If one can pick a time when the ruler planet is at an eclipse point or at station, then it really does not matter if it happens to be with a bad aspect at the time.

The earnings surprise method

One of the simplest ways to begin planetary stock trading, according to Meridian, is to employ the earnings surprise method. This involves an analysis of the horoscope of the stock on the day that the earnings are announced. If there is little contact with the horoscope at the time, the earnings will be in line with forecasts. In these cases, there is contact to the natal first-trade chart. The advantage to this method is that a trader is only exposed to the market for about 2 days, the day prior to the announcement and the day after. In the analysis, concentrate on the MC, Sun and Moon, first natally and then by secondary progression both direct and converse.

Criticism

There is a section of the book which contains the natal charts of many companies without any annotations. Some reviewers on Amazon think that this part of the book is quite redundant.