In The News

Business - Reuters
Thu Jan 22, 4:01 AM ET

Stargazer: Spring Rally, Trouble Ahead
By Elizabeth Lazarowitz

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As the Dow Jones industrial average shoots toward 11,000, stock investors can be forgiven for a certain degree of star-gazing with their portfolios.
But each year, as Capricorn turns to Aquarius on the astrological clock, research analysts and economists are joined by a different kind of soothsayer in making yearly stock picks.
According to financial astrologer Arch Crawford, a springtime rally is in the stars for stocks this year, but 2004 may not be all clear skies for U.S. markets.
" The market is going to pull back here for two, three, possibly four weeks, and then rally into the March-April period," Crawford said at a panel discussion on Tuesday in New York. "That will probably be the high of the year."
Crawford, who uses a combination of technical analysis and planetary cycles to predict the direction of financial markets, has been putting out a monthly newsletter since 1977 and maintains a phone hotline for stock tips. About 2,000 people, including top Wall Street hedge fund managers, subscribe to the newsletter at $250 annually.
Trouble is brewing for stocks as Venus crosses the face of the sun for the first time since the 1880s, Crawford told the audience at a panel discussion hosted by the Society for the Investigation of Recurring Events, or SIRE, which studies cyclical changes in the economy and financial markets.
That will happen between June 4-6, Crawford said, and it is "not good news."
To make matters worse, Saturn will pass through the spot where the sun was located on the astrological charts at both the time President Bush was born and when the United States was formed, he said.
" I read that as probably a hit to the honor of, and the faith in, the United States," Crawford said. "It will probably be very bad for the dollar and very good for gold."
Crawford is also tracking the "Mars-Uranus cycle," an indicator that he said has corresponded with every stock market crash in the past 100 years.
That portion of the cycle will last from mid-August into March 2005, Crawford said. "We expect there will be another stock market crash during that period."

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