ASTROLOGY & TRADING
Rosecast Financial Astrology Newsletter - September 2005
Moving on from Summer
Since the last Rosecast newsletter of late June 2005, it has been a long summer. Typically in summer people go on vacation and I have done the same this year.
On vacation you meet new people and quite naturally the question pops up "what do you do for a living ?”
For most people this is an easy question to answer. Unfortunately for me this is not the case.
Often I will answer; “I am a financial trader” or “I am a consultant on the financial markets”. Both answers are well accepted. Now sometimes it happens that I am around females and as females (and occasionally males too) are usually bored with the financial markets, I will answer “I am an astrologer” - after all I do spend most of my professional time looking at horoscopes or planetary data. Such answer will usually lead to a question like "Oh how interesting, I am a Virgo. Can you tell me something about myself?"
Problems might only arise when I am around couples. I tell the guy “I am financial" and the woman I tell “I am an astrologer". To both I tell "I actually do both". The first reaction I get is “Are you serious?", or "This cannot work ", or “Can you make any money doing that?" or “Do you believe in that?"
The bottom-line is that it is way beyond the imagination of most people that you can combine astrology and the financial markets in any meaningful, much less, successful way.
This I find interesting because most people have no problem accepting astrology in its pure (non-financial) form. According to newsletter surveys the majority of people today believe in astrology.
Now I am usually not a person that ignores questions lightly. Especially not when they repeat.
So that is why I am addressing in today's newsletter the question "Can you combine astrology and the financial markets in a successful way? Does it work?” Actually I have been posing that question to myself ever since I started researching the financial markets and astrology in 1995.
The other question "Do I believe in astrology?” has never been of real importance to me.
The Story of the Star Astrologer
There has once been (and there still is) a very famous astrologer in a country called Germany. Originally coming from the legal profession, he dropped into astrology by kind of an accident 20 years ago. Today he runs a huge web portal, writes astrology columns in the most popular women magazines, has a small TV show, publishes numerous books and articles every year and has once charged 650 Euros for a 90 minutes consultation. Naturally he is fully booked most of the time. My point is that he is one of the best in his profession - at least as measured by any financial standards.
It happens that an old school buddy of his was an investment banker. But he was not an investment banker with any investment bank. He was a banker with the most respected investment bank on the Street. As an outsider you might believe that Wall Street cares little about astrology. On the surface you would be correct. But beneath the surface some very successful people on Wall Street are quite open to a lot of things - and that includes astrology.
So to cut a long story short they started raising money for a fund. The star astrologer was looking at the horoscopes of companies and was calling the shots according to his interpretations of the stars. After a few months they terminated the project and later called it an "experiment". Probably because they were losing money.
Now, maybe the starting time was not well picked since they started to invest around early 2001, just before the bear market had set in. Anyway, the astrologer later concluded in a local magazine that he had stopped investing completely. Instead he would now devote his full attention to what he enjoyed doing most and to what he was really good at. That is, helping individuals and couples to lead better lives through the knowledge of the stars and signs.
Astrologer becomes Trader ?
Recently a letter was forwarded to me that went something like this. "I have been a consulting astrologer for 10 years and now I feel it is time that I start making money in the financial markets by trading the currencies. Is there any advice you can give me on how to proceed?"
Now you have to know that I am a skeptical person. And this has most likely to do with the Moon trining my Saturn (this one goes out to all astrologers).
If anybody who has never traded before comes to me and tells me that he is going to make money in the financial markets, then I will give them a fair chance of 25% that they will succeed at some point. However if an astrologer tells me the same, then my fair chance rate drops rapidly to below 5%. The reason is that I know very well from experience that most traditional astrological knowledge cannot be applied towards the financial markets. Also most professional consulting astrologers have an ego issue. That means that they try too hard to be right about the financial markets (so that they can prove to their friends that astrology is working), and this necessity to be right just works opposite to their purpose of making money. That means they will hold on to a losing position too long (because they want to be right), while somebody that just trades on his ideas or guts is naturally quicker to recognize when he/she is wrong. Cutting losses (at a predefined point) is the most important rule of successful investing or trading.
To sum up, most astrologer-traders have two substantial disadvantages over non-astrologers. First is that traditional astrological knowledge cannot be applied in the majority of cases. Second is their ego which needs to prove that astrology works and that stands in the way of their purpose of making money. A third disadvantage is that most astrologers do not know the financial markets well enough. Clients are usually friendlier than the financial markets and are more willing to forgive a small mistake.
Because of all these good reasons I was not surprised to learn how the above "experiment" of the star astrologer had ended.
Astrology is a highly specialized discipline
I have lived many years of my life in Vienna, Austria. Vienna is a city that is ruled by the Sign Scorpio and has enjoyed a strong tradition of psychology (Freud) and astrology. Through my frequent Friday evening visits to the ‘Vienna School of Astrology’ I have had the chance to meet many outstanding astrologers of the German speaking world and some of Europe. Each of them has applied astrology in a very specific way towards his/her own chosen field of research, consultancy and therapy. Some of them have combined their consultancies with other disciplines like the arts, alternative medicine or special techniques of psychology.
According to their chosen fields, their interpretations vary widely. The differences start not only with their interpretations but also with the types of astrological data that is selected as inputs for various assessments. Generally these astrologers have mastered a very narrow field of expertise in which they are very competent in, have created their own systems of astrological interpretation and know the needs of their clients very well.
To me this is not surprising. After all would you go to a dentist to have heart surgery performed just because both dentists and surgeons are doctors? From my own experience I dare to say that the best astrologers are as specialized as the best doctors. But just as specialization continues in each branch of medicine, so the specialization continues in every branch of astrology. This is also true for the branch of financial astrology. Financial astrologers differ widely in their methods and approaches as they cover different markets and time frames and cater to different clients with varied investment and trading objectives.
Which brings me back to the initial question of this newsletter "Can you combine astrology and the financial markets in a successful way, does it work?”
Words and Numbers
I have shown the difficulties that astrologers must overcome when using astrology in the financial markets. Most of the time their existing knowledge is much more a liability than an asset for reasons discussed above. However, this statement should not imply that astrology is an inconsistent science. It is just that most consulting astrologers do not need to apply astrology in the way of an exact science since their clients are not robots but humans. To give good advice to a human being on questions of life will always be a kind of art that requires not only special astrological expertise but also a special talent, dedication and a good sense of responsibility.
I believe that financial astrology is more apt to apply scientific methods than any other branch of astrology. Financial markets are ultimately numbers and a lot of astrological data consists of numbers. This fact however is unknown to the public and this is the reason why ordinary people have trouble associating astrology with finance. Let me give you an example. My Sun sign is Libra. But since Libra is the 7th sign then I might also say “I am a 7. What's your sign?” Well people do not like to think of themselves as numbers. However for the purposes of financial astrology such thinking is fine.
The Answer
If a trader gets to learn astrology and approaches the subject with a neutral and open attitude, he has a good chance of improving his returns significantly. All technical analysis is based on numbers. Numbers that are derived from past price or volume. Technical analysis is completely based on the past. It cannot be based on the future. Financial astrology derives its data from the positions of the planets in the different signs. Such positions can be calculated years in advance. That means financial astrology works with numbers of the future while technical analysis works with numbers of the past.
And this is the answer why some of the most successful speculators and market forecasters of all time have used financial astrology as their secret weapon. Some of the most successful traders are rumored to use astrology to increase their edge on the market. If you were to take the time to investigate this you would find that in many cases these rumors are true. Also WD Gann was a great believer in the "science of astrology" as evidenced by his 1927 novel Tunnel through the Air. This is the book I recommend to all those among you who are skeptical towards financial astrology but have heard about WD Gann or employ "Gann" analysis.
And what about Rosecast ? Well every day Rosecast uses numbers of the future to forecast the prices of the future; namely the high and low prices of the S&P and the Dow Jones for the next trading day. And how successful is Rosecast in doing this? Does the correlation between astro derived numbers of the future and tomorrow's financial markets work? Well you can be the judge. Just click here and examine the presented data. Often Rosecast forecasts not only the exact high or low price of the day, but often it forecasts both, thus giving a clear indication of next day's range. Forecasting the next day's range equals forecasting the direction of the next trading day while at the same time providing traders with precise entry and exit levels.
More on Rosecast
Furthermore Rosecast has a new focus on S&P E-mini points movements of at least 30 points. Rosecast has forecasted a 30 points movement down from the highs of August 22 and it has forecasted a 30 points movement up from the lows of August 31. The last forecast has been a 30 points move down from the September 9 highs, this forecasts has not materialized yet (as of this writing). However there has been a substantial movement down (plus 20 points) until September 15.
I am not implying that such forecasts will always be the norm - the future is still the future and the past is only the past. However I am confident that Rosecast will continue to provide an edge to its subscribers because of its diligent and scientific approach to market forecasting and financial astrology.
Markus Rose