Review

More than $2 trillion in market value is set to be wiped from the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 this month, as Big Tech earnings intensified investor scrutiny of whether the billions being poured into artificial intelligence can generate returns quickly enough. The wipeout would amount to slightly more than SpaceX’s entire market value.

—Johann M Cherian and Shashwat Chauhan, “Nasdaq Faces $2 Trillion Wipeout in October as AI Spending Fears Deepen,” Reuters, October 30, 2026.

The markets are in the red, with the tech-heavy NASDAQ leading the selloff, having dropped about 8% from its October 6 all-time high (ATH). As noted at the time in this column, “The bearish intermarket divergence with the Dow continues to grow and is now also accompanied by bearish oscillator divergence in the CCI too. These are strong technical indicators for crest formations.” The following was noted in the introduction to the September edition of the MMA Monthly Cycles Report:

Venus retrograde cycles repeat in the same section of the Zodiac every eight years. The previous Venus retrograde cycle in Scorpio occurred between October 5 and November 16, 2018. Shortly before that cycle commenced, the S&P 500 formed a record high on September 21, as the Sun approached the autumnal equinox. It subsequently declined more than 20% into Christmas Eve. That was also the last midterm election held during a Trump administration.

The markets have been more resilient in Europe, with the Swiss SMI actually putting in a new ATH. The UK’s FTSE and the German DAX are also rallying and close to their respective summer highs. The Asian markets continue their weakness, with the Chinese SSE Index leading the way, having corrected 16% from its May high. The Indian Nifty is also down 16% from its February high. The Japanese Nikkei and the Australian ASX continue to consolidate. In Latin America, the big story was President Lula’s reelection, which sent Brazil’s Ibovespa tumbling more than 18% this week.

With Crude Oil back above $100, we saw precious metals hit new yearly lows on fears of further central bank tightening. The crypto market was shaken by news of a record heist as hackers stole approximately $6.3 billion. This was a concern expressed in this column and weekly reports earlier this year, that some form of corruption or major hack usually accompanies a broad sell off into the 4-year cycle low, which at the time we projected would be in October 2026 +/- 1 month. Maybe that big decline isn’t over yet, although our bias remains that the low did happen during the summer. This is likely a secondary low forming, known as a half-primary cycle trough, which we will cover in our monthly MMA Monthly Crypto Report coming out this week, November 4.

Short-term geocosmics

Over the past week, we have been dealing with the impact of Mercury turning retrograde (October 24). In the U.K., we were hit by high winds and storms, which in some parts of the country resulted in power cuts. In Spain, there was another fatal train crash claiming 68 lives.

Over the coming week, whilst Mercury and Venus remain retrograde, there are relatively few other major aspects forming as we head into November and the U.S. midterm elections. A clear outcome may reduce uncertainty in the markets, whilst a disputed or prolonged count could increase it.

However, the geocosmic landscape is seldom quiet enough to offer much-needed respite. Readers may recall that, ahead of the August Solar Eclipse, I noted that the sensitive eclipse degree of 20° Leo would be reactivated by the transit of Mars on November 3 (± 1 week). This signature can coincide with conflict, protests, military action, accidents, fires, confrontations, or decisive action by political leaders. Any significant story that emerged during the eclipse period may now reach a point of escalation. The main story in August was the end of the 60-day deadline set by the MoU between the United States and Iran, which is at risk of being retriggered. Keep an eye on Central America, as the subsolar point for the eclipse was in this region. Colombia suffered a 7.4-magnitude earthquake two days before the eclipse. It may also be important to note that transiting Mars will also form a T-square to the Mercury–Pluto square in the New York Stock Exchange’s Buttonwood chart of May 17, 1792. This often corresponds to the end of a sharp decline, and will be in effect November 6–20.

Longer-term thoughts and opinion

The MMA team is deeply involved in writing Forecast 2027, and this week I wanted to share a sneak preview of the research I carried out for the chapter concerning the Jupiter–Saturn trine aspect. To understand where we are in the cycle today, we first need to go back to where it began, at the great conjunction on December 21, 2020.

The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn has long been considered one of the most important cycles in mundane astrology because it governs the structure of society itself. The doctrine reached us from Sassanian Persia through the astrologers of Baghdad, above all Masha’allah in the eighth century and Abu Ma’shar in the ninth. Abu Ma’shar’s Book of Religions and Dynasties is studied to this day and caught my attention when he ranked the great conjunctions in three orders of importance:

• The ordinary conjunction, every 20 years, speaks of kings, governments, and the fortunes of rulers.
• The mutation, about every 200 years. Each conjunction falls almost exactly a trine from the last, so the meetings stay in signs of the same element for about two centuries before moving into the next. This change of element speaks of the transfer of power from one dynasty to another and from one nation or empire to another.
• The return to fire, about every 800 years. When the series comes back to the fire signs after passing through all four elements, the astrologers are told to expect a new prophet and a new religion, as the impact falls beyond the realm of kings, nations, and empires.

The conjunction of December 21, 2020, was a mutation. After almost two centuries in earth signs, the conjunctions have moved into air, where they will remain for the next 200 years. This speaks not only of a change of rulers, but of a change of dynasties, empires, and nations. A change in empires and nations essentially equates to a period of turmoil and conflict that accompanies a mutation as national borders are redrawn, especially during the opening years. Earth is the element of the tangible: land, industry, commodities, and money backed by something you can hold. Air is the element of the intangible: ideas, information, trade, law, and networks. In an air era, power passes to those who control the flow of information and capital rather than the ground and what it produces.

The tradition also gives the change a geography. In the Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy divided the known world into four quarters, one for each element. A line along the Mediterranean separated north from south, while a longitudinal line through the Arabian Gulf, the Aegean Sea, Pontus (the Black Sea), and Lake Maeotis (the Sea of Azov) separated west from east:

• Fire ruled the northwest, Europe: Britain, Gaul, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
• Earth ruled southern Asia: Persia, Mesopotamia, and India.
• Air ruled the northeast: Armenia, the Caspian, Central Asia, the steppe north of the Black Sea, and Serica, the land of silk, which is China.
• Water ruled the southwest: North Africa, with Syria among its nearer lands.

I was astonished to find that when we follow the mutations through history, power has moved to the lands of each element far more often than chance would suggest:

• Fire, AD 14: Rome at its height.
• Earth, third–fourth centuries: the Sassanian dynasty seizes Persia (224), and the Gupta Empire rises in India in the early fourth century.
• Air, fifth century: Attila’s Huns sweep off the steppe, and Rome falls in the West (476).
• Water, 571: the traditional birth period of Muhammad, followed in the seventh century by the rise of Islam and an Arab caliphate ruled from Syria that conquers North Africa.
• Fire, 769–809: Charlemagne unites Gaul, Germany, and Italy, and is crowned emperor in 800.
• Earth, eleventh century: the Seljuk Turks take Persia and enter Baghdad in 1055.
• Air, 1186–1226: Genghis Khan builds the core of the Mongol Empire across much of Asia; in 1258, Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan sack Baghdad.
• Water, fifteenth–sixteenth centuries: the Ottomans take Constantinople in 1453 and conquer Syria and Egypt in 1516–1517, while Europe takes to the oceans.
• Fire, 1603: the Stuart and Tokugawa dynasties both begin on the same day, and Britain, France, and the Netherlands build their empires.
• Earth, 1802–1842: Napoleon ends the thousand-year Holy Roman Empire, the Industrial Revolution takes hold, and the age of empires anchored to gold begins. This is the weakest fit, as leadership stayed with Britain and later the United States rather than passing to Ptolemy’s southern Asia. However, it is worth noting that both Britain (pre-WWII) and the U.S. (post-WWII) dominated the oil industry in the Persian Gulf.
• Air, 2020: the new era begins. We call it the “New Aira,” a modern-day term coined by MMTA graduate and market analyst, Kat Powell.

The new air era is unfolding on exactly the ground Ptolemy assigned to it. The war over Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia erupted in 2020. In August 2021, the Taliban took Kabul in Central Asia. In February 2022, Russia, the great power of the air quarter, invaded Ukraine, and the war has been fought ever since along the Azov coast and the Donbas, close to the very line where Ptolemy’s air quarter meets his fire quarter. Meanwhile, China, the land of Serica, has become the chief economic rival of the United States.

The last time the conjunctions moved into air, the Mongols rose from the steppe and connected East and West through networks of trade and the use of paper money. It was also during this period (1215) that the Magna Carta was written, a document declaring that the king was not above the law but was subject to the same laws as everyone else. If the doctrine holds, and as Ray puts it, the pendulum of world power is once again swinging from the West towards the East, and this is only the beginning of the transfer.