(2 August 2026)  Stocks finished higher last week despite some volatility brought on by renewed hostilities between the US and Iran and another spike in oil prices.  Despite the inflationary threat posed by higher oil prices, the Fed opted to leave interest rates unchanged. The positive weekly outcome was somewhat unexpected as I thought we might have seen a bit more downside from the double station near-square of Mercury and Saturn (July 23 and July 26) as well as the semisquare of Saturn and the North Lunar Node on July 30.  Our backtests of these patterns showed a strong bearish bias, especially in the days following the stations. For the 45-degree semisquare of Saturn and the North Node, the updated cumulative charts below suggest that the potential fallout from the current alignment has been earlier than the post-alignment period in which the mean and median dip below the zero line.  In that sample of 27 cases, the negative effects are typically after the exact semisquare which in the current case occurred July 30.  The early bearishness roughly matches the scale of...