The following is an interview I did in 2005 with Arch Crawford. A colorful and fascinating character in the market's lexicon. Read the full interview prior to casting judgement. He just called for the mother of all bear markets to start on July 26th, 2010. What he calls the "Cardinal Climax". His DJIA stops are at 11466. time will tell, Enjoy!
I fully realize that this is a highly controversial and unusual subject, however, Arch has one of the best
documented historic records for correct market calls of any market analyst. In fact, over the last 3 and 6
month time frames,Timer Digest, has ranked him #3 of all market letter writers. Jump on board for a
journey into this esoteric subject!
Dave: How are you today, Arch?
Arch: Very well, thank you.
Dave: Let's start at the beginning. What first got you interested in the financial markets?
Arch: I always loved numbers as a child and used to extract square roots for fun and I saw my Father
looking in the paper and there's this whole page of numbers. I loved the numbers so I started watching the
stock market, pulling out stocks under $10 through the A's, B's and halfway through through the C's--and
there were a lot of them in 1954. The methods I studied were basically technical. In 1960, I kept a chart of
US Steel --there was a big steel strike--and I kept the headlines on the chart. And it made no sense
whatsoever.
Dave: There was no correlation between the headline and the stock movement?
Arch: Exactly. One of the first books I read was Darvas' How I Made $2 Million In The Stock Market. He
was a dancer and he used a simple trend-following method. A couple of years later I went to work for
Merrill Lynch in Raleigh N.C., putting up prices on a chalkboard and 2-3 months after that they got an
electronic board and I became an assistant in the cage.
Dave: This is the early '60s?
Arch: Yes, this is 1961. I had been studying math and physics at the University of North Carolina and I
started off with really great grades and they were beginning to drift lower and lower and I figured I would
go do what I wanted to do before I got thrown out, so I left while I still had decent grades. I told Merrill
Lynch "This is what I want to do with my life, send me to New York" and they said,"don't be ridiculous."
So later, after I'd been there a while I said I quit, I'm going to New York and look for a job. They said
"Don't do that, we'll transfer you." They said "What department would you like?" and I told them technical
research. They sent me right up to the research department but the technical things I was doing at that time
was I was actually drawing the weekly charts of Merrill Lynch's industry specialists and that took me three
days to do 45 charts. While I was in Raleigh the commodity guy there got me Edwards & McGee and they
were getting the trendline charts from Commodity Research Bureau and it had 600 charts every week. I
use to draw all the lines and supports and resistance and trendlines and look at the moving averages and
make a projection as to what was going to happen and go back and look at last week's while I'm doing this
week's and see what worked out and what didn't. I'm self-taught from that standpoint, using Edwards &
McGee. I was spending every night in the library. I made friends with the librarian--an elderly Irish lady--
and I bought lottery tickets from her, so she let me stay in the library at night and lock it up at 12:00. I was
looking at the chart of the market and it was beginning to form a multiple head and shoulder top pattern.
Dave: When you say the market, you mean the Dow?
Arch: The Dow Jones, yes. I said if this pattern remains symmetrical, the market will top in the middle of
December and it will crash next year in 1962. It topped in the middle of December. It finished the head
and shoulder top and broke down on April 13, the day Kennedy made the steel companies roll back the
price increases. That broke the neckline and it started down and then it drifted down and rallied a bit and
drifted down and rallied a bit and then started turning very nasty and we went into the crash of '62. And I
was going around saying "it's going to crash" and I got the nickname "Crash Crawford." And then it
actually did it--the worst crash since 1929.
Dave: That was your first major accurate prediction?
Arch: Yes. I also turned 21 in the meantime on April 17th and inherited $1000 from a sweet aunt who had
died and I put it all in puts and made seven times my money, so that was my beginning.
Dave: How did you go from being a technical analyst to a financial astrologer?
Arch: On the day before my birthday, in 1963, the Wall Street Journal had a front-page article about three
guys who were predicting the market using astrology. The credible one was Lt. Cmdr. David Williams
who had been head of the purchasing department for Con Ed for 40 years and a Lt Cmdr in the Navy in
the Big War and he was a fine gentleman. Williams had written a pamphlet called Astro-economics in
1955. I went out and bought it. Next to that pamphlet in this metaphysical bookstore was Donald Bradley's
Stock Market Prediction and he had developed a model using all two-planet pairs. I started keeping his
model by hand and--thank God for computers! It was a lot of calculation but it was worth it. The market
would follow that line for several months and then if would go off and do something else and for several
months it would be off of that line and then it would come back onto it sometime later.
Dave: What particular planets?
Arch: All of them. Ten counting the Sun and moon. The Moon didn't count in them because it was too
quick. What I found in following that for a while was that when there is a large configuration involving
several planets it becomes what the Mandelbrot set, the chaos people, call a "strange attractor" which
would take the market up or down to the date of this large configuration was most exact or to the last
aspect between whatever planets were involved and then the market would turn and go the other way.
Dave: When you say configuration, what do you mean?
Arch: A number of planets in harmonic relationship. A harmonic relationship of one means two planets
have the same longitude in space.
Dave: They're in line with each other
Arch: Yes. Looking out from Earth, they're in the same place. A harmonic of two is like a full Moon
where one is opposite the other separating the sky into two different parts, the left half and the right half.
The second harmonic is 180 degrees, which is one-half of the 360 degree circle, and the third harmonic is
120 degrees which is one-third of the 260 degree circle. So a trine is 120 degrees and a square is 90
degrees. These are the ones most traditional astrologers use.
Dave: You noticed that these configurations would affect the market,am I following you?
Arch: Oh absolutely. When several planets are involved instead of just these two-planet pairs, it becomes
a unique event and that's what makes it a strange attractor and the market will pull up to that day and then
down or down to that day and then up.
Dave: How many times a month do these strange attractors occur?
Arch: Two to three times a year on a good year. Other than that they follow the Bradley somewhat.
Dave: You found David Williams' pamphlet and the Bradley book...
Arch: First I got a book of planetary positions and I noticed when they were in the one-third and one-sixth
harmonic harmonic the market tended to go up and when they were in the second and fourth harmonic it
tended to go down. That's what I entered into my notes and that's what Williams said in his book. In terms
of statistics there are so many factors involved that a lot of scientists can look at this and they will say
"Ahh, there are not statistically meaningful" but you can combine them in two or three or four cycles
together and they become extremely meaningful.
Dave: These strange attractors that occur two to three times per year... is it something that changes the
trend of the market?
Arch: Yes. It'll either take them up to that day and drop it or down to that day and rally it.
Dave: This really sounds crazy. What's the theory behind the concept? Why does it seem to work?
Arch: You got me. The closest I know about was from another guy named John Nelson, who was a radio
propagation specialist for RCA Corporation, and they put him on the top of a building with a telescope
and said "figure out when the darn sunspots are going to blow up" because before the days of the satellites
they were sending dataflow across the North Atlantic. When the sunspots hit they had to switch to sending
to South America and then over to Africa and then back up to Europe and it was time consuming and
costly so they wanted to know when these things were going to happen. Nelson by regular cyclical means
got up to a 65% accuracy rate which was not satisfactory at all and someone said "why dont you look at
the planetary alignment around the sun at the times of these sunspots because that may give you a handle
on what you want to look at." So he took the 13 worst magnetic storms on the Earth that were on record
with RCA and drew the horoscope heliocentric chart--heliocentric meaning the Sun in the middle. He was
totally blown away by all the harmonic ratios in the days that these sunspots popped off in a big way.
Dave: So it's basically somehow affecting the magnetic field which in turn is affecting people's behavior?
Arch: Yes. Nelson and I figured that if there is a powerful alignment heliocentrically they'll blow the
sunspots out and if it happens to be a high tidal force--a new Moon or full Moon--then the ionized layer of
the Earth's atmosphere will be brought down close to the Earth and make people crazy.
Dave: Let me see if I follow you. It affects people's emotions--making them feel elated--therefore they
will buy stocks, and when they're depressed hit they will sell stocks?
Arch:When the electrons hit it tends to be depressive and when the protons hit hit it tends to be elating and
so if you get a major solar flare it tends to throw a lot of heavy protons but the electrons get there first so
the first couple of days the market drops and then when the protons get there it goes screaming the heck
up. But there are a lot of complications with that. In the 1987 crash, there were the largest number of
electrons hitting the atmosphere that I had ever seen for the longest period of time. When the electrons got
over 1 to the third per cubic centimeter, that's when the market started coming apart. It proceeded on down
on Friday--of course that was options expiration--and crashed on more Monday. The strategy at that time
was if the market went down a certain amount you sell S&P futures are you are protected to whatever
level. The system they had would protect you down to five standard deviations from normal. Monday, it
was a seven standard deviation event and the whole system was threatening to come down.
Dave: What happened the day after that?
Arch: The next morning it was down like another 200 points in 15 minutes with hardly any stocks open.
The Fed said "anybody comes in from Wall Street that wants money, give it to them" and the market came
roaring back and was positive by 10:00.
Dave: Let's talk about another astrological event--the eclipse. Are there any correlations between market
movements and eclipses?
Arch: Yes. They are the most powerful events, taken individually. W.D. Gann wrote seven books about
the market and he was an astrologer but he rarely said anything specifically about astrology in all of those
books.
Dave: He was very vague in everything he wrote.
Arch: Well he was very secretive about it and swore the people around him to secrecy relative to
astrology. David Williams actually introduced me to a friend of his who had worked for Gann and he said
"Yeah he swore us to secrecy but we didn't know anything anyway." (laughs)
Dave: What happens during a solar eclipse?
Arch: The solar eclipse tends to have a longer-term effect, not necessarily so much on the day it happens--
in other words it will be a more important event, but the lunar eclipse tends to be more dramatic for one
day or two days.
Dave: How many eclipses are there per year?
Arch: There are 3-5 eclipses per year. Around the time of the 1987 crash, The Wall Street Journal ran an
article about a guy who had come up with a Mayan calendar date that was very important, and that was
supposed to be August 17 and all the new new age people were going to sacred sites and dancing and
drumming and praying and meditating and doing what they do. It was called the "Harmonic
Convergence." It was supposed to be this Mayan date. Well I looked at this date and I didn't see anything.
I looked forward and here seven days later was the tightest 5-body conjunction in at least 800 years and
they were all visible bodies. And I said "that is what the Mayans were talking about." I said "this market
will peak on August 24, give or take three days, after which we will have a horrendous crash." The market
peaked at Noon on August 25 and it dropped and dropped and it stopped and turned violently on the day
of the solar eclipse on the Fall equinox and it had the biggest up-day in history, to that date, in points. It
broke down in the morning, scared the heck out of traders, turned around and had the biggest up-day in
history. Then it rallied for two weeks; at the top of that rally we had the biggest earthquake in Southern
California in at least seven years and two days later we had the lunar eclipse, which was the biggest down
day in history to date. So the lunar eclipse touched off the earthquake.
Dave: Does astro work the same across all markets?
Arch: These are things that act on emotion and it depends on what markets are moving emotionally at the
time. Another thing I discovered in calculating these cycles was the Mars/Uranus cycle and it's just about
a two year cycle. The market does not crash every two years but every crash that's taken place in the last
100 years took place in the same 40% of that cycle...every one. So I watch those periods whether we are
technically weak or strong, whether we are set up for a possible bad time or not. I said on September 4,
2001 "this market may crash by October 5." The week after the towers fell we had the worst percentage
decline since the fall of France in 1940. I also said that there was an event--I think it was Mercury
changing direction on the Fall equinox which was September 21--and I said that may make that timeframe
more important than normal, and that was the low actually, the 21st--within one day I think Friday was the
low and the equinox was Saturday morning. Also, in that September 4, 2001 letter I said the United States
will be at war around the weekend of the 7th or 8th of September
Dave: Impressive. What do you see for the near future?
Arch: There was nobody else--astrologer or psychic or card reader or anybody else--that had anything
close to that. We are not in that crash period now but the Bradley model shows a high around the middle
of July and goes down all the rest of this year. I think it looks pretty bad right now and it could turn down
right now. We may have a hard hit for 2-3 days next week and then a rally into July, which may or may
not make a higher high and then down the rest of the year. The next crash cycle takes place from August
'06 to March '07.
Dave: When you say crash cycle, you mean a major 1987 style event?
Arch: Yes, The Mars/Uranus cycle, where every crash has taken place.
Dave: What do you see for gold?
Arch: I believe gold will hit a high maybe Monday and will then drop into the summer and after that we
will have a super up-move in it beginning around Labor Day and going for close to a year. Gold, oil,
silver, metals, CRB Index generally. Inflation hedges are ruled by Neptune for whatever reason. I've never
paid any attention to rulership they were telling me that when Saturn came up to 0 degrees Leo the price
of gold would drop because Saturn is contractive and I said that's horsepuckey. Well, the day that Saturn
hit Leo the IMF announced it would sell tons and tons of gold over months and months of time and it was
the only limit move that year. But, it was the day Saturn hit in apparent right ascension, which is the way
astronomers look at the sky, not ecliptic longitude, which is the way astrologers look at the sky. So I
learned a little about rulership stuff and I said "Oh my God." Why should some rulership thing work? I
don't know...
Dave: Is the rulership something astrologers learned from the ancients?
Arch: The ancients had it pretty much locked up in terms of what was supposed to happen theoretically in
those times, yes.
Dave: Arch, we're almost out of time. I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
Arch: It's been fun and I always enjoy talking about this work; it's meant a lot to me for many many years.
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