The best day to invest: electing a financial decision

Investment astrology: electing the moment money is committed

The best day to invest money, by the rules of electional astrology, is not a weekday or a date that suits everyone. It is a window: the strongest moment inside the dates you can act, for the place where you will act. Investment astrology in this sense is the art the Arabic authors called al-ikhtiyārāt, “the choices”, turned to money: the astrologer looked ahead for an auspicious day to invest money and an hour within it. The best time to invest money is found by a search, not read off a calendar.

Not financial advice. An election rates the timing of a step by astrology’s rules. Canopy’s own guidance is plain that a timing score says nothing about the price or risk of an investment and is not the chance of a good outcome.

Canopy’s purpose for it is Investments & Financial Decisions, al-Māl wa al-Istithmār, for buying stocks, allocating capital or any undertaking with money. Its advice is to time the moment you commit the money: the order placed, the transfer sent. Unlike much astrology investing, an election reads no market chart and no Sun-sign forecast, but the moment itself. A home purchase has its own purpose, Property & Real Estate, and a raise is timed as a negotiation.

The best time to invest money: Jupiter, Mercury and the houses of wealth

Every matter has its significators, the planets that signify it by nature. For money Canopy takes Jupiter first, the greater fortune and the planet of increase, and Mercury second, the planet of reckoning, trade and written terms. A launch takes the same two the other way round, and the order matters: the first significator is the one the Moon is measured against, so a Moon applying to Jupiter counts in an investment window’s favor, the more the closer she is, and more again in mutual reception.

Each significator is weighed by sign, and their dignities pull against each other: Jupiter’s own signs, Sagittarius and Pisces, are Mercury’s detriment, and Mercury’s, Gemini and Virgo, are Jupiter’s. A window seldom finds both at full strength, and a significator burned by the Sun loses ground.

Four houses carry the matter, each with a House Ruler Analysis card on a window’s detail: the first, the one who commits the money; the second, “Wealth, possessions, and resources”; the eighth, “Shared resources and transformation”; and the seventh, the other party. The eighth is the second house counted from the seventh, the other side’s money: a fund, a borrower, a counterparty.

Canopy scores each house’s lord in every window. The second is the matter’s own house: when the lord of the Ascendant, who stands for you, is not stronger than its lord, the window is capped below the excellence band, and Why this time? says so. An investment, unlike a negotiation, is not scored as a contest with the other party.

The borrower’s house and the lender’s house

This purpose adds refusals of its own. Canopy’s investment rules treat the first and seventh houses as the borrower’s and the lender’s, and Mars or Saturn anywhere in either whole-sign house sets a window aside, even when the malefic is weak in its sign; a negotiation would forgive that in the seventh.

If the lord of the second or of the eighth is retrograde or combust, the matter’s own lord is disabled and the window is set aside, unless that lord is the Sun or the Moon. A launch guards the tenth this way; an investment guards the eighth.

Mars or Saturn in the tenth, the trade’s house, only lowers a window. And since the seventh is one of this purpose’s houses, a malefic fixed star whose zodiacal longitude lies within a degree of the Descendant rules a window out, as it would on the Ascendant or the Midheaven: Algol on any of the three sets an investment window aside.

Faults that strike any window

Beneath these lie the faults that rule out a window for any purpose: the Moon combust, within 8.5° of the Sun, unless cazimi; joined to the South Node within 8°; void of course, which Sahl ibn Bishr and al-Bīrūnī took for an undertaking that comes to nothing; or in the via combusta, from 19° Libra to 15° Scorpio. Mars or Saturn within 3° of the Ascendant and a combust lord of the Ascendant do the same. See how Canopy reads an election.

The best day to invest is an hour, not a weekday

Popular lists name Thursday, Jupiter’s day, as the day for money. A weekday takes its name from the planet of its first hour after sunrise, but the planetary hours keep turning in the Chaldean order, so every day holds hours of all seven planets, and Canopy scores the hour, not the day.

An investment favors the hours of Jupiter, Mercury and the Sun, and every election also weighs an hour by its planet. Together, Jupiter’s hour counts most, the Sun’s next, then Mercury’s and Venus’s; the hours of Mars and Saturn count against a window, as does an hour whose lord is retrograde or combust. The planetary hour now tool shows the hour in your city.

Three mansions for an auspicious day to invest money

The Moon’s lunar mansion counts too. She spends about a day in each of the twenty-eight, and where the business rules favor nine, an investment keeps three, al-Buṭayn, al-Zubra and Saʿd al-Suʿūd, and counts eight heavily against a window. These are scores, not refusals: a strong sky can carry a forbidden mansion, at a cost.

Each favored mansion sits beside a forbidden one, so a single day can move a window from one list to the other: al-Sharaṭān gives way to al-Buṭayn in Aries, al-Zubra to al-Ṣarfa in Leo, and Saʿd Bulaʿ to Saʿd al-Suʿūd at the end of Capricorn. The lists are this purpose’s own and replace each mansion’s general nature: al-Ṣarfa counts as Saʿd in the general table, yet it counts against an investment.

When Jupiter or Mercury is retrograde

The modern warning is never to invest while Mercury is retrograde. Canopy is stricter: a retrograde significator rules every window out, a rule drawn from Sahl and the Picatrix, and money has two. While Mercury is retrograde, about three weeks at a time, three or four times a year, the search finds nothing, and the same holds for the four months or so in every thirteen that Jupiter spends retrograde.

Empty lists are common; the app’s advice is “Widen the window, or scan again.” A six-month range reaches past a Jupiter retrograde. Any other planet retrograde only costs a window a little, unless it rules the second or the eighth.

How to find the best day to invest in Canopy

In the app, open Elections, choose Events, and under “What are you electing for?” pick Investments & Financial Decisions, listed under Business. Set From and To, up to 183 days, about six months. Check the Location card, since the hours and the rising sign are worked out for that place, and set it to where you will commit the money; then tap Find Best Moments.

The results list shows the windows that reach 50% or more, sorted by Soonest or Best Quality. Each card gives the time, the Ascendant, the Midheaven, the ruler of the hour, up to three factors in its favor and the score. Open one for House Ruler Analysis, Why this time?, Save to Calendar and Set Reminder. The score rates the timing, not the return.

Your chart and the money

Windows are ranked by the election chart alone. With your birth data entered, your nativity adds a bounded adjustment, never more than ten points either way, and Your Chart at Election Time draws your natal planets inside the moment’s wheel.

Jupiter at the chosen moment in conjunction, trine or sextile with the ruler of your natal second house, or passing through that house, counts in a window’s favor, as it would for any purpose. For the business purposes, an election Ascendant in your natal eleventh-house sign counts as the commerce channel, unless your natal Mars or Saturn is there. Against a window count an election rising in your natal sixth, eighth or twelfth sign, the eighth read in the nativity as a place of loss, and a rising degree or Moon within the rays of your natal Mars or Saturn.

In the election chart itself, a Moon in the third, sixth, eighth or twelfth sign from the moment’s Lot of Fortune is a caution, a rule drawn from the Picatrix.

Questions