Wall Street Traders Turn to ... Astrology?!

Wall Street is a sophisticated place full of smart, savvy professionals who make decisions based on rational criteria … like whether or not Mercury is in retrograde. An astrology-based financial newsletter has drawn a couple thousand subscribers, Marketplace.org reveals. Another has at least 300 traders subscribed, for the low-low price of $237 a year. Of course, most traders want to keep such a trove of valuable insight to themselves—astrologer Arch Crawford recalls a customer asking to receive the report in "brown paper wrappers."

Another astrologer gave this advice ahead of a recent Fed announcement: "They now have Saturn squared to Neptune, which is really bankruptcy. Neptune represents money. But when Saturn shows up in a chart, it indicates restriction. So for the Fed, that means, 'the fiscal cliff is here.'" Sounds scientifically sound to us. Oh, and if Mercury really is in retrograde, watch out—that means communication failures, and according to Crawford, that usually means market glitches—like Knight Capital's meltdown. (More Wall Street stories.)