The Need for Research in Business and Financial Astrology
	By Manfred Zimmel Abstract This article discusses the importance of investigations into the field of business and financial astrology. It highlights the differences between astrology in the stock markets and in personnel management. Suggestions are made to improve the situation. Introduction Research in business and financial astrology is a crucial factor, much more than in natal astrology. Interpreting a birth chart for a client is centered on the counseling process and the interaction between astrologer and client. There is little need to find the right chart interpretation, it can even be argumented that there is no right interpretation. Natal astrology definitely is a highly creative process depending on many social factors focusing on finding meaning rather than truth. The benefit created for the customer and his or her satisfaction may be rather independent of the astrological techniques and methods used. As proposed above, this is different for business and financial astrologers. Almost all of the time, there is a wrong or right solution for a given problem, an accurate or inaccurate forecast. And in many cases, the value of the astrological consultation can be expressed in monetary terms. There are some exceptions, of course, especially when astrology is used for coaching employees and managers which is resembling natal astrology. So in most areas of business and financial astrology there is the risk of being right or wrong that is why we need reliabe astrological knowledge to build upon which can be achieved by (empirical) research. In this short article I want to discuss the current situation and make suggestions for future improvements. I am distinguishing here between financial astrology and astrology in personnel management. The former is primarily based on incorporation and first-trade charts, the second on natal charts,. The research conditions are very different in these two areas so I will treat them seperately. Financial astrology In general, financial astrology has a strong position. On the one hand, there is a sufficient body of research results, on the other hand financial astrologers do not need to justify the methods used by them. Every client can dispose of his or her money in whatever way he or she wants. Moreover, there are few other reliable instruments to predict the financial markets. Most of the investment decisions based on recommendations of financial advisors, investment letters and banks underperform the market. It has repeatedly been shown that the average investment fund manager is not able to outperform his benchmark index. Only about 20% of all investmentfund managers can beat the market in a given period. Yet those who outperform in one period have a high probability of underperforming in the next period. Of the dozens of investment advisory lettters tracked by Mark Hulbert in the last years only a few were able to constantly outperform the S & P 500 index - among them Crawford Perspectives by the astrologer Arch Crawford. Financial astrology has been explored very well, hundreds of studies have been published on the subject. Yet a large part can be labelled as "fishing expeditions" meaning that no well-defined hypothesis that was set up before conducting the actual testing. Such quick studies are facilitated by computers and the internet where data can be obtained easily on many places for free. All you need is an astrological research program and some very basic astrological knowledge. So a lot of research is conducted by laypeople who work for themselves or as financial analysts for their company. These people normally do not publish or even communicate their findings. First, they are very reluctant to publicly admit their interest in ing astrology. Second, they are seldom integrated into the astrological community, and third, they are not willing to give the competetive edge created by their research efforts out of hand. I estimate that as little as10%-50% of all studies are published. Several problems are caused by this development. Obviously, a lot of valuable insights are lost for the public. One reason for this situation is known as the prisonner's dilemma in game theory. When everyone is maximizing his or her personal benefit by not sharing research findings the benefit of the whole community is not maximized. However, if only a few participants are communicating their knowledge to the others those who do not share their knowledge will benefit from those who do. The best situation (win-win) would imply for everyone to open the files. Let's move to the published studies now. A majority suffers from flaws, e.g. artifacts remaining uncovered due to not considering astronomical cycles. In rather few cases the current status regarding the research question is covered and alas, statistical analyses showing the significance of the results are often lacking. Hypotheses derived from fishing expeditions have a minor or at least questionable quality compared to properly designed studies. A clear distinction has to be made about the assumptions und expectation before the testing procedure. What might sound a little bit strange at first is that data may be wasted or even "destroyed" in some way. You can not generate hypotheses and test it on the same data set. I want to explain that fact on the following example. Suppose, for instance, astrological constellations are compared to the Dow Jones Industrials Average 1884 to 1998 in a "shotgun approach", i.e. the whole data is used to generate hypotheses that are not specified before. There is no direct way to re-test these assumptions afterwards since all the available data on the DJIA was used. Other stock market indices may react differently to astrological constellations. Gathering and systematically integrating all these hypotheses into the astrological body of knowledge is the big task to be done in the future. This includes distinguishing the powerful from the less powerful astrological signatures for a given market and highlighting "jewels". Furthermore, there are new concepts (e.g. golden section of cycles) and planets (e.g. Chiron) that have not been explored in detail yet. Astrology in personnel management The investigation of astrology in personnel management is at a completely different point. Why? Decisions in personnel management are normally met for other persons, not for the person seeking advice. For example, when a manager has the choice between three job applicants and decides for one of them for astrological reasons, his decision has a major influence on other people's lives and careers so it has to be justified. Yet when astrology neither in the public nor in the scientific opinion is considered to be a valid means to hire people, the criticism of unfairness or arbitrariness by rejected applicants is justified. Besides, there are good or even excellent other recruiting instruments available, e.g. the assessment center. In this situation research that clearly demonstrates the benefits of astrology is not only desireably, it is an absolute duty. Nevertheless, almost no research is available on hiring or training people with the aid of astrology. I could only find two (!) studies. Neither of the two supports the astrological hypothesis. The one is a matching experiment conducted by Prof. Bergmann in Switzerland, the other a BSc dissertation at the University of Manchester. To repeat it, in personnel selection it is not enough that some astrologers agree that "somehow it works". One has to consider< that quite a lot of work has been done on a related topic, the astrological signature of professions. The first to mention are Michel and Francoise. Despite having occupied the minds of dozens or even hundreds of scientists over the last 5 decades there is still no consense on the final result and its meaning for astrology. The Gauquelin research program clearly demonstrates the typical difficulties occuring when exploring astrology and professions. First of all, there is a hot debate about the research question. Are professions and success written in the stars? And if yes, what is it exactly? Second, gathering the data is not as easy as it seems. Enterprises are rather reluctant to provide the data. In the case of the Gauquelins, it took years to agree on a reliable criterion to measure the success of a person. As usual, the birth time remains a big question mark. Third, there was some dispute on how to process the data and how to interprete the results. To stay with the Gauquelin example, it was completely unexpected that the so-called "key sectors" were not equivalent with the houses 1 and 10 but rather with 9 and 12. The results remain a little bit inconclusive. To summarize, a hard piece of work still needs to be done, or to be more precise, the work shoud at least begin some day. My contribution to that goal is my doctoral thesis at the Vienna University of Business Administration and Economics, Austria. I conduct an empirical study on astrology in personnel selection and I am looking for astrologers to participate in the study. If you are interested and wish to learn more about it, please visit my website http://beam.to/Zimmel. Conclusions In this article I have tried to give a brief overview over research in business and financial astrology stressing the imbalance and differences within the area and making some suggestions how to achieve improvements. I think the International Society of Business Astrologers is a very good forum to discuss these matters within the astrological community and to take the necessary steps. Please send comments or questions to h9251757@asterix.wu-wien.ac.at. References BERGMANN, A (1992) L’astrologie, outil d’aide à la décision pour géstionnaires? Cahiers de documentation et de recherche en gestion de resources humaines. [Can astrology help in making recruting decisions?] Unpublished research paper: University of Lausanne, HEC KNOBIL, R (1995) The value of astrology in personnel selection. BSc Dissertation: University of Manchester, UMIST POTTENGER, M (ed.) 1995 Astrological Research Methods Volume 1: An ISAR Anthology. Los Angeles, CA: International Society for Astrological Research; A rather long list of references can be found on my website: http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/usr/h92/h9251757/Ref.html   © Copyright Manfred Zimmel 1999