What investment strategy is working these days? How about stargazing? Indeed, there are a few investment newsletters that currently employ the tools of technical analysis and fundamental analysis in combination with the movement of the planets and stars to predict market moves.

Two prominent newsletters in this “space” are Crawford Perspectives. edited by

Arch Crawford Arch Crawford

, and Wall Street Next Week, run by

Henry Weingarten Henry Weingarten

Both think that the coming opposition of Jupiter and Neptune around Sept. 11, 2002, will have a big effect on the market. However, Weingarten reads the shifts as being bullish for stocks, while Crawford thinks equities will be further ravaged by the bears: The only spike up will be in commodities, especially metals.

Note that Crawford is the only newsletter of the two that is tracked by Hulbert Financial Digest. His record is admirable. He has been publishing his timing service since 1977. He called the market bottom in the summer of 1982 and the October 1987 crash. Last year, he called for “war” and sharp market corrections after Sept. 11. Crawford’s current outlook on equities is extremely bearish: He’s been short the S&P 500 since the first week of 2002; since April he’s been 200% short (fully margined short-selling) the Dow and S&P. Such ultra-bearish positions made him the top market timer for the first half of 2002 as ranked by

Jim Schmidt Jim Schmidt

‘s Timer Digest (interestingly, fellow astrological investor and fund manager

Bill Meridian Bill Meridian

is just behind Crawford on that list).

Crawford plans to stay short on stocks, based in large part on fundamentals. Disappointing corporate earnings, exacerbated by pension underfunding and a deteriorating macroeconomic climate will push more investors out of the market, bringing on “capitulation of a sort never seen before in the modern era.” Crawford says the market has a lot farther to fall before it becomes anywhere near reasonably valued by traditional measures. There may be tradable bear market rallies this fall, but Crawford says equities will be much lower by the end of the year. Long term, he says to buy gold.

By contrast, Henry Weingarten of the Astrologers Fund is 100% long and says stocks “are on sale” right now and investors who don’t buy now “will have to pay retail later.” Weingarten believes that markets hit a bottom on Monday and that the Jupiter-Neptune opposition portends a return to optimism, if not irrational exuberance, among stock investors. “The closer we come to Jupiter-Neptune Sept. 11, the more investors will feel like they are missing out versus being freaked out,” predicts Weingarten.

As far as industry groups, Weingarten likes biotechs and recommends buying Merrill Lynch’s Biotech Index as well as media and entertainment stocks. He’s also bullish on Japan and recommends buying Japan Index iShares or blue chips like Sony. Weingarten’s favorite individual stock is IBM. which he says is “going to 130 in the next year.”

Crawford doesn’t offer analyses of individual stocks in his newsletter, though he stands by a technical call he made last month in a Forbes investment newsletter chart room column: IBM will hit $54 by spring of 2003.

Weingarten points out that IBM, going by its incorporation date, is a natural bull, born in the sign of Taurus.