The horoscope of Bill Gates, Jr., the founder of Microsoft Corporation makes a very interesting reading. His sidereal horoscope has Gemini ascendant with Jupiter in the 3rd house (Leo), Mars and Mercury in the 4th house (Virgo); the Sun, Venus and Saturn in the 5th house (Libra). It is quite obvious that his horoscope has to have tremendous wealth generating and ruling combination. A cursory glance at his horoscope shows that, if read from the ascendant, you will have to stretch your intellectual sinews to prove that this one indeed is the horoscope of an individual who happens to be a world famous billionaire. You will be hard pressed to do mental callisthenics to distinguish it from other horoscopes that you see a dime a dozen. I have seen the horoscope of a woman with the same ascendant with similarly placed Mercury and Venus and a better placed Mars, but she is not a billionaire-far from it, she is in a poor shape, financially speaking.

Bill Gates' period of exalted Saturn ended very early when he was less than three years of age. Thereafter, the period of Mercury lasted till he turned 19. After that his 7 year period of Ketu (dragon's tail) started. This period ended just after he had signed an agreement with IBM in 1981. For twenty years afterwards ie 2002 he reigned supreme in twenty year period of Venus in the fifth house of Libra-a trinal house. While this does explain his 20 year period of his phenomenal rise, it does not explain the incubation period-so to speak-of seven years preceding it. Unless, of course, you see it from the radical moon placed in the tenth house. Here, Ketu is in sitting pretty in the third house-representing courage and hands among other things. It is extremely good for a malefic to be in the 3rd house. It is also important to have the lords of 4 lean houses (viz. 3rd, 6th, 8th and 12th) to be weak. His Sun, the lord of the 3rd from the ascendant is in its fall in Libra, hence it is weak.

Seen from the Moon Sign, Pisces, we see that besides Ketu in 3rd, the lords of the 4 lean houses from Moon viz. Venus (lord of the 3rd Taurus and 8th Libra), Sun (lord of 6th, Leo) and 12th Saturn are together in the 8th, forming an extremely formidable Vipareeta Raja Yoga-it literally means reverse ruling combination-when sometimes you gain from other's failure. In his case it resulted from the failure of Digital Research to deliver an Operating System to IBM. Of course, here also lords of two trinal house and the 2nd house (Moon and Mars) and two angles (Mercury-4th and 7th) are in mutual aspect and conjunction, lending tremendous weight to the overall horoscope.

It is this and multiplier effect of so many rare combinations from the ascendant and Moon that has lifted him to the top, and kept him there for decades.