VOL. I · NO. 119 · standardpoorly.comTHU · MAY 28 · 2026FORWARD HORIZON · 1 d / 1 wk / 1 mo / 3 mo
STANDARD Poorly
"All the correlations that are barely fit to print"
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Poorlylifestyle_searchSP-4874

Search: "Mercury retrograde"

Daily Google search volume for "mercury retrograde" in the US, indexed 0–100 by Google. Spikes at the start of each retrograde window (when astrology newsletters and Twitter remind everyone) and decays through the period. We pair it with the calendar indicator above to separate "retrograde happening" from "people thinking about retrograde happening" — which, if you believe in the soft sentiment hypothesis, might matter more for markets than the celestial mechanics.

Sectors:Search & Wikipedia Trends
the verdict —
Engine has no recorded fires for this indicator (no day where |z|≥2 against the rolling window). The series is too steady, the threshold is too high, or the data is too short to evaluate. Status: pending.
What to watch when it fires
XLY

— Current state —

Latest value
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Binary calendar indicator — value is 1 on event days, 0 every other day. A time-series sparkline isn't meaningful here (it's mostly zeros). The hit-rate / magnitude stats below are computed against the event days themselves; see the COMING UP strip on the home page for upcoming instances.

— What it has historically predicted —

Historically barely better than chance over the next trading day. We surface this for transparency, not because we'd trade on it.

50%
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1 d
50%
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1 wk
50%
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1 mo
50%
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3 mo
50%
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6 mo
50%
—
1 yr

— Beyond SPY — how this signal performs across markets —

Same fire days, different forward returns. Each row asks: when this signal fires, what does that asset do? The big number is the average return; underneath is how often the asset moved the same direction as the signal (50% would be a coin flip).

target
1 d
1 wk
1 mo
3 mo
6 mo
1 yr
SPY
S&P 500 ETF
n=0
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50% same direction
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50% same direction
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50% same direction
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50% same direction
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50% same direction
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50% same direction
shaded cell = each row's strongest horizon (green = bullish forward return, red = bearish)“same direction” means the asset moved the same way the signal moved — opposite of a coin flip.