Checking In

The Peplexed Investor is now the absentee investor. The DOW totters on a precipice. Two months ago, I would have been watching every tick. Now, consumed ....a digression.

I almost wrote 'subsumed', and it occurred to me that I really did not know the meaning of that word. Naturally, I looked it up. Looking up words that I don't know is something of a habit. And in looking up subsumed, I found colligate. I found colligate in Wicktionary: To formally link or connect together logically.

I've had to do a good bit of colligating of late, so my rapturous contemplation of the Dow's limbo dance with 7,000 has been interrupted by things of a more mundane nature. It's the mundane, though, that matters, for the market is ultimately a reflection of the mundane.

Now that I'm working long hours again, the market seems like a very distant and foreign thing. But that I had the opportunity to become its intimate (seems like I should insert something about not getting screwed to badly), helps me look at passing data---interest rates, commodities, gold and other sector performance and have a reasonably clear sense of it all.

I often abbreviate Jose Ortega y Gasset's name a JOYG. Reading this lovely book, Meditations on Quixote has brought me much JOY.

He who wishes to teach us a truth should place us in a position to discover it ourselves. (p.67)

Rollbacks

It looks like the stock market is channeling the ebullient, sunny-faced Walmart cartoon figure and is rolling back prices with a vengeance. I see that we are back to 1997 levels in the DOW. So much for our perennial bottom callers who were so certain that THE bottom (v. A bottom) was in.

I secretly marvel at the hubris that it takes to make such statements with such certitude--largely in that I have some painfully embarrassing moments in my life where I've been most wrong where I was most certain. It is also one thing to be certain about your opinion of the market when it comes to your own money; however, to express these opinions so that other people's money will become entangled in your arrogantly held views on the market is another thing indeed.

Book club was at my home this past Saturday. It was nice to be with everyone. We discussed the book The Ascent of Money. I do recommend your treating yourself to this book that provides an interesting historical context for today's events. There really isn't anything new under the sun. And our market and credit machinations are just one of a long series of busts. The only question is of what magnitude and duration.

I'm embracing a new book: Meditations on Quixote by Jose Ortega y Gasset. I've mentioned it when I acquired it. The first 36 pages were introduction that I read. I'm 45 pages (9 of the author's) into this slender 165 volume. There is considerable here to grasp. I hope that I'm up to it!

"We should be on guard against rigidity, the traditional livery of hypocrisy."

I find JOyG's writing to be full of phrases, sentences and paragraphs that are quote-worthy--much like his fellow Spanish philosopher, George Santayana.

"Man reaches his full capacity when he acquires complete consciousness of his circumstances. Through them he communicates with the universe". (p.41)

"I am myself plus my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I cannot save myself." (p. 45)

I know that this book has come into my hands at an important juncture in my life and the circumstance of the world---the circumstance of MY life. I think that this man's thoughts will help me build some perspective that will tie in a number of things that have been flopping around in my brain. And as I read what he is writing and reflect on it in a wide-eyed response to it as if I had opened a little blue box with some glittering inside, I realize that there is something of a moral imperative for each of us to acquire complete consciousness of our circumstances. I've never thought about it that way before.

Perhaps it is the wrong approach to take as I slip back into interested reader mode--wrong in that it may bias my understanding by placing a filter between me and his writing. But our filters help us make sense of things. I'll be on guard to ensure that my filter does not subject me to the sin of rigidity that he warns against.

Book Club Day

My book club comes to my home today. As usual, EPA cleanup duties abound. We are reading Niall Ferguson's, The Ascent of Money.

I thought I would print for them my Spring 2007 series of Hedge Funds and Systemic Risk. I ran across this paragraph, that I thought would bear repeating:

I wanted to provide a bit of a backdrop of hedge funds (HF's). You may not be a qualified investor and may never will be, so HF's funds may never be in your investment horizon. Nevertheless, they are in the same financial arena as you competing for returns. And the whole point of my writing about this is that if they screw up, it can cost you money.

Let's reflect a moment on the basic tenets of the paper.
· HF's have proliferated;
· They have a high attrition rates;
· Risk profiles (due to leverage and investment styles) are unavailable;
· Operations are not transparent; and
· Non-correlated dynamic strategies can correlate into phase locking during periods of market stress.

Welcome back Nice Guy.....the markets are writhing like a worm on a hot sidewalk. I stay mostly on the sidelines with just enough in the market to feel some pain/gain!

Another Fleecing Exposed

So the Stanford Financial Companies (to include the ubiquitous Stanford Research that appears in so many of the tickers has having issues a research report) is the very latest to have been exposed as financial charlatans.

No shortage of those. If we were in a more primitive society, they would be ground up as chum and fed to fishes who would then feed the hungry. Now that would be poetic justice. BRKR a holding was up yesterday in the carnage. WH, my Chinese tubular steel maker, did not fare well.

I sure wished I owned more gold! I was looking for a file and found my worksheet on the gold stocks that I did over the Thanksgiving holiday. I still have my CEF which I bought on 11/21/08. I try not to judge past decisions on current information as no one has the clarity of prescience, merely educated guesses PLUS miasmic probability distributions. Oh, those are just dressed up hunches and given the aire of respectability by making it look substantive.

Sort like our financial charlatans.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day offers two opportunities: Opportunity 1 is to get out of the dog house. You can guess Opportunity 2 easily as it is the obverse: getting into the dog house. Hopefully my male readers have availed themselves of all means to embrace Opportunity 1.

Yes, I realize that saying that is a wee-bit on the gender biased side of the scales. There does seem to be more obligations for our men on this day than for women. But in men are the wooers still no matter how far women have come in trampling over some of the evolutionary roots of human courtship.

I had a dog run today. It ended up being a longer day than planned. When I arrived on the lot to get the Ford Freestyle, it was blocked in the back by a pickup truck and trailer. In front it was blocked by a trailer. I managed to pick up the trailer an move it out of the way to pull frontwards. To say that my body still has a vivid memory of that event is an understatement.

But, I accomplished my mission and had 8 puppies (in a large crate), 3 cat crates 3 lab girls sisters and a hound dog. The lab girls were NOT cat friendly, and I had to cover their crates, though they wanted to play tug of war with the sheet. Thankfully they settled down, and we had a quiet drive.

A New Leash on Life: A reader, RW, was most kind to suggest that I find a Chinese supplier. He provided a link. And.....it does look very promising. I'm doing some exploratories with different contacts to see if this looks like something to pursue. A dog's lead is very symbolic of their deep connection with us and us with them. I did a trial pitch to one of my former colleagues who was VP of Sales and Marketing. (I always want to abbreviate that to S&M, but it just never looks right, though I would say that there are likely many shared characteristics with the darker suggestion).

I showed him my leash, and he was amazed that I had made it. I'm not sure that it said so much for the leash as much as it may have said about his surprise at my skills to produce one. Anyway, it was good conversation over a martini!

I asked the bartender how business was. He said weekends were just as busy, but weekday traffic has lessened.

As I write this, my husband has come in (from making a dog 3-board dog fence extension) to tell me that he has not done too well. Apparently he has charged by daughter with procuring a box of chocolates. She, unilaterally, decided that spending $30 on a box of Godiva chocolates was more than I deserved. She did not bother to tell my husband this until it was too late.

Now, my husband's confession is a bit of paradoxical. Here is a man who has spent the better part of his day (and another day) to dig post holes and cut and nail boards to keep our dogs safely contained. This particular extension is to keep Chumbalina (a/k/a Macy and Fat Monkey) from terrorizing the mail person, the UPS man and any of my neighbor's other guests when they have to drive into HIS driveway. That Macy sees it as her duty to do this is unacceptable. As my husband and Tim are such good friends, a considerable amount of thought went into the gate latch.

We want an enclosure to keep our dogs from chasing vehicles that can hurt them. We do not want an enclosure to keep our friends from visiting. I find that value to be enormously more than a box of chocolates. For my own part, I'm grilling lamb chops. Simple dinner of grilled lamb chops, salad and baked potato and good bread. Accompanied by some Greg Norman Shiraz. I'm having a $120 (including tip) restaurant dinner for about $25. And there's not much effort involved. I normally have crab cakes with spicy avocado sauce, but that's more effort than the energy I have available.

I hope that you enjoyed your time with your special someone.

The market?.........ahh....love is more important than money. We'll save that conversation for another day.

Bonds v. Equities

Bloomberg provided this informative graphic (nice muted colors too) on equities v. bonds. You can click on the graph to be transported to the original post entitled: ‘Cult of Equity’ Is Under Attack, Citigroup Says: Chart of Day

For so long, we've been told that in all instances stocks outperform bonds, and it has been the rallying cry to invest in equities using bonds to soften some of the volatility in stocks. Are we a awakening, then, to a new day where bonds are now exciting rather than staid and boring? Will equities now languish as unattractive investments due to their 'last in line' status in uncertain times? The fullness of time will answer that.

------------------------------------------------

Ray Dalio is interviewed by Sandra Ward in Barron's.

Recession? No, It's a D-process, and It Will Be Long

Ray Dalio, Chief Investment Officer, Bridgewater Associates

By SANDRA WARD

Click on the title and you'll be transported. If you are not a subscriber to Barron's you can e-mail me (leisa-va@cox.net) and I'll be happy to e-mail you the link.

P. S. A reader offered this link to a PDF on Scribd.

A New Leash on Life

The Perplexed Invetor has morphed into a second-rate, piece rate seamstress. Trust me, I'd starve if I had to make my living this way. But after the equipment failures on our dog rescues, I was determined to find a way to make some high quality leashes by buying the webbing and the clasps wholesale.

I do know how to sew, and I pulled out the trusty Bernina. My prototype did not go well. But in Henry Ford fashion, I managed to improve my productivity with each lead.

It is hard to find discount pet products. I knew last summer I had hit the jackpot at Big Lots, when they had a bunch of beautiful Aspen Pet leads for $1. I bought every one that they had, for I could not even buy the buckle for that. I parceled them out to my volunteer friends and to me. They are all gone but one. Ever since, I've been looking for a deal. There were none to be had.

Over the last few transports, we've had more tethered dogs. Big, strong dogs who pull. We've had 'D' rings break, choke chains break and the clip shank break. It's no fun handling a dog and have an equipment failure. So here I am with a goal : A New Leash on Life.

By spending a small amount of my time (about 10 minutes per lead), I can give a dog a new leason on life. S/he gets a high quality leash that helps him/her as well as supports the volunteer handling/caring for the dog. Leashes of this quality sell for about $12-15. I can save about 75% making them without a big investment of time ( Seems like the best I can do is make these leads for $3 a piece--or about 25% of retail price. ). I'm trying to work out a better deal from the supplier, so I gave him my inspirational story. We'll see what happens.

PRGO

This chart has been in my rifle scope. I believed that it was in distribution and had formed a top. I bought some FEB 25 puts at a whopping .25. It was a bit of a flyer, and I even bought some of the stock to pick up some uptick. I had fully funded puts that I just left. Oh, it was not very much mind you....a handful. But I sold them for $2 yesterday. I consider that a dividend. They traded as high as 2.90---but I was busy at work, and looked in after I saw they reported yesterday morning. Good historical numbers but reduced guidance. Huge gap down. I didn't overstay.

Here's an inverse chart for WH--my Chinese tubular steel maker (for oil services). They announced some good news and sold off a bit yesterday on about 1/2 volume of the day before. I remain long in a small position.

I remain very conservatively positioned.....I don't feel that the market has priced in all of the bad news----largely due to the rather serial nature of the bad news, meaning that it is keeps coming with no relief. It appears to me that the market is expecting some good news around the corner.

The healthcare sector has been enjoying a resurgence of interest. If you are looking for areas to find some action, you could look there. Here are a few names that I found with Stock Fetcher--13 day moving average moving above the 34 day moving average on in 2x increase volume in the 5 day v. 10 average volume:

Another Busy Week

Just prior to leaving for my client yesterday I received an e-mail from the English Setter Rescue. A lovely girl was in the King William pound and today was the "Day". Times up, out or down. She had a foster, but the foster was up in DC and could not take her until Tuesday.

I found myself writing one of those 'use me as a last resort' e-mails. I was extraordinarily busy, and would have to leave early. I don't have a completely fenced in yard, and English Setters are go-go guys and gals. So all I could think about was all of the obstacles to my getting her--particularly when I had to do a rescue the next day (today). Stepping back away from the obstacles, though, I had to reason with myself, that I literally was the singular intervention in this dog's life on that day--and that felt like a duty. Not a burden, but simply a duty. I hit the send button.

My cell phone rang immediately. As it turned out, another volunteer who could not get her, could overnight her. All I had to do was drive. King William is not very far out. It was about a 40 minute drive. I picked up this BIG girl, who was very reticent, but very sweet (as are most ES's). Driving back into town, I was headed west. I was treated to the most beautiful and luminous of sunsets. It felt like a reward for doing good.

We will have a cold day today to do our work. I like doing these rescues in the cooler (if not cold) months. I don't get overheated, and the dogs do not get overheated. You can service the pups and their crates and stick them right in a vehicle without baking them.

The market has gone no where so it seems. I did get a call from a Merrill Lynch person who had been talking to my client about their investment options for the 401(K). He was going on and on about their experience. And then started talking about how they like corporate bonds and muni's. (I'm sure 2 years ago they liked the CDS's). Generally, he was talking about their 'success'. I had a 'moment' and said, "Well, after all you've done so well on your own account." I don't think that he fully understood my meaning.

Permit my being a little jaded in taking investment vehicle advice from someone who had to have a shotgun wedding.

The Market?

I'm now on day 8 of my consulting project. So far nothing has blown up. I was able to process and get payroll out with nary a glitch. The nice thing about seeing and working with lots of systems, is that you realize that there are only so many different ways to get to the end result. The software interface either makes it an efficient or frustrating experience. And....I learned a long time ago that you do not mess with people's pay. So, I spent the better part of the weekend entering, checking and double checking payroll. It's an environment with producing employees so there is job costing involved for 80% of the employees.

But I've had to sit in an emptied seat and figure it all out for myself for every job that I've ever had (consulting and employee). While it's not a comfortable experience flying an airplane blind, I'm an intrepid pilot--though I would likely never land a plane so smoothly on the Hudson. The trouble is that these positions are pretty isolated and not one other person in the company knows how to do anything that seat does. They all just know what they get from the seat.

Being away from the market, I'm reminded as to what a foreign world the market's daily machinations are to working folk. The respite away from the dips, soars and wiggles has been very refreshing. I still look at charts, mind you, and I'll look at a few after I press the send button.

I had to have my car serviced. I stopped by to visit my salesman--he is a professional salesperson, and if you buy a car from him, he will take care of you. You will find NO auto salesperson more successful than he. My husband and I have bought every Ford car we've owned from him. He's been at the same dealership for years, except for a little tiff he had and left for a very brief interlude to work for a competitor. He said his volume is down 50% and his income is down 70% as they are offering employee discounts to customers to move product.

I heard Dennis Gartman on Gary K night before last. He believes, as does many others, that the market has already bottomed. I'm trying to be agnostic. I've enough long exposure to not feel like I'm missing out on any of the the good moves.

I've been watching the Utilities. I have some FEB XLU 30 calls. Lots of constructive action in several names.

Today I hunt for W-2's.

Cecil County SPCA

I adopted Daisey from this organization, and I have given them support. I stopped sending any further donations as no one bothered to send me a thank you note. Recently, I was both surprised and disgusted to learn of the many allegations by former shelter workers and volunteers of animal abuse. One of our transport volunteers for my Saturday transport voiced some concerns. Apparently, many have been trying to get their voices heard to get someone to do something. I'll spare you the details. I had to stop reading the affidavit that was forwarded to me after about line 3. The alleged cruelty is unspeakable. Though someone had to speak it to fill out the affidavit. Worse, this person (and others) had to witness it. Worse still, the animals had to experience it.

Hopefully the tenor of the accusations is to the level that something will be done to remove the management of that facilty and return the facility to what it is supposed to be: a shelter.

The Nature of Risk Part Two

Justin Mamis's book, The Nature of Risk, is now on my 'must recommend' list for new investors. I'm not longer a new investor, but I sure learned plenty from it. There is a mosaic of points that he makes about time, price and information risk that is so cogently said, that I've not considered them together in such a way. Consider these points. . .

* At the bottom, there is maximum negative, and no positive, information, but the price risk is minimal. (p 36). . . The price risk--because selling is exhausted--has been taken out of the stock, even though we have total information risk.... At the moment of maximum information risk, the price risk is mininal.
* The more information that becomes available, the greater the price risk because the stock has already risen (p. 42). . . Thus at the point of maximum positive information we also have maximum price risk.
* Time risk is alwasy present for those who are over anxious to bottom-fish.What does eventually turn out to be the bottom eighth--in hindsight--is a high-risk place to buy a stock. (p. 34)

Overheard

I overheard a money manager stating the importance of staying invested so that investors can catch the first meteoric rise off the bottom.....paraphrased......"being in such lifts off the bottom are important to not underperform the benchmark indices."

As individual investors, we are not compared in any mandatory way to any benchmark indices. Any such comparison is done voluntarily--or perhaps under durress by a spouse who wonders about our competency--sometimes with good reason. Assuming a measure of competency which has schooled us into stepping aside lest we get flattened by an avalanche of selling activity, we have a heckuva lot outperformance goodwill accrued as we've sidestepped a wholesale 40%+ haircut on our portfolio. Why, then, should we feel compelled to step into the opaque and turbulent waters of a market uncertain as to if its next move is up or down?

Why are there few money managers willing to say such? Who's to know. But even forgetting about any of that, and I do not believe in benchmark performance against indices. Relative outperformance against an absolute loss of dollars is a hollow victory. John Hussman is astute in pointing out that the best way to compare the performance of one's money manager is over the course of an ENTIRE cycle. Makes sense to me.

Vulnerable S&P

[This picture scroll illustrates a story of Minamoto Yoshitsune, a military commander at the end of the 12^th century, and his follower, Benkei, who were expelled from Kyoto and arrived at Hiraizumi, Oshu Province. This story was very popular by being adapted to dramas and novels] Click pic to be transported to the Rare books of the National Diet Museum.

I've some client work that will keep me away from the markets for some weeks/months. I'm reminded that my skills are best deployed to help others.

The S&P is looking very vulnerable to my eye. It will either hold or break. It is likely not to dawdle long here.

Up or down? Toss a coin.

How Low Can They Go?

Sounds like it ought to be a new game show for financial stocks. Here's an ugly picture



Who is left to sell BAC? Or C?


Here's a chart of Industrial Metal Prices.

Have they stabilized a la Napier's suggestion for a bear market to end? I do not know. The $USD action and supply/demand are sort of a jumble. Best to observe as this violence plays out.

I Couldn't Help Myself

I no longer color my hair. Though I must say that it is a bit unsettling when folks say about one's streaks of gray that it looks "striking". It makes me think of Morticia. I'm not contemplating a divorce quite yet. So the agent of change in my life must be this blog.

I found this template and I like it alot. I have to rebuild links and what not. I hope you like the new style.

S&P 500: Then V. Now

In my continuing quest to bring you stuff that no reasonable person would look for on his/her own, I present to you the following table that shows the change in relative market cap among the sectors represented in the S&P 500. You can get this information for yourself here

While an immediate review of the percentages themselves may produce a yawn or two, if you look at the % change over 2008, the change is rather stark.. . .

• Consumer Staples increase of 22.6%
• Energy being weighted just higher than Financials
• Financials DECREASING a whopping 34.6%
• Healthcare increasing 19.3%
  
• Utilities, while still less than 5%, increased 14.1%
  

I don't pretend to have any special knowledge of stuff, but given the weighting changes, it would seem to me that sector rotation would have lots to do with the behavior of the index when one is looking at comparisons. For example, how much further could financials fall RELATIVE to Consumer Staples? Meaning the new composition may affect onward rate of change relative to economic conditions. Accordingly, there might be some stability now in the index itself as so much of the 'hot money' was in Financials and Energy.

The S&P market cap has fallen 39.3% over the study period.

P. S. If I ever had ANY doubts about Mercury Retrograde, they were all resolved on our last dog transport: car troubles, traffic troubles, dog mix up troubles----not to mention the geese and the plane................

The Nature of Risk

Google books on line has several out of print books that you can get. You know one of my favorites is Selden's Psychology of the Market. I think I'll go through that again today by the fire.

Anyway, this one came from Gold Bricks of Speculation byJohn Hill, Jr. of the Chicago Board of Trade. (1904). It is helpful to read these long forgotten words to remind ourselves that there is truly nothing new in the world, and people cheating other people is a timeless preoccupation of humankind.

Fraser Publishing has a number of these books for a reasonable price. I recently finished Justin Mamis's The Nature of Risk: Stock Market Survival and the Meaning of Life. It is a delightful book about the market and the rather twisted ways in which our psychology perceives risk. In reading the forward, he mentions Helene Meisler who write TA for Real Money. I wrote her a brief e-mail mentioning how much I enjoyed the book. She said that Mamis was the best mentors that a person could have. He is in his eighties now. How delightful it must be to have your mentor call you out as being a "helper along the way" to his/her own understanding.

As I move along in seeking to diminish the perplexedness out of my own investing, I've found that the less I think, the better I do. I say this, though, having spent a good bit of time in forging my own understanding of stock market stuff--and developing a bit of 'doing without thinking' which is rather firmly rooted in doing a lot of thinking, doing, falling down, getting up and getting kicked in the stomach, arse, and having my ears boxed by the market. It's called building competence.

I have to compare my investor education to the exquisite trade of a blacksmith. With only fire and brawn and a rhythmic pounding of his hammer, he takes unformed metal and makes it into wondrous things of both elegance and utility. I'm pushing for both elegance and utility in my own investor education. The fire is my own desire to understand this 'stuff' and the brawn is simply my dogged tenacity in reading and acquiring the tools to be successful and applying those tools in an environment of uncertainty (risk).

Mamis is a market technician's technician. He believes that the market has its own language and uses technical analysis to listen to what the market is saying. He reminds that the market is designed to fool the most people most of the time. I believe him.

He writes

The value of technical analysis in the stock market is to reduce risk. It is especially helpful in guiding you to believe what otherwise seems unacceptable. By extension, therefore, it is most helpful at identifying significant market turns, both for the market and for individual stocks. . . . Stock charts and the indicators are like doctors' advice: exercise, diet, reduce stress, and so on. They are a means of establishing imperfect but relatively objective ways to understand market risks and market choices. (p.13)

This book reads more like an engaging philosophical treatise that doesn't mention words such as phenomenology! Also, his writing is fluid and engaging, and the book is liberally interspersed with real nuggets of practicable wisdom. I'll likely read it a couple of more times. What is particularly helpful is his discussion about ultimately you have to make a decision to act (buy/sell/hold) within a context of having incomplete (in all of its manifestations) information.

Mercury Retrograde Strikes at Home

In classic Mercury retrograde fashion my computer was mightily felled over the last couple of days. I wrote to Cox customer service and they gave me the standard suggestions which I had done. But my broadband was crawling at 512kbs. All things that I rely on my computer for were screwed up. In that process, I wanted to share a few things with you.

• Norton Utilities: I found and ran Stopzilla--one of those anti-spyware programs. It found Vundo and another virus that Norton was asleep at the wheel with! It has since found some other stuff.
  
• Speedtest.net: Here's a great place to test your internet upload/download speed. My neighbor who has been in computer sales, repair etc recommended this site. This is where I was able to measure my pitiful performance. Check it out.
  
• Online PC Repair: AFter I pulled off a bunch of stuff, these guys did a PC tuneup/repair that found bunches of other crap that both Stopzilla and Norton did not remove. For a flat fee, they fix this stuff. I got the Family Premium Membership which gives unlimited service for 1 year on up to 3 computers. The cost was $380. My daughter has a laptop, and just doing two tuneups/fixes pays for the service--then you can get whatever you need for another year afterwards. Sure beats unhooking and hauling. These guys worked on the computer (I couldn't use it for a good part of the day). Their service was terrific and more than exceeded my expectations. (I don't get any freebies for mentioning them).
  

So, if you've NOT given your pc any tender loving care (meaning removing the leper scabs of adware and other crap that has adhered to your computer), you might want to consider doing so in some fashion particularly if you rely on your computer.

Mercury Retrogrades for 2009

Yes dear readers we are going to dip our toe into the waters of the fantastical other realms, in this case astrology! Whether or not you believe it or not, why not throw some salt over your shoulder and mark the dates below on your calendar for this year? These are the dates that Mercury goes into retrograde. These periods mark a time when stuff ruled by Mercury can go awry.



'SRx' is' retrograde'. 'SD' is 'station direct' where the planet moves from retrograde to forward motion. Here's a nice summary of the effects of a Mercury retrograde:

Mercury retrograde gives rise to personal misunderstandings; flawed, disrupted, or delayed communications, negotiations and trade; glitches and breakdowns with phones, computers, cars, buses, and trains. And all of these problems usually arise because some crucial piece of information, or component, has gone astray or awry.

Rob Tillet (Click here for link to this article)

Tillet also notes:

In general, Mercury rules thinking and perception, processing and disseminating information and all means of communication, commerce, education and transportation. By extension, Mercury rules people who work in these areas, especially people who work with their minds or their wits: writers and orators, commentators and critics, gossips and spin doctors, teachers, travelers, tricksters and thieves.

Because of the 'tricksters' and 'thieves' inclusion above, this retrograde fully embraces the market! Supposedly this is also a time when technical analysis, specifically supports, signals etc fail.