I wonder what indices do people track to get a feel of the overall market as a whole. And are there any other specific indices or any instrument that you track and for what reason? I'm trying to: 1) set up a system to give me an idea where the overall market is going and 2) see what others are using to see since surely I am missing something.
Push, I do this at the end of the day, not real time, so I am not sure if we will be on the same page. But I track all of the ETFs and a few Closed End Funds just to get an idea of what baskets are strong or weak. These are available at www.holders.com and www.ishares.com Including the foreign ETFs there are enough indices to keep up with what is going on with most of the world markets. Since almost all are going down, there is not much divergence these days. But during the initial tech meltdown Utilities, Oils and Healthcare all held up pretty well. Until earlier this year, small caps were putting up a good showing vs big caps. Those are the sorts of things that I look for. Recently Muni Funds have moved from my list of new highs and started to sell off pretty hard. Something is going on. mac
Thanks guys for sharing. I must admit many of the futures stuff is beyond my understanding since I've haven't looked into studying futures. I've heard they are a good leading indicator. Right now I'm researching swing trading with holding periods from days to weeks. For FYI, I use Datasharks to download ascii data and view them in TradeStation 2000i.