OptionsWest | What is OptionsWest?


Stock Market indexes are chart tools that allow us to analyze the investor sentiment of markets, sectors, and industries. Measuring these cohorts can give us educated insights into the movement of markets, industries, and stocks. Learning to utilize these tools and to make them a part of your financial lexicon can contribute greatly to your trading skills and expertise. When it comes to investing successfully, traders with a solid knowledge of the market indexes and how to read their charts have a definite advantage. Some indexes are purely for analysis, like the Dow (DJI) and the S&P 500 (SPX), but many are tradeable entities. Learning the significance of an industy index can give you a clearer perspective on the metric that moves that specific market. Staying in tune with sectors that are working is one of the keys to making money in the market. Market trading is a challenging endeavor and working for every edge and advantage is a sound investing approach.

Major Indexes

The major indexs that the mutual fund managers follow are the same indicies that we want to follow. They are the well known barometers that are always listed on the evening news.

Dow Jones 30 - DJI
S&P 500 - SPX

NASDAQ 100 - COMP
RUSSELL 2000 - IWN

Tradeable Industry Sector Indexes

The sector and industry indexes are an assorted group of true stock group indexes and SPDR's and ETF funds. They give us a look at an industry as a whole, forming an over-all picture of how well a particular group is performing. This big picture view helps us determine where the money is flowing and allows us to hone in on industries/stocks that are working.

Financials - XLF
Tech - XLK
Energy - XLE
Healthcare - XLV
HomeBuilders - XHB
Metals & Mining - XME
Gold - GLD
Semiconductor - SMH
Industrial- XLI
Infrastructure- IGF
Infrastructure- PXR
US Dollar - DXY
Oil Service - OIH
Oil & Gas Exploration- XOP

Materials - XLB
Midcap 400 - MDY
BioTech - IBB
Retail - XRT
Russel 2000 - IWM
Consumer Staples - XLP
Consumer Spending - XLY
Transportation - IYT
Telecommunications - IYZ
Coal - KOL
Crude Oil - OIL
Copper- JJC
S&P 500 SPDR - SDY
Steel- SLX

Tradeable ETF's

Exchange Traded Funds (ETF's) are funds offered exclusively as trading entities that follow a specific industry or sector. The powers that be have invented just about every trading product you can imagine and offer them as investment vehicles. There are thousands of them Below are a few that also gives us insight into the health of different market sectors and industries.

UUP	Bullish	US DOLLAR INDEX FUND

BGU	Bullish 3X	LARGE CAP RUSSELL 1000
BGZ	Bearish 3X	LARGE CAP RUSSELL 1000

MWJ	Bullish 3X	RUSSELL MID CAP
MWN	Bearish 3X	RUSSELL MID CAP

TNA	Bullish 3X	SMALL CAP RUSSELL 2000
TZA	Bearish 3X	SMALL CAP RUSSELL 2000

MATL	Bullish 3X	BASIC MATERIALS
MATS	Bearish 3X	BASIC MATERIALS

ERX	Bullish 3X	ENERGY
ERY	Bearish 3X	ENERGY

FAS	Bullish 3X	FINANCIALS
FAZ	Bearish 3X	FINANCIALS

GASL	Bullish 3X	NATURAL GAS
GASX	Bearish 3X	NATURAL GAS

RETL	Bullish 3X	RETAIL
RETS	Bearish 3X	RETAIL

TYH	Bullish 3X	TECHNOLOGY
TYP	Bearish 3X	TECHNOLOGY

YINN	Bullish 3X	CHINA
YANG	Bearish 3X	CHINA

EDC	Bullish 3X	EMERGING MARKETS
EDZ	Bearish 3X	EMERGING MARKETS

LBJ	Bullish 3X	LATIN AMERICA
LHB	Bearish 3X	LATINAMERICA

BRIL	Bullish 3X	BRAZIL
BRIS	Bearish 3X	BRAZIL