Ticker symbols

[99percent]

Being only invested in the TSP I'm wondering which (if any) ticker symbols would be appropriate to keep an eye on. TZI, VIX...etc. Thanks.

Have a great Sunday!

 

[RealMoneyIssues]

Being only invested in the TSP I'm wondering which (if any) ticker symbols would be appropriate to keep an eye on. TZI, VIX...etc. Thanks.

Have a great Sunday!

What are you trying to do? That may give folks an idea of your plans so that they can recommend what to keep an eye on.

 

[99percent]

Not even sure how to respond to that.

 

[Birchtree]

I monitor about 17 stocks during the day as well as tape read to give me a feel of the real underlying activity that is happening - not everything is visible.

 

[RealMoneyIssues]

Not even sure how to respond to that.

hmmm... well

Do you want to watch what the TSP funds are doing?

Do you want to get an overall feel for what the markets are doing?

Are you trying to figure out what to do with your money on a daily/hourly/continuous basis?

What are your goals?

 

[JTH]

I'd start off with a basic foundation, you don't need to monitor stocks as much as the broad indexes (a rising tide floats all boats.) Covering the markets is like a women's skirt, you want it long enough to cover the important stuff, but short enough to keep it interesting

Transports, NASDAQ, S&P 500, Wilshire 4500, EFA, Dollar, Some bonds like AGG, ect...

 

[imike023]

Well the obvious being S fund: w4500, C fund: gspc, F fund: agg. Others I look at are the dow jones industrial: dji, Russell 2000: rut, nasdaq: ixic and volatility in s&p500: vix. Not much interested in individual stocks right now.

 

[Sensei]

The place I always go to for charts that basically follow our TSP funds is on the home page of this site, upper left side, "Fund Index Quotes".

 

[99percent]

hmmm... well

Do you want to watch what the TSP funds are doing?

Do you want to get an overall feel for what the markets are doing?

Are you trying to figure out what to do with your money on a daily/hourly/continuous basis?

What are your goals?

Oh, I see. Well I guess I'm just trying to get a basic feel for the markets. How it might affect the TSP. Got some good responses. Thanks all! Thanks for responding Real Money.

 

[RealMoneyIssues]

Oh, I see. Well I guess I'm just trying to get a basic feel for the markets. How it might affect the TSP. Got some good responses. Thanks all! Thanks for responding Real Money.

NP, there are so many ways to answer your question, so it really does depend on what you are looking for... the charts at the bottom of all the forum pages gives you a daily guide of what the funds are, so use those same fund tickers on a daily, weekly, and monthly chart to look for trends, support and resistance levels. You can look at the USD and VIX to get an idea of movement of the market too as the USD causes commodities and stocks to fluctuate and VIX gives a vague idea of what traders think volatility will be.

For each of the tickers you choose to look at, you can add trend lines (typical is 20/50/100/200 simple moving averages), some form of stochastics (ultimate, slow, fast, etc), and possibly bollinger bands since it shows statistical resistance and support based on a 20 period moving average.

I would highly recommend watch videos too. Nnuut posts a lot of them in the media portion. I am partial to InTheMoneyStocks, Perfect Stock Alerts (good website too), and Grok trading. I occasionally watch Ira Epstein and for humor watch Oscar Carboni.

All of this, over time, will show you what the markets do. No one can predict the market 100%, but some around here are pretty good! Watch JTH, Coolhand, Bquat, and sniper for posts; jkenjohnson and mrjohnross when they are around; and read Birchtree's posts with a grain of salt. BT is a great guy, but he is a PermaBull, so sees everything with bull-colored glasses... he wouldn't recognize a bear if it roared in his face.

There is so much and so many others... keep reading

 

[Cactus]

The place I always go to for charts that basically follow our TSP funds is on the home page of this site, upper left side, "Fund Index Quotes".

Another one I like is Popular Charts at the bottom of the home page. It adds the Dow, Dow transport, U.S. dollar ETF, Nasdaq, Russell 2000, U.S. Oil ETF, etc. Thank you Tom.