"Scoreboard." "Haves and Have Nots." "Winners and Loo-hoo-hoo-sers."
Regardless of which term you like best, this is simply an end-of-day recap of how many stocks finished a given trading session higher or lower than the prior session. This metric is used by technical analysts who believe (A) it may provide a glimpse into investors' psyches, (2) it is indicative of the near-term momentum/direction of markets, and (iii) performing actual, difficult, fundamental research is for suckers.
If an index like the Dow Jones Industrial Average experiences 12 consecutive days of more declines than advances amongst its component stocks, that could indicate the market is "oversold" and about to see a reversal of fortune. Of course, it could just be the first 12 of 365 similar "down days" in the market. On the bright side, the most you can lose is 100% of your fortune, if you interpret this metric incorrectly.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is the Dow Jones Industria...2710 Views
finance a la shmoop- what is the Dow Jones Industrial Average? well it's just
an index. it's a basket of 30 industrial stocks hence the catchy industrial word [list of the 30 stocks involved in the Dow]
in there and it was started in 1896 by Charles Dow and Edward Jones sort of the
Coke and Pepsi of stock averages in the day .worth noting is the fact that while
the Dow average is quoted often in the press it's not something that real Wall
Street traders really rely on that much as a market place holder anymore. why?
well because the Dow comprises only 30 stocks. it isn't really a broad market [Dow Jones in the trash]
representation, and you know the way the S&P 500 is the 500 is bigger than 30. Big
Brother has way more stocks and is thus way more liquid than the relatively
blippi set of 30 stocks that the Dow offers. over time the Dow has changed as
companies were bought and/or died and or just withered and became no longer
relevant. i.e. newspaper industry. which means that this thing has gone through
more faces than Kanye West .yeah. [Kanye West faces pictured]
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