Today's Quote: “There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control The firm resolve of a determined soul." Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

If you are new to trading, or if you are new to a trading room, some of the language may get confusing. The ‘Market’ looks like this, the ‘Comp’ looks that, and the ‘Futures’ are doing something else. Here is just a quick review of some of the things we look at when evaluating the ‘Market’.

There are about 8,000 stocks out there, not including very small stocks that do no meet listing requirements, known as ‘over the counter’ stocks. The NASDAQ market contains stocks of 4,100 listed companies. This NASDAQ market is sometimes called the ‘COMP’. Its symbol on many platforms is $COMPX or similar. The top 100 NASDAQ stocks make up the NASDAQ 100. Its symbol on many platforms is $NDX.X. Its chart pattern will be very close to the NASDAQ COMP, as the NASDAQ 100 stocks carry the great majority of the capitalization of the whole NASDAQ Market. The QQQQ is a tracking trust that was created to ‘trade’ the NASDAQ 100 market like a single stock. You can buy and short the QQQQ, and can even short without an uptick. They are sometimes called the ‘Q’s’

The term ‘Spiders’ is a nick name for the S&P 500, because its ticker symbol is SPY. The SPY is a trust like the QQQQ you can use to play the whole S&P 500. The term ‘market’ when used is often ambiguous, but most use the term ‘market’ to refer to whatever market they most recently discussed. Some use it to mean the ‘entire stock market’. Some may be referring to the S&P 500, and some may even be referring to the ‘DOW’. The DOW is this case would be short for the 30 Dow Industrial Stocks. It is most often the quoted price of the ‘market’ even though it is only 30 stocks.

We also use futures symbols to track the NASDAQ 100 and S&P 500. Due to the way futures are traded, they sometimes react faster to market moves. At the end of the day, the NASDAQ 100 futures will look the same as the NASDAQ 100. But you may see the move faster. ON many platforms, the NASDAQ futures are /NDM8, and the S&P futures are /SPM8. The last two digits, ‘M7’ in this case, will change to represent the quarter of the year (M) and the year (‘8’ for 2008). These need special subscriptions to the futures markets, you will usually not get them if not subscribed. The S&P futures are sometimes nick named the ‘Spoos’.

Hopefully this will help clarify some of the terms you might hear.