Google and Yahoo Finance Symbols

Some indexes can be hard to find on Google and Yahoo Finance.    The chart below gives some ticker symbols for popular indexes. Index Google Finance Ticker Yahoo Finance Ticker S&P 500 INDEXSP:.INX or .INX ^GSPC Dow Jones Industrial INDEXDJX:.DJI or .DJI ^DJI VIX INDEXCBOE:VIX ^VIX 13 Week Treasury Bills INDEXCBOE:IRX ^IRX              

Why 18.5 is the right PE ratio for the S&P 500

Originally posted May 28, 2012 Consistent long term growth rates are one of the tenets of buy and hold investing.  In the case of the S&P 500 this annual growth rate has averaged 5.9% since 1950 (dividends excluded, compounded monthly).  All you need to do is invest early, be patient, and wait for the inevitable payoff. The last 12 years have not been kind to …

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Greed takes a holiday

I believe the best way to understand the ebb and flow of the market is to view it as the interplay of fear and greed.  Of course, economics are important, but I view human psychology as even more fundamental to the movements of the market. Tonight fear has the upper hand.   US markets have been down two days in a row, the Asian markets …

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S&P 500 Still Tracking 2004…

I updated my 2003-2004 compared to 2009-2010 chart for SPY/S&P500  with another week of data and adjusted the normalized volume scale so that I wasn’t chopping off the curve.  While the absolute value of SPY is almost identical to what it was 6 years ago the volume is about a factor of 6 higher, so the volume curves are only significant from a shape standpoint, …

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