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Technology Stocks : INTEL TRADER -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ynot who wrote (6740)	9/11/1999 3:56:00 PM
From: MonsieurGonzo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11051

ynot:" qubes " options.nasdaq-amex.com symbol QQQ - NDX-100 Index "qubes" is similar to the SPY - S&P-500 Index "spyder", ynot. You can buy or sell SPY and QQQ just like a stock. These stocks' prices follow their indices (or more precisely, the index futures). For example, many people invest in the VFINX - Vanguard S&P-500 Index Fund. This is the same thing as buying SPY. I use a 50:50 mix = SPY:QQQ as my personal portfolio benchmark. Because 50% of it is (QQQ) the NDX-100, it's a little more aggressive than just using SPY = S&P-500 index, which is the industry standard benchmark for portfolio managers, ynot. ---> Note that greater than 80% of the portfolio & mutual fund managers fail to "beat the S&P-500 (SPY) index". From the Nasdaq/AMEX website above, you will also see that there is a DIA - DJIA-30 Index "diamonds" available, as well as 17 "WEBS", each equal to some foreign stock market's index (like EWG - Germany or EWJ - Japan, for example). And there are nine "sector SPDRs", like XLK - Technology, for example. Right now I am following the XLU - Utilities sector spyder closely, fwiw. This vehicle is roughly equal to the PNX.X - Phone Sector Index (all the baby Bells) plus the UTY.X - Electric Utility Index (companies like DUK, SO, ED, PCG, etc.) The advantage of these thingys, other than the fact that you can buy and sell them like stocks, as opposed to having to buy or sell mutual funds - is that, when you invest in an index, you reduce some "specific risk" that you assume when you try to pick some individual stock (that lives within the overall index or, some sector thereof) and have only "market risk" or "sector risk" in your portfolio. To beat a simple 50:50 = SPY:QQQ investment tactic, your portfolio would have to perform better than > 90% of the of the professional money managers / mutual funds in existence, fwiw - and for this you would be assuming the specific risk of your individual stock picks, plus the market risk inherent to the entire stock market (^_^) For folks who trade rather than invest, ynot, (like TheDonald, for example) DIA, SPY and QQQ are useful vehicles for jumping in and out of the DJIA-30, S&P-500 and NDX-100 index... without having to assume (or enjoy) the leverage effects of buying or selling index options. I recommend that all new stock traders / investors chart SPY and start "e-trading" that way. If you can't trade/invest successfully in (SPY or QQQ) the entire market, then it is unlikely that you will do any better with individual stocks, imho. This experience also teaches you how to trade/invest individual stocks "with the market" trend. For advanced traders, contemplating the move to index options (and/or futures), SPY and QQQ are superb vehicles to learn the finer points of index trading entry and exit timing, without having to worry about "leverage" and/or "time value decay". -Steve