Market Watch is a very popular site that offers basic financial information, industry news, industry analysis, and overall stock market data on major companies. In addition to The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, it is also a unit of News Corp., a publicly held company of which Dow Jones & Company are a part. It has the highest traffic of any of the financial sites on the internet, and with that traffic comes plenty of criticism. So is it really relevant, or is it just another venue for financial marketing?
This website is very simple to use. You simply login and choose what type of data you want, whether it be pricing or tick charts or both. From there, you can select which financial instruments you want to monitor, how often you want to check them, how much you would like to spend monitoring the market, and even how you would like to receive market watch updates. You can receive daily stock picks via email, RSS feeds, text messages, or regular email. If you prefer to receive Market Watch quotes in your email rather than in an email newsletter, that is fine too.
Once you log in you will see that this is pretty much the same layout as most of the other financial tools you will find on the internet. There are several main sections including Stock and Symbol Performance, Fundamentals, Industry Overview, Breakouts, and Start/End Day. The Stock and Symbol Performance section feature breakout charts for the most active securities and their open prices as well as the historical performance of those securities. Fundamentals focuses on providing fundamental analysis such as why a security is priced the way it is, what the fundamental factors underlying it are, and what impact the price may have on the stock’s future potential. Industry Overview has a few topics that are relevant to all areas of the market such as market sector, leadership, growth and market structure. Lastly, the last topic for this type of market watch is the Basics tab which includes an explanation of terms, a brief glossary of important symbols, and the definition of other terms you may encounter.
The Stock and Symbol option trading tool uses the PSC (stock pick report) and CMN (commodity pricing model) to determine the most bullish and bearish stock picks. For instance, if you enter a trade and the stock’s market price is above the option strike price, the stock pick is considered bullish and if it’s below, it’s considered bearish. Then, based on the open and low closing prices of that particular contract, you can determine how much you stand to gain or lose on that trade before you make your move.
Stock and Symbol Options Trading is extremely easy once you have learned how to use the popup prices and S&P 500 quotes window. Basically, all you have to do is choose the contract with the best profit potential and then place your order. The Market Watch feature of this type of market watch displays the open and low quotes for the selected contract. By using the pop up symbols, you’ll be able to determine if the market is under bullish or bearish depending on the color of the symbols. Most traders prefer to use the blue and red colors that signify bullishness and moving in a positive direction while green and orange denote moving in a downward direction.
Last but not least, when you enter a trade using the popup symbols, you’ll get to see the last trade, the open and low signals as well as the symbol charts for the last one hundred or so days. The symbols in the chart represent the moving averages, which are used to indicate the direction of the market, as well as the relative strength index. The strength index shows the recent volatility and it also has historical data for a particular currency.