Key market indicators cut the noise and give market direction signals. Those indicators are employment, auto sales, house prices, and the FED fund rate. Together, those indicators demonstrate that you, me, and everybody else have a huge economic impact! We count because we spend lots of money! Our economic impact shows as these 4 key indicators that can be used to cut through and muffle all of the market noise!
What you learn from market indicators cut the noise:
This lesson explains how investors deal with stock market noise and use 4 market indicators to cut through that noise and get reliable investment signals. As well, it identifies the differences between investing and trading signals. Also discussed are how, why, and when those key stock market signals matter, and when and why other data does not matter. What you learn in this lesson can improve your investment results which help make money work for you. Find links to related content at the end of the lesson.
FAQ about:
Market indicators cut the noise
Investors ask questions about the market indicators, investing, trading and stock market noise, and how to use this information to make better investment decisions. The questions and answers that follow have some overlap which helps to provide context for those related topics. As a result, investors can see how each answer fits into the broader investment picture.
What are the best market direction indicators?
For market direction indicators, long-term investors can track financial fundamentals to see significant economic trends, while active traders use short-term market technicals to analyze current price trends.
The fundamentals investors use include employment, auto sales, housing starts, and the FED funds rate. Positive job numbers mean more paychecks are boosting auto and home sales. Investors expect growth, economic expansion, and prosperity when combined with a positive FED fund rate.
Short-term traders relying on technical analysis, including trend and oscillator charts, seek price movement probabilities over fundamentals.
What is an investment signal?
Investment signals are technical indicators that assist traders in making informed decisions regarding buying or selling assets. Correctly interpreting short-term price and volume movements can be very profitable.
However, while traders may rely on these short-term patterns or value fluctuations as signals, long-term investors usually ignore them.
Instead, long-term investors focus on fundamental changes and trend shifts to identify signals to buy and sell.
What is market, investment, or economic noise?
The term noise in the market, investments, or economy refers to inaccurate or irrelevant information. It can include good, bad, or unrelated news, misinformation, and disinformation.
Noise makes finding or trusting market data harder, which makes decisions more challenging. However, experienced investors learn to sift through the noise to find and focus on relevant information.
While noise is more of a challenge to short-term traders, some risk-takers monitor and take advantage of current situations by trading noise trends.
How do investors deal with market noise?
Investors filtering out market noise are better wealth-builders. Market noise obscures long-term economic trends and distracts from productive asset fundamentals.
Successful long-term investors do their homework and focus on trend direction, strength, and length. That focus keeps their vision clear, allowing them to ignore the noise of market media, trading chatter, opinions, and emotions.
As a result, they have the time and energy to find and buy more productive investments that make them better wealth-builders. It is another no-worry investor skill and mindset that you can learn!
How do investor and trader market signals differ?
Investors and traders use different market signals because their approaches to the market and timelines are different. Traders seek to profit from short-term price movements, while investors have a longer-term time horizon. Investors seek dividends and higher equity value returns as share prices rise for years or even decades.
Investors research company fundamentals to find long-term profitable holdings that grow. In contrast, traders use technical signals to find profitable trades they may hold for nanoseconds to months in any stock's rising or falling price.
Technical signals consumed by traders are avoidable noise for most investors. However, fundamental and technical signals can play strategic roles when they fit the financial plans and goals of investors or traders.
Can you outsmart the stock market?
Small investors can use their advantages to outperform the market. To effectively respond to the market and achieve your ultimate investment performance, acquire and use knowledge, do the homework, and make the required effort. No-Worry Investors wealth-build doing six things to outperform the market:
1. Organize your financial life, beginning with an emergency fund,
2. Eliminate debt except when buying productive assets,
3. Invest long-term to make money work forever.
4. Use Smart Diversification centered on your circumstances.
5. Don't be concerned about mirroring or following the market,
6. Strictly manage expenses to minimize every fee and cost.
Core content:
Market indicators cut the noise
4 Indicators muffle market noise
Seeking money-making opportunities, investors can be overwhelmed by market noise. That noise is caused as markets move and media instantly report that markets are moving up, down, or sideways. And those reports suggest that the numbers track stock markets and business developments. However, investors that are interested in long-term money-making, get little useful information from those numbers. For most investors, such market reports are just media packaged trading noise.
Is it about making money, market action, manipulation, or trading noise?
Within capitalism, public stock markets have an important role in raising and placing capital. As well, they serve a trading function that allows investments to be traded for cash or cash to be traded for investments. That ensures investments have liquidity. They can easily be bought and sold. As a result, with relative ease, investments and cash are exchanged. But to have a clear view of investment opportunities, investors must learn to identify and filter market noise.
The economy matters for investors,
not the stock market
Yes, the stock market is important to capitalism, investors, and public companies. But it is not the economy. In fact, the stock market and all the related activities are a mere fraction of the economy.
Investors are all about making money for themselves. And so are traders. But the so-called stock market reports provide updates on trades and market actions. For most, those reports are media noise of little value to investors.
The stock market is not the economy, it is part of the economy, but only a fraction of the financing sector. In fact, the economy is about everything economic. That includes all of the credit market, plus aspects of financing, money-making and spending. That making, spending, and using money part, includes all of us, which means it also includes all companies and every bit of government spending within the economy.
Most often, the media reports stock market numbers or activity as reports on business and the economy. But the economy is far more than just that limited view. And for investors, it is the economy that matters for our long-term money-making. As a result, our investment decisions benefit most from knowing where the economy is going. At the same time, we like to keep track of the stock market. The point is, the stock market is not the big deal that the economy is to long-term investors. It is economic growth and direction that matters for investors.
Markets and the economy are related, but are more like cousins than twins!
As noted earlier, investors and traders use different market signals. Therefore, many signals do not matter. They are just noise! So, filtering out unnecessary signals and other market noise are skills investors learn to develop and manage. When done well, investors using economic signals for valuable economic direction information can produce better returns.
As well, investors and traders use different methods to analyze their opportunities. Investors seek facts, history, and trends from the use of fundamental analysis. But more often, traders place bets on future price direction. Before doing that, traders may use charts and technical analysis. While traders consider fundamentals of limited value, investors generally dismiss technical analysis and price forecasts as more market noise.
Market indicators cut the noise and signal market direction!
If you're an investor who wants to make money in the stock market, it's important to understand where the economy is headed. To do that, there are four key indicators of economic activity that can give you a glimpse into the future of the economy and the stock market. These indicators give us a quick look at the total of all economic activities. Those indicators are employment, auto sales, and house prices as well as interest rates.
When we have a good idea of where the economy is headed, we have information that helps us make money in the stock market. For example, if you see that employment is increasing, that's a good sign for the economy and could mean good things for the stock market. Conversely, if interest rates are quickly rising, that's a sign that the economy may be slowing down, and that could mean a downturn for the stock market.
So, if you're an investor who wants to make money in the stock market, it's important to understand where the economy is headed. To do that, we can use the four key indicators of economic activity for a glimpse into the future.
It is about more than us
We are not the total economy by any means. But when we want to know where the stock market is going, we need to know how financial matters are looking for most people. When most of us can and do spend money, the market goes higher. When we can’t or don’t spend, the market will not rise. So we need to know how people feel about spending.
1. The stock market is not just about businesses and wealth - most of the economy is based on regular people spending money.
2. When we want to know where the stock market is going, we need to understand how people feel about spending money.
3. The stock market goes up when people are feeling good about spending money
Economic tracking is not just an interesting pastime!
We can always ask how people are feeling about money! However, the very best indications of how people feel in financial and economic matters show in their actions. Tracking their financial and economic actions is far easier than learning about and tracking their feelings!
Getting a grasp of key consumer market behavior gives us a good economic vision. Such indicators are not perfect, but are excellent! Just like parts of me, excellent, but not perfect!
Still, stock market trends reliably and closely follow these key market indicators. So tracking indications of how everyone is doing financially gives a good look at the prospects for the stock market.
1. Economic tracking can be used as a good money-making tool.
2. Consumer market behavior indicators give us a good economic vision.
3. Stock market trends reliably and closely follow these key market indicators.
4. Tracking indications of how everyone is doing financially gives a good look at the future prospects for the stock market.
5. Therefore, by paying attention to economic tracking, investors can make informed and profitable decisions.
6. Although these indicators are not perfect, they provide a valuable glimpse into the economy that should not be ignored.
The 4 Key Market Trend Indicators
To make money in the stock market, it's important to stay up-to-date on key economic indicators. By following four key market trend indicators, you can get a sense of where the economy is heading and make more informed investment decisions. The four market trend indicators are:
1. Employment trends of 3 & 6 months
2. House price trends of 3 & 6 months
3. Auto sale trends of 3 & 6 months
4. U.S. Federal Reserve rate trends of 3 & 6 months
Each indicator provides valuable insight into the overall economy and can help you anticipate changes in the stock market. Keep an eye on these indicators to make more money in the market!
No jobs - no pay - no spending:
the most important economic indicator
Economic prosperity always begins with jobs. You need to get paid before you can spend. We each need an income. Be it making or delivering the goods or providing a professional service, that essential of economic success remains constant. People must collect pay checks. More collecting is good! But when fewer are collecting pay checks things can get bad! And fast!
To get a feel of how the economy and stock market will do, begin at home. What is the employment outlook for you, your neighbors, and your community? Expand your observations to your region and nation. Employment outlook is essential to know before investing money. Follow employment numbers, house, and car sales, and the U.S. Federal Reserve funds rate and you can treat all the other analysis as noise!
All the key indicators are readily accessible and widely reported by the mainstream media. The headline will always be based on the data released for the month just passed and can be important and interesting information. But the key numbers are the 3 and 6-month trends.
Economic trends are not absolutes
Note that we are talking about trends, not absolutes. This means being aware of the trend direction over 3 and 6 months for each indicator. Up is good, but a downtrend warns there is a concern.
Car and house sales need pay checks
As long as your neighbors have jobs they can buy houses and cars. That will be positive for the local market. When national key market indicators all show positive trends, we expect both the economy and stock market to be or stay positive.
House price 3-and 6-month trends
Real estate is always a local market. Prices and sales in Prince George, British Columbia have nothing to do with, or have any influence on, real estate in Toronto, Los Angeles, Paris, or Miami.
So for the best understanding of the economic and stock market outlook, when looking at real estate, we must look both near and far. To have the best understanding of the possibilities for real estate, look at both your local and national real estate statistics. National trends up are good indicators for the stock market.
Long-term house sale trends matter and are a good economic indicator!
Locally a boom or depression, if not reflected in the general or national economy, indicates only a local issue. Local statistics alone can give no insight into the general or national economy.
To avoid being misled either up or down by a local situation, simply check trends in several major centers across the country. That way, local or regional differences cannot mislead you.
Condo sales in a community relate to overall market conditions, in that community, and the trends in condo sales can significantly differ from trends in house sales. However, only in exceptional circumstances, do condo and house sales move in opposite directions for many months.
The size of either the price or unit sales does not matter. When both trend up, we are good! Growing numbers and prices are good, declining numbers are not so good! Remember, one or a very few months of either good or bad news, does not show a trend or a change in trend.
Almost always, some local real estate markets struggle, while other local markets boom. Apart from those exceptions, the general overall national housing picture is typically positive. At this time, national housing growth is underway. I expect the positive sales trend to continue for some time. So we count this key major market indicator as positive.
Key take away points from market indicators cut the noise
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Monitor Markets to Protect Wealth:
Introduction to Monitor Markets to Protect Wealth Lesson 1
Market indicators cut the noise Lesson 2
4 Market direction drivers Lesson 3
Daily buyer-seller battles Lesson 4
3 Risk or opportunity signals Lesson 5
Look forward with data Lesson 6
5 Star market compass Lesson 7
Check market direction trends Lesson 8
Headline news market risks Lesson 9
Next lesson:
4 Market direction drivers
Have a prosperous investor day!
Bryan
White Top Investor
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Lesson code: 475.02.
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White Top Investor
