On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 8:28:46 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
OT, way OT

Why do they give the Dow Jones, the S&P, and sometimes the NASDAQ all
the time on the news? Who wants to hear it?.

ISTM if one is an investor, in the market for the long hall, keeping
your stocks long enough to make gains long term, it doesn't matter what
stocks do on one day. They could report it every week or month and
that would be plenty.

And if you're a speculator, what does it matter what an average of many
stocks has done? It's what the stock you might buy or sell does that
matters to you. So you still have to check on them.

And yet even mid-morning, -day, and -afternoon 6 minute newscasts at the
top of the hour give partial days' results and number of shares traded.
Why do people care?

A better argument than "who cares" would be that it would seem
anyone who does care almost certainly has a smart phone where you can
see not only the indices, but also your actual stocks. Giving the
updates made more sense decades ago, when there was no easy way
for most people to have any idea of what the markets were doing.
Today, it's mostly just a holdover thing on routine days. On
days where the market is making a big move, then it's certainly
news worthy.

As a side note, for some what the indexes are doing is all that
matters. You can invest in and trade the actual indexes too.

In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 27 Aug 2015 06:07:54 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 8:28:46 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
OT, way OT

Why do they give the Dow Jones, the S&P, and sometimes the NASDAQ all
the time on the news? Who wants to hear it?.

ISTM if one is an investor, in the market for the long hall, keeping
your stocks long enough to make gains long term, it doesn't matter what
stocks do on one day. They could report it every week or month and
that would be plenty.

And if you're a speculator, what does it matter what an average of many
stocks has done? It's what the stock you might buy or sell does that
matters to you. So you still have to check on them.

And yet even mid-morning, -day, and -afternoon 6 minute newscasts at the
top of the hour give partial days' results and number of shares traded.
Why do people care?

A better argument than "who cares" would be that it would seem
anyone who does care almost certainly has a smart phone where you can
see not only the indices, but also your actual stocks. Giving the
updates made more sense decades ago, when there was no easy way
for most people to have any idea of what the markets were doing.

Not quite true. The stock prices were printed in the paper every day.
Even my small town (50,000) paper printed in the 50's, iirc, the local
stocks and some big national ones, and Indianapolis in the 60's printed
almost all of them. More than enough for an "investor". and as to
speculation, the vast majority of those who you might be bidding against
were in the same situation.

And if you were a serious spectulator, even as far back as the 30's I
think, you could go to a stock broker and sit in the room with the
tickertape and read the latest prices as they came over the wire.
Before the web, and probably still, at some brokers there was a
"tickertape" running in lights in a 14" high array across the wall. in
that room.

Today, it's mostly just a holdover thing on routine days. On

I wonder if they'll get rid of it in my lifetime. I want to hear more
about who Laura is cheating on her husband with.

days where the market is making a big move, then it's certainly
news worthy.

As a side note, for some what the indexes are doing is all that
matters. You can invest in and trade the actual indexes too.

Well that's a point

Dean, my browser is stuck but I'll read your url soon.

On Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 9:08:02 AM UTC-4, trader_4 wrote:
On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 8:28:46 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
OT, way OT

Why do they give the Dow Jones, the S&P, and sometimes the NASDAQ all
the time on the news? Who wants to hear it?.

ISTM if one is an investor, in the market for the long hall, keeping
your stocks long enough to make gains long term, it doesn't matter what
stocks do on one day. They could report it every week or month and
that would be plenty.

And if you're a speculator, what does it matter what an average of many
stocks has done? It's what the stock you might buy or sell does that
matters to you. So you still have to check on them.

And yet even mid-morning, -day, and -afternoon 6 minute newscasts at the
top of the hour give partial days' results and number of shares traded.
Why do people care?

A better argument than "who cares" would be that it would seem
anyone who does care almost certainly has a smart phone where you can
see not only the indices, but also your actual stocks. Giving the
updates made more sense decades ago, when there was no easy way
for most people to have any idea of what the markets were doing.
Today, it's mostly just a holdover thing on routine days. On
days where the market is making a big move, then it's certainly
news worthy.

As a side note, for some what the indexes are doing is all that
matters. You can invest in and trade the actual indexes too.

Well, to be more precise, you can invest in ETF's, Mutual Funds and other instruments that mimic various indexes, but you can not invest in an actual index.

An index is nothing more than a mathematical representation of the securities that make up a certain segment or segments of the market. Index mutual funds, Index ETF's, etc. attempt to mimic the returns of a particular index by holding the same securities, in the same percentage, as are listed in the index they are trying to mimic.

On Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 12:04:02 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 27 Aug 2015 06:07:54 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 8:28:46 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
OT, way OT

Why do they give the Dow Jones, the S&P, and sometimes the NASDAQ all
the time on the news? Who wants to hear it?.

ISTM if one is an investor, in the market for the long hall, keeping
your stocks long enough to make gains long term, it doesn't matter what
stocks do on one day. They could report it every week or month and
that would be plenty.

And if you're a speculator, what does it matter what an average of many
stocks has done? It's what the stock you might buy or sell does that
matters to you. So you still have to check on them.

And yet even mid-morning, -day, and -afternoon 6 minute newscasts at the
top of the hour give partial days' results and number of shares traded.
Why do people care?

A better argument than "who cares" would be that it would seem
anyone who does care almost certainly has a smart phone where you can
see not only the indices, but also your actual stocks. Giving the
updates made more sense decades ago, when there was no easy way
for most people to have any idea of what the markets were doing.

Not quite true. The stock prices were printed in the paper every day.
Even my small town (50,000) paper printed in the 50's, iirc, the local
stocks and some big national ones, and Indianapolis in the 60's printed
almost all of them.

Almost all of what? You first say "local stocks and some big national ones",
then say almost all of them. From my experience how much stock info a
paper had varied from just the most widely held ones to almost all of them,
with the latter being the WSJ. And by no idea of what the markets were
doing, in the context of what you're bringing up, I clearly meant that
absent an update on the radio, there was no easy way for most people to
have any idea of what the markets were doing during the day,



More than enough for an "investor".

Maybe for you, others would disagree. An investor might have $10K
in cash, trying to decide what to do with it, looking to find the
right opportunity. Hearing that the DOW was down 1,000 points the
other day, that investor could act and use that opportunity and buy
during the panic. Or another investor might need to sell some stock
soon and hearing that market is very strong on a particular day,
they could use that info to decide to check into what the stock is
doing and then sell it.


and as to
speculation, the vast majority of those who you might be bidding against
were in the same situation.

As a speculator, do you want to be in just the same position as the
vast majority?



And if you were a serious spectulator, even as far back as the 30's I
think, you could go to a stock broker and sit in the room with the
tickertape and read the latest prices as they came over the wire.

That depends on what you mean by "serious speculator". The vast
majority of speculators didn't have a stock
ticker service. Even as technology made it widely available in the
80s, the cost was prohibitive for most speculators. And the majority of speculators
had jobs other than speculating as their main source of income. You
also seem to be confusing very short term speculating with speculating.
Many speculators have a longer term perspective, holding positions for
days, weeks, months. It's only in the last two decades that the tools
and systems have been put in place that allows very short term day trading
by the masses. To do that kind of speculation, you need a lot more
than just a ticker tape.

On Friday, August 28, 2015 at 11:14:20 PM UTC-4, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 9:08:02 AM UTC-4, trader_4 wrote:
On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 8:28:46 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
OT, way OT

Why do they give the Dow Jones, the S&P, and sometimes the NASDAQ all
the time on the news? Who wants to hear it?.

ISTM if one is an investor, in the market for the long hall, keeping
your stocks long enough to make gains long term, it doesn't matter what
stocks do on one day. They could report it every week or month and
that would be plenty.

And if you're a speculator, what does it matter what an average of many
stocks has done? It's what the stock you might buy or sell does that
matters to you. So you still have to check on them.

And yet even mid-morning, -day, and -afternoon 6 minute newscasts at the
top of the hour give partial days' results and number of shares traded.
Why do people care?

A better argument than "who cares" would be that it would seem
anyone who does care almost certainly has a smart phone where you can
see not only the indices, but also your actual stocks. Giving the
updates made more sense decades ago, when there was no easy way
for most people to have any idea of what the markets were doing.
Today, it's mostly just a holdover thing on routine days. On
days where the market is making a big move, then it's certainly
news worthy.

As a side note, for some what the indexes are doing is all that
matters. You can invest in and trade the actual indexes too.

Well, to be more precise, you can invest in ETF's, Mutual Funds and other instruments that mimic various indexes, but you can not invest in an actual index.

An index is nothing more than a mathematical representation of the securities that make up a certain segment or segments of the market. Index mutual funds, Index ETF's, etc. attempt to mimic the returns of a particular index by holding the same securities, in the same percentage, as are listed in the index they are trying to mimic.

I agree, except the part about "attempt" to mimic. They do mimic it very closely because as you point out the fund owns the stocks that make up the
index. The SPDR 500 holds all the stocks that are in the SP500, for example.
The point here was the claim was made that the radio information of what
the market indices were
doing didn't reflect the actual performance for any investors because they
had individual stocks or mutual funds, etc, so their performance was not
going to be the same as the indexes. If you hold the SPDR for the DOW,
whatever the DOW is doing that is reported on the radio is extremely close
to what you're holding. It's not the case for most investors though,
which is why I said it was a side note.

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:26:57 AM UTC-4, trader_4 wrote:
On Friday, August 28, 2015 at 11:14:20 PM UTC-4, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 9:08:02 AM UTC-4, trader_4 wrote:
On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 8:28:46 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
OT, way OT

Why do they give the Dow Jones, the S&P, and sometimes the NASDAQ all
the time on the news? Who wants to hear it?.

ISTM if one is an investor, in the market for the long hall, keeping
your stocks long enough to make gains long term, it doesn't matter what
stocks do on one day. They could report it every week or month and
that would be plenty.

And if you're a speculator, what does it matter what an average of many
stocks has done? It's what the stock you might buy or sell does that
matters to you. So you still have to check on them.

And yet even mid-morning, -day, and -afternoon 6 minute newscasts at the
top of the hour give partial days' results and number of shares traded.
Why do people care?

A better argument than "who cares" would be that it would seem
anyone who does care almost certainly has a smart phone where you can
see not only the indices, but also your actual stocks. Giving the
updates made more sense decades ago, when there was no easy way
for most people to have any idea of what the markets were doing.
Today, it's mostly just a holdover thing on routine days. On
days where the market is making a big move, then it's certainly
news worthy.

As a side note, for some what the indexes are doing is all that
matters. You can invest in and trade the actual indexes too.

Well, to be more precise, you can invest in ETF's, Mutual Funds and other instruments that mimic various indexes, but you can not invest in an actual index.

An index is nothing more than a mathematical representation of the securities that make up a certain segment or segments of the market. Index mutual funds, Index ETF's, etc. attempt to mimic the returns of a particular index by holding the same securities, in the same percentage, as are listed in the index they are trying to mimic.

I agree, except the part about "attempt" to mimic. They do mimic it very closely because as you point out the fund owns the stocks that make up the
index. The SPDR 500 holds all the stocks that are in the SP500, for example.

I guess I should not have worded my response the way I did. Not all index funds or ETFs hold the exact securities of the index they represent. I was trying to keep it simple by merely pointing out that your claim that an investor can "invest in an *actual* index" was not correct.

Per the SEC website for Index Funds:

Index Funds
An "index fund" describes a type of mutual fund or unit investment trust (UIT) whose investment objective typically is to achieve approximately the same return as a particular market index, such as the S&P 500 Composite Stock Price Index, the Russell 2000 Index or the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index. An index fund will attempt to achieve its investment objective primarily by investing in the securities (stocks or bonds) of companies that are included in a selected index. Some index funds may also use derivatives (such as options or futures) to help achieve their investment objective. Some index funds invest in all of the companies included in an index; other index funds invest in a representative sample of the companies included in an index."

In other words, if you look beyond the common place DOW and S&P index funds, things get a bit more complicated.

So, my point is two-fold: not only can you not invest directly in an actual index (which I know you know) but in addition, not all index funds hold all of the securities that make up that index, thus my use of the word "mimic".

The point here was the claim was made that the radio information of what
the market indices were
doing didn't reflect the actual performance for any investors because they
had individual stocks or mutual funds, etc, so their performance was not
going to be the same as the indexes. If you hold the SPDR for the DOW,
whatever the DOW is doing that is reported on the radio is extremely close
to what you're holding.

True.

It's not the case for most investors though,
which is why I said it was a side note.

On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:54:47 PM UTC-4, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Saturday, August 29, 2015 at 9:26:57 AM UTC-4, trader_4 wrote:
On Friday, August 28, 2015 at 11:14:20 PM UTC-4, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 9:08:02 AM UTC-4, trader_4 wrote:
On Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 8:28:46 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:
OT, way OT

Why do they give the Dow Jones, the S&P, and sometimes the NASDAQ all
the time on the news? Who wants to hear it?.

ISTM if one is an investor, in the market for the long hall, keeping
your stocks long enough to make gains long term, it doesn't matter what
stocks do on one day. They could report it every week or month and
that would be plenty.

And if you're a speculator, what does it matter what an average of many
stocks has done? It's what the stock you might buy or sell does that
matters to you. So you still have to check on them.

And yet even mid-morning, -day, and -afternoon 6 minute newscasts at the
top of the hour give partial days' results and number of shares traded.
Why do people care?

A better argument than "who cares" would be that it would seem
anyone who does care almost certainly has a smart phone where you can
see not only the indices, but also your actual stocks. Giving the
updates made more sense decades ago, when there was no easy way
for most people to have any idea of what the markets were doing.
Today, it's mostly just a holdover thing on routine days. On
days where the market is making a big move, then it's certainly
news worthy.

As a side note, for some what the indexes are doing is all that
matters. You can invest in and trade the actual indexes too.

Well, to be more precise, you can invest in ETF's, Mutual Funds and other instruments that mimic various indexes, but you can not invest in an actual index.

An index is nothing more than a mathematical representation of the securities that make up a certain segment or segments of the market. Index mutual funds, Index ETF's, etc. attempt to mimic the returns of a particular index by holding the same securities, in the same percentage, as are listed in the index they are trying to mimic.

I agree, except the part about "attempt" to mimic. They do mimic it very closely because as you point out the fund owns the stocks that make up the
index. The SPDR 500 holds all the stocks that are in the SP500, for example.

I guess I should not have worded my response the way I did. Not all index funds or ETFs hold the exact securities of the index they represent. I was trying to keep it simple by merely pointing out that your claim that an investor can "invest in an *actual* index" was not correct.


And I was trying to keep it simple, by not going into an arcane discussion
into the negligible differences in buying the tracking stocks versus the
indexes that are quoted on the radio. Micky was commenting on the fact
the actual indexes, as quoted on the radio, are largely irrelevant
because you can only invest in stocks not indexes. I didn't see the
need to get into a complex discussion of how the actual investment
vehicles work. The simple fact is, that for the purposes of an investor
or typical speculator that would be listening to the radio,
if you buy the SPDR SP500 or DOW, they so closely
match the actual index that how exactly it's done doesn't matter.
It is like owning the index. If the radio says the SP500 is up
20 points, then your SPDR500 is up almost exactly the same amount
and the radio information is spot on to what you're invested in.


Per the SEC website for Index Funds:

Index Funds
An "index fund" describes a type of mutual fund or unit investment trust (UIT) whose investment objective typically is to achieve approximately the same return as a particular market index, such as the S&P 500 Composite Stock Price Index, the Russell 2000 Index or the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index.

Did you ever hear the Russell 2000 or Wishire Index quoted on the radio?
You've broadened this way beyond the indices quoted on the radio.


An index fund will attempt to achieve its investment objective primarily by investing in the securities (stocks or bonds) of companies that are included in a selected index. Some index funds may also use derivatives (such as options or futures) to help achieve their investment objective. Some index funds invest in all of the companies included in an index; other index funds invest in a representative sample of the companies included in an index."

In other words, if you look beyond the common place DOW and S&P index funds, things get a bit more complicated.



So, my point is two-fold: not only can you not invest directly in an actual index (which I know you know) but in addition, not all index funds hold all of the securities that make up that index, thus my use of the word "mimic".


Use any words you like, but I'd say "attempt to mimic" is a mischaracterization.
The DOW, SP500 which are the indexes quoted on the radio that have tracking
stocks, they don't just "attempt to mimic", they track them so closely that
for Micky's investors it doesn't matter. Unless you want to get into a nit over a hundredth of a percent or similar.





The point here was the claim was made that the radio information of what
the market indices were
doing didn't reflect the actual performance for any investors because they
had individual stocks or mutual funds, etc, so their performance was not
going to be the same as the indexes. If you hold the SPDR for the DOW,
whatever the DOW is doing that is reported on the radio is extremely close
to what you're holding.

True.

Well, that was the whole point.