Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A Simple Way to Track Intermarket Themes



Here's a futures heat map from the Barchart.com site that I've mentioned in past posts (bottom chart). It offers a quick glance at a variety of asset classes, so that traders can see themes that may be moving markets. Today was a range day in stocks, but note that energy futures and metals were strong, giving a bullish tone to the day.

One nice feature of the map is that you can click on any of the squares to see how instruments within each asset class performed. The top chart, for instance, shows how currency futures behaved, highlighting the U.S. dollar as a loser on the day.

For a trader wanting a quick but detailed update of intermarket themes, this is an excellent tool.
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