PTI

The PTI

The PTI is my proprietary composite of 8 items, each one dealing strictly with market action. So no subjective considerations, no guessing, no adjusting -- these 8 items are based on actual daily market action. I've been running the PTI daily since 1971. The PTI monitors the sub-structure of the NYSE. I liken it to the water in a bathtub. The Nasdaq (the soap) can bounce up and down all it wants, but it's the level in the bathtub that tells us what the great primary trend is doing. The PTI is the level of the water in the tub.

The Advance-Decline Ratio

The advance-decline ratio monitors the direction of the majority of stocks on the NYSE. Each day I take the difference between all the issues that advanced and all the issues that declined. To adjust for the increased number of issues that appear on the NYSE over the years, I divide the daily differential by the issues traded each day. If more issues were down for the day, I subtract from the previous day's total. The total can be started anywhere -- at 10,000, 50,000, a million.

The Big Money Breadth Index (BBI)

The Big Money Breadth Index (BBI) is an index I "invented". To my knowledge, nobody else runs it. It's an advance-decline of the ten largest-cap stocks in the S&P 500. I think it's a valuable index since the direction of the majority of these ten giants has to be important in the broad market picture. It's hard to envision a bull market without the BBI trending generally higher. It's hard to conceive of a bear market without the BBI trending generally lower.