myself run my swing trading with a basket of indices, commodities and currencies. Here is the list:
Indices: DAX, Dow Jones, SP500, Nasdaq100
Bonds: Bund futures (futures on the German 10-year bonds).
Commodities: WTI Crude Oil, Gold and Silver
Currencies: EUR / USD, EUR / JPY, GBP / USD, USD / JPY, USD / CHF, AUD / USD, NZD / USD, USD / CAD
That's a total of 16 markets. Believe me: If you observe these markets every day, you have a fairly accurate sense of what is happening on the financial markets at the moment. The more experienced traders know, of course, that all these markets correlate. This means that they are more or less related to each other.
Although the correlations can change over time, you can still set up some rules that apply generally:
1. Stock indices often highly correlate. When the American markets rise, you will see mostly that the Asian or European indices do this as well. The three major US stock indexes Dow Jones Industrials, S&P500 and Nasdaq100 can safely still be called the drivers of the world's stock markets. When these three are in a downward trend, the other indexes have a generally hard time countering this.
2. The US dollar is still the most important currency in the world. If