What kind of technical analysis and indicators available for mutual fund navs
A general mutual fund's exact holdings are not known on a day-to-day basis, and so technical tools must work with inexact data. Furthermore, the mutual fund shares' NAV depends on lots of different shares that it holds, and the  results of the kinds of analyses that one can do for a single stock must be commingled to produce something analogous for the fund's NAV. In other words, there is plenty of shooting in the dark going on. That being said, there are plenty of  people who claim to do such analyses and will gladly sell you their results (actually, Buy, Hold, Sell recommendations) for whole fund families (e.g. Vanguard) in the form of a monthly or weekly Newsletter delivered by US Mail (in the old days) or electronically (nowadays). Some people who subscribe to such newsletters swear by them, while others swear at them and don't renew their subscriptions; YMMV.
"Yes. S&P/ Case-Shiller real-estate indices are available, as a single national index as well as multiple regional geographic indices. These indices are updated on the last Tuesday of every month. According to the Case-Shiller Index Methodology documentation: Their purpose is to measure the average change in home prices in 20 major metropolitan areas... and three price tiers– low, middle and high. The regional indices use 3-month moving averages, published with a two-month lag. This helps offset delays due to ""clumping"" in the flow of sales price data from county deed recorders. It also assures sufficient sample sizes.  Regional Case-Shiller real-estate indices  * Source: Case-Shiller Real-estate Index FAQ. The S&P Case-Shiller webpage has links to historical studies and commentary by Yale University Professor Shiller. Housing Views posts news and analysis for the regional indices. Yes. The CME Group in Chicago runs a real-estate futures market. Regional S&P/ Case-Schiller index futures and options are   the first [security type] for managing U.S. housing risk. They    provide protection, or profit, in up or down markets. They extend to the   housing industry the same tools, for risk management and investment,    available for agriculture and finance. But would you want to invest? Probably not. This market has minimal activity. For the three markets, San Diego, Boston and Los Angeles on 28 November 2011, there was zero trading volume (prices unchanged), no trades settled, no open interest, see  far right, partially cut off in image below.  * Source: Futures and options activity[PDF] for all 20 regional indices.  I don't know the reason for this situation. A few guesses: Additional reference: CME spec's for index futures and options contracts." "In the case of mutual funds, Net Asset Value (NAV) is the price used to buy and sell shares. NAV is just the value of the underlying assets (which are in turn valued by their underlying holdings and future earnings). So if a fund hands out a billion dollars, it stands to reason their NAV*shares (market cap?) is a billion dollars less. Shareholder's net worth is equal in either scenario, but after the dividend is paid they are more liquid. For people who need investment income to live on, dividends are a cheap way to hold stocks and get regular payments, versus having to sell part of your portfolio every month.  But for people who want to hold their investment in the market for a long long time, dividends only increase the rate at which you have to buy. For mutual funds this isn't a problem: you buy the funds and tell them to reinvest for free. So because of that, it's a prohibited practice to ""sell"" dividends to clients." "Sure, stocks don't pay interest. I just looked up the word ""compound"" in a couple of dictionaries and the relevant definition in all of them just mentioned interest and not growth in the value of stock. So it may be technically inaccurate to talk about ""compound growth"" of a stock. I'll yield to someone more knowledgeable about the technical language of finance to answer that part. But regardless of whether the word strictly applies, the concept certainly does. Suppose you put $1000 into a mutual fund and the fund grows by 10%. You now have $1100. The next year the fund grows by 15%. So you gain 15% of what? Of your original $1000? No, of your present balance, $1100. The effect is the same as compound interest. There is the fundamental difference that interest is normally a fixed rate: you get such-and-such percent a year as spelled out in a contract. But change in the value of a stock depends on many factors, none of them guaranteed." Any ETF has expenses, including fees, and those are taken out of the assets of the fund as spelled out in the prospectus.  Typically a fund has dividend income from its holdings, and it deducts the expenses from the that income, and only the net dividend is passed through to the ETF holder.   In the case of QQQ, it certainly will have dividend income as it approximates a large stock index.  The prospectus shows that it will adjust daily the reported Net Asset Value (NAV) to reflect accrued expenses, and the cash to pay them will come from the dividend cash.  (If the dividend does not cover the expenses, the NAV will decline away from the modeled index.) Note that the NAV is not the ETF price found on the exchange, but is the underlying value.  The price tends to track the NAV fairly closely, both because investors don't want to overpay for an ETF or get less than it is worth, and also because large institutions may buy or redeem a large block of shares (to profit) when the price is out of line.  This will bring the price closer to that of the underlying asset (e.g. the NASDAQ 100 for QQQ) which is reflected by the NAV. Since the vast majority of fund managers/big investors run private entities, it's not possible to track their performance. It's possible to look at what they are holding (that's never real-time information) and emulate their performance. You can follow the intra-day NAV of an ETF, for instance SPY, by viewing its .IV (intra-day value) ticker which tracks it's value.   http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=spy http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^SPY-IV Otherwise, each ETF provider will update their NAV after business each day on their own website. https://www.spdrs.com/product/fund.seam?ticker=spy Index funds: Some of the funds listed by US SIF are index funds. ETFs: ETFdb has a list, though it's pretty short at the moment. "http://www.attaincapital.com/alternative-investment-education/managed-futures-newsletter/investment-research-analysis/423  http://www.cta-info.com/cta_stats.htm  I just googled ""managed futures stats"".    I'm not 100% sure what your goal is, but I wouldn't look to filter out trades.  You're better off grading returns and variance within the returns.  http://www.autumngold.com/  Poke around the ""top traders"" section and compare the returns with the drawdown of the traders.  You'll see the ""lucky"" traders, but you'll also see the high risk guys and low risk guys."