Devoted to understanding the basics and fundamentals of investing

There are over 9,000 publicly traded securities.  More than 6,000 of them would be considered micro-cap stocks.  Most stock indexes contain far fewer stocks.  Some index funds measured by market cap include the Dow Jones Industrial Average (30 macro cap stocks), Standard and Poors 500 (the 500 largest market cap stocks), the Russell 1000 (the 1000 largest market cap stocks, and the Wilshire 5000 (the 5000 largest stocks.)

The most widely traded index is the S&P500.  It is available in both mutual funds and ETFs.  One of the largest S&P500 mutual funds is the Vanguard 500 (ticker VFINX.)  The largest ETF is the Spyder 500 (ticker SPY.)

In the last four years there has been an explosion of ETFs.  You can buy them for almost any index, sector, country grouping, or asset class.  You can buy commodity funds, REIT index funds, emerging market funds, developed market funds or almost anything your heart desires index funds. I use ETFs exclusively for my investing.  I am currently overweight REIT, Oil, Oil Services and International.  I generally buy and hold for a year or longer.  I look for broad trends and use sector ETFs to express my views.

What do you think?  Where are you overweight today?