I have been watching RUT forever, it was actually my favorite for a while.
One thing that you have to be aware of are the weightings in this index.
It's something like healthcare, financials, industrials, and tech all have similar weighting and make up roughly 60% of the index. It's much less tech heavy than NQ and ES.
It's a broad sector index. For this reason, it is a favorite hedge against the Dow. Big prop firms will buy DJX and sell RUT for huge size to get a relative value trade going.
This is actually a pretty big deal.
The dow is more liquid than the russell, but neither of them are nearly as liquid as the ES. This means they have to trade this thing round the clock in order to move volumes.
Every tick, every bounce, and all of the market action is being worked over by the DJX/RUT spread paper (orders). This is the original US cap' spread.
I like that trade, but not really RTY outright, so much. RTY can make good money, and it has a cool multiplier, 50*RUT. Also, because it is less liquid the market makers in the futures basis have to trade very aggressively - which can help you get a read on the market.
Can get all of the sector tickers here
https://www.americanbulls.com/SearchList.aspx?lang=en&SearchText=^R2RGS
and you can find correlated instruments here
http://www.market-topology.com/correlation/IWM?etf=0