Quote from taofinance:
Marty Schwartz has said that it is the overnight trading of the cash bond... but this won't help you out.
What will really help you is to stop thinking of indicators, of strong correlations, of easy ways out. Some days crude is running, so the oil sector is strong and pumps up the rest of the market. Some days the brokerages report write downs, and this drags the market down. Some days one sector is strong, one sector is weak, and the market is neither.
It is all connected, and at the same time it is not. I used to have biases on what the market will do based on certain macroeconomic forces, and my losses showed it. Now I just follow the market, if it is acting strong, I will look to buy; if it is acting weak, I will look to short. I am a new trader, less than a year, and this month I have profit of $8000 so far.
My point is, there is no holy grail to trading. If there was, wouldn't we all be doing it? There is a tip though: Trade what you see, not what you think.