NYSE TICK INDEX

This is the total number of advancing issues minus the number of declining issues, which is why it was strange to see it in a downtrend earlier today while the market was moving up. You can think of the TICK Index as a sort of breadth indicator or a read on the strength of a trend by how many stocks are participating.

Here you see the long term downtrend today with only a brief uptrend around the time the Euro tested last week's highs, now that uptrend is broken and seeing readings in the negative. This is one reason I feel that the support level shown in the last chart is important as the TICK Index would suggest that the market was simply following the Euro higher, but there wasn't broad NYSE Component strength behind the move up, creating a very parabolic spike that is potentially quite thin.