Overview: stock charts don't lie, also past performance is no indication of future performance. However, I believe the odds are better using charts instead of analyzing fundamentals, especially when investing in stock market indexes and market sector funds.

Trend and Momentum - Momentum is most easily defined as the acceleration rate of a stock's price. ETFs or stocks that are accelerating rapidly often times continue that directional trend for sometime and become tradable trends, and so momentum can be a valuable trading tool in your arsenal.

        
(DIA) - 3 weeks ago it traded in in negative territory (-2.9%), while Y-T-D it gained +2.5%

The performance trend is NOT a buy or sell signal, it just indicates which ETF performs better over a given time period. Your portfolio should hold the best performing ETFs based on the chart and may be adjusted from time to time depending on the stock market performance. Frequent swapping of ETFs may result in portfolio overall under performance. Should an ETF trend moves into the negative territory, it's time to raise cash and should be on the watch list.