The Wilshire 5000 moves up for the week ending 12/29/2006

Trend: This week the daily line turned up and then down, finishing up 81 points since last Friday. The 50-day moving average continues to move above the rising 200-day moving average. Friday's close was 493 points below the all-time high for this index of 14,751, set in late-March 2000.

Here's a 12-month chart of the Wilshire 5000* (a proxy for the stock market as a whole), showing the 50 and 200 day moving averages.

*The Wilshire 5000 is sometimes called the "total stock market index" or "total market index" because it includes more than 7,000 of the 10,000-plus securities that are publicly traded in the United States. All publicly-traded companies with headquarters in the U.S. that have readily available price data are included in the Wilshire 5000. Finalized in 1974, this index is extremely diverse, including stocks from every industry. Although it's a near-perfect measure of the entire U.S. market, the Wilshire 5000 is referred to less often than the less comprehensive S&P 500 when people talk about the entire market.