Russell 2000 Index

 Russell indexes have been developed by the Frank Russell Company and the New York Futures Exchange (NYFE), to measure U.S. stock market segments and were introduced to the market in1984. Russell 3000 index is the main U.S. index from the Russell series. This index is divided into several well known sub indexes, such as small-cap Russell 2000 index and large-cap Russell 1000 index.The Russell 3000 index is compiled by the Tacoma, Washington-based Russell Investment Group by listing all traded U.S. companies in descending order by market capitalization and selecting top 3000 largest companies. The top 1000 of the largest companies from the Russell 3000 index make up Russell 1000 index and 2000 smallest companies from the Russell 3000 index make up Russell 2000 index. The list of the stocks representing Russell indexes is updated on a quarterly basis.Russell indexes has been used by analysis in the technical analysis to predict future price movements of the ETFs (exchange traded funds) that track Russell indexes.The Russell 2000 index is one of the most popular indexes from the Russell group. With the introduction of the exchange traded funds (ETFs), the Russell 2000 index started to attract more and more retail and institutional, small and big investors. The speculators have been attracted to the more risky Russell 2000 e-mini index futures which are considered as one of the most traded and most liquid emini (together with S&P 500 e-mini) index futures on the commodities market.The Russell 2000 E-mini contract is one-fifth of its standard counterpart. The same, e-mini Russell 1000 futures are one-fifth the size of a full Russell 1000 futures contracts. The e-mini Russell 2000 and e-mini Russell 1000 are traded on the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) electronic trading system. The e-mini Russell index futures contracts are an affordable way to trade the Russell 2000 and Russell 1000 Indexes. Yet, a trader should remember that even if the Russell 200 e-mini is considered as separate from the index entity it still tracks the index and it would be logical to apply the index technical analysis to trade e-mini rather than use technical indicators solely applied to the e-mini itself. At the end, even if the technical analysis applied to emini points to one direction and the same technical indicator applied to the benchmark index points in opposite direction - most likely the emini will follow the index trend, simply, because it was set to track the index.