The Yonder 40

The Yonder 40 is not the forty acres behind the horse barns. It's a new stock index of rural America created by http://www.dailyyonder.com/, a web-based journal that focuses on rural America. The 40 stocks chosen will be invested in and tracked by the website, and looked at as a way to gauge the relative economic health of 55 million rural Americans by tracking the Yonder 40 against a few major indexes.

For comparison indexes most people are familiar with Dow Jones Industrials, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. Other well known indexes are the Russell 3000 which incorporates the large number of mid-cap stocks or the Wilshire 5000 which adds in a big chunk of small-caps. For more esoteric comparisons one could go to http://www.stockpickr.com/ and find everything from Warren Buffett's portfolio to the Lindsey Lohan index, from Viking Global's hedge fund portfolio to the Golf and Fishing index. And then there's http://www.stockerblog.com/ which has a broad range of portfolios and indexes, with today's being The UFO Index. Whatever one's preference, the Yonder 40 will be there to follow and use for any comparison.

Check it out.