Here is one of my favorite quotes. I find this proverb very inspiring in many ways.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb

What this quote means to me

The message I get out of this is that it’s never to late to accomplish the things you want to accomplish.

In every day life we all have things we want to do. Maybe our personal goals or something we have always wanted to do, some place to see, or something to accomplish. We could have tried to accomplish it sooner, which may have been a better time, but we can still accomplish those things today — now. This quote inspires me to get out there and do all the things I want to do.

The investor in me views the trees as investments. The best time to start investing was 20 years ago. The second best time to start investing is now. There’s another quote regarding investing that also fits with this: “It’s not timing the market, it’s time in the market.” Time in the market basically means the longer you have investments, the longer your investments have been growing and making you money.

Inspiration

Overall, I think this is a great inspirational quote. We all have trees we want to plant. We shouldn’t give up hope, since we can still plant our tree today.

Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything. – Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham was referring to the hype he was saw coming from Wall Street. A lot of speculation. A log of fluffy news. A lot of hype to get traders and investors greedy and wanting more. Graham knew markets would always fluctuate, and he saw a solid investing approach in value investing. He searched for the gems that would reward him tremendously as he held on to it for a longer time. He didn’t seem to care for speculation in the markets at all, and I think this quote really reflects his attitude towards speculators. Maybe he saw speculation as a technique that had perhaps short term potential, but was not a solid long term investing tool.

I agree with Benjamin Graham on Wall Street people – including online daytraders and investors – that most people learn nothing and forget everything. However, there are many of us out there looking to learn more and improve our gains. But we all have to remember the tech boom, and bust. And we still see a lot of hype coming from Wall Street. One week it’s oil. The next week it’s tech. Television shows like Jim Cramer’s Real Money also help build hype and get people hearing about stocks they would normally never have heard of.

What do you think Benjamin Graham was talking about in his quote? Leave your comment!

The Featured Products page contains a list of great trading and investing books I recommend reading.

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Here is a snippet from my review of Trading In The Zone by Mark Douglas, found at my trading blog Trading Winner:

Trading In The Zone by Mark Douglas examines the mentality and psychology of successful and unsuccessful traders, understanding our trading actions, and shows us how to strengthen the psychological aspect of trading. “In Trading In The Zone”, Mark Douglas shows you how to analyze your mental strengths and weaknesses when you make trading decisions. He then shows you how you can correct flaws in your trading mentality and habits. The ultimate goal of Trading In The Zone is to eliminate trading based on emotions.

Read my full review of Trading In The Zone

I have gathered information on each online broker, such as commissions fees, margin rates, minimum initial deposits, special offers, and any other useful information I could find. I’ve also created a page for each broker where you can read other peoples comments and rate your broker from 1 to 5 stars. If you rate your broker, I would appreciate if you leave a comment for others, for example why you like or dislike your broker or any advantages or disadvantages you’ve experienced. People’s comments and ratings are a good way to weed out a great broker from a poor broker.
Browse the list of online brokers: List of Online Stock Brokers
Need help choosing a broker? Read my article: Choosing An Online Stock Broker.

Choosing an online stock broker is a guide to help you find the best online stock broker for your needs and requirements.

Read the full article at Trading Winner: Choosing An Online Stock Broker.

Introducing the new silver exchange traded fund (ETF): SLV

You can get in on the hot commodities and precious metals actions without owning physical metals such as gold and silver coins. Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) allow you to invest in commodities and precious metals, like Gold and Silver, and watch your ETF investment grow as the prices of gold, silver, and other commodities rise.

For those unfamiliar with Exchange Traded Funds, or ETFs, read my Exchange-Traded Funds – ETF on my Investing Winner blog. ETFs have many advantages and can benefit every stock trader and investor.

People have recently asked me about an exchange traded fund based on the price of Silver. One such silver ETF is the IShares Silver ETF, with ticker symbol SLV (ETF: SLV).

About the iShares silver trust etf:
Price: $138.12
Today’s Change:: +9.12 (+7.1%)

The SLV etf is sponsored by Barclay’s Global Investors and has been in the works for more than a year. Silver’s big brother gold also has an ETF in active trading, ticker symbol GLD.

Investors and traders alike have been waiting for the creation of the silver ETF. We can see their support and liking of the new SLV etf with the 7% jump in the price of the ETF, which was introduced on the stock markets on Friday, April 28, 2006.

Global investors are predicting both silver and gold will continue to rise even more than they have in the past year, due to concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, weakened dollar, gas and oil prices, and buying of precious metals by world banks.

SLV price quotes and charts

Exchange-Traded Funds – An Explanation: An Exchange-Traded Fund is a stock market security that generally tracks an index, such as NASDAQ, or a group of stocks. ETF’s are similar to mutual funds in that they are a collection of other stocks. This ETF collection of stocks allows you to diversify your money into numerous companies on the stock market by buying a single ETF stock. Exchange traded funds are traded on the markets like any other stock, such as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), or Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD). You can buy and sell ETF’s as you please. You do not have to wait to buy or sell as in your standard mutual funds.

How ETF’s Work The price of an ETF share is calculated by the value of the individual stocks the ETF tracks. For example, the most popular and actively traded ETF is based on stocks in the NASDAQ 100 – symbol: QQQQ. By buying a share of QQQQ, you are indirectly buying a little piece of all the companies listed in the NASDAQ 100 list. This allows you to invest your money long term, pegged to the value and price of the largest, most popular NASDAQ companies. If the value of NASDAQ 100 as a whole increases, your QQQQ will also increase at the same rate. If NASDAQ 100 gains 1% in a day, then your share of QQQQ will also gain 1% in one day. The same is true for market declines, and you will lose money. The QQQQ allows you to buy a whole basket of stocks, diversifying your holdings across the 100 companies of NASDAQ 100.

Where to Buy and Sell Exchange Traded Funds: You can buy and sell exchange traded funds – ETF – exactly like any other stock market share. For online brokers, such as TD Ameritrade, E*Trade, or Scottrade, you would place your order for an ETF in the same way as your order for SIRI (Sirius Satellite Radio) or WAG (Walgreens). Every stock broker allows you to buy and sell exchange-traded funds.

What kinds of ETFs can I buy? There are over 150 different ETF stocks you can purchase, ranging from stock market indexes (example: QQQQ), to ETFs composed of specific sectors such as defense and aerospace or energy (example: PPA). ETFs also exist for precious metals, such as Gold (symbol: GLD), or Oil commodities (symbol: USO). Other ETFs may track stocks in foreign markets, such as China or India. You are almost guaranteed to find an ETF to suit your investment wants and needs. You just have to do a little digging and research to find the perfect exchange traded fund (ETF) for you.

Popular Exchange Traded Funds:

• QQQQ – NASDAQ 100 ETF
• SPDR (Spider) – S & P 500 Index ETF
• GLD – Gold ETF
• USO – U.S. Oil Fund ETF

Benefit of ETFs: ETFs have numerous benefits. Most mutual funds have a minimum investment, which can range from $500 or $1000 to $25,000 or more per fund. You must send your money to the mutual fund company, such as Vanguard or T Rowe Price, to purchase the fund. With ETFs, you can buy and sell as you see necessary, through your favorite stock market broker – I use TD Ameritrade. You can buy as little as 1 share, or you can buy thousands of shares of a single ETF, just like you can with stock market investments. Most importantly, your money is (usually!) diversified across a range of stocks – either broadly based such as stock market index ETFs, or focused in sectors such as mining or energy. In my research on Exchange Traded Funds, the most substantial gains come in longer term holding of the ETF stocks, generally speaking over 1 year. Also for stocks held over 1 year, you will end up paying less in capital gains taxes. That being said, there are many traders that regularly daytrade or swing trade ETF stocks, most notably the Nasdaq 100 ETF, QQQQ.

As always, thorough research is necessary for investing and trading anything, even ETF securities. Doing your Due Diligence is one facet of becoming a successful investor. You have the power to become an Investing Winner!

My friend JCV has a blog called MarketLinks.org that provides great resources, information, and commentary, covering many investing and trading subjects. JCV’s goal is to facilitate trader and investor education by providing a wealth of information we can use to increase our success.

Some topics you can read about at Market Links include:

• Investing
• Trading Mutual Funds
• Commodities and Futures
• Risk Management
• and more

I highly recommend checking out MarketLinks.org – you’re guaranteed to learn something new or find a link to a useful website. Leave JCV a comment!

I have developed a new tool to assist stock market traders and investors in finding the most popular and active companies traded on all of the stock market exchanges: Market Clouds.

Market Clouds allows stock traders to quickly scan and identify the most actively traded and popular stocks, using different font sizes for levels of activity.

How Market Clouds Work Market Clouds utilizes data from across my network of websites as well as forums and IRC chatter talk to build a list of stocks people are currently and actively requesting quotes, charts, and news for.

Why are some stock tickers bigger? The most popular and actively traded stocks have the largest font sizes. Less active or popular stocks have smaller font sizes. The stocks with the least amount of activity have the smallest font sizes.

How Market Clouds Helps Traders Large font sizes allow us to scan the entire list of daily hot stocks or stocks that are very active. Traders can quickly identify the most active – they have huge font sizes and are easier to spot and read than the less active stocks. Less active and popular stocks have tiny font sizes, allowing market traders and investors to easily cut out the noise.

Put Market Clouds on Your Website or Blog! I have created a Market Clouds service I call MyCloud, allowing you to include a customizable Market Cloud on your own web page. View Market Clouds’ MyCloud in action in my sidebar on the right!

As with any research you do, you must perform Due Diligence on any potential trade. Market Clouds should be used to identify possible trades, based on their trade activity and popularity. These are the stocks people are requesting quotes, viewing charts, or reading news about. Market Clouds should be used in conjunction with other research tools and analysis. You should not buy a stock simply because it is the most active or popular stock with the biggest font size. It could be this stock is actively trading because people are selling all their shares!

Check out Market Clouds – All Stocks, the Market Clouds – Top 100, and the Market Clouds – Over the Counter Bulletin Board Stocks (OTCBB). Put Market Clouds on your website or blog with Market Clouds – MyCloudI welcome all comments and criticisms. If you have an improvement I can make, let me know. I hope you enjoy Market Clouds as much as I do!