Investing tools I use every day

Every day I go through my stock checking routine, which varies from day to day depending on what computer I am on. Here are the tools that I use:

• Sogo Elite - This is my broker and trading platform. Sogo Elite (by SogoTrade, formerly SogoInvest) is Sogo's advanced trading platform, which is still lacking if you are a really serious trader, in which case you should go to a direct access broker with a more featured platform and level 2 quotes. However, Sogo Elite has all the features I need, like real time level 1 data, charting, and the most popular indicators such as MACD, RSI, and Stochastics. You can execute orders from the platform as well. One other reason I use Sogo is because of their dirt cheap trades. Check them out to learn more.
  
• Zecco - This is my backup broker. I use Zecco because it is very cheap (if you maintain a $2500 balance, you get 10 FREE trades per month, otherwise trades are just $4.50). Zecco has a nice web interface and is usually very fast as far as trade execution. I've entered some pretty bizarre orders, sometimes well below the bid, with an AON (all or none) order, and got a fill with Zecco when I couldn't with my other broker. Plus, you can trade OTCBB and pink sheet stocks with Zecco. Check them out!
• Think or Swim paper money - Think or Swim's popular trading platform is available for free to use with their paper money program - a simulated trading environment. Along with being able to test strategies without taking on any risk, you can use their real time data, charts, and other tools all for free. The platform is exactly the same as a real account. The charting in TOS is great because you can annotate and draw on charts, which allows you to easily define channels and patterns, as well as support, resistance, and trend lines. You can also set up fibonacci lines very easily. TOS paper money is easily worth getting just for that one feature alone.
• Bigcharts.com - very nice charts here, and you can save your preferences to a cookie so you don't have to set them every time (this includes chart line style, indicators, color scheme, time window, etc)
• Yahoo finance - I use Yahoo Finance for company news. Every now and then I will use their charting as well.
• stockta.com - Excellent website for stock technical analysis. Type in a stock symbol and instantly see all resistance/support levels as well as bearish/bullish sentiment for the overall stock for the short and long term, as well as sentiment according to each of the popular indicators.
• stockhouse.com screener - an outstanding technical screener for finding stocks based on technical rules such as candlesticks, moving averages, and abnormal volume.

There are many more resources that I use, but this list could easily get way too long. If you have any tools or resources that you use every day, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Adsflip versus Spottt - how do they compare?

I use both Spottt and Adsflip on this blog, because they are free banner exchanges - which means free traffic. The traffic is far from great, but I wanted to share my results with both:

So, in an Adsflip Spottt comparison, it looks like they are roughly the same. It should be noted that I am using the same ad image for both exchanges.

Like I said, nothing spectacular. If I start getting more organic traffic in the future (which isn't happening now because google isn't indexing my pages, for some reason ... very odd, considering blogger is owned by google!) I will probably ditch both services for advertising that would be far more useful considering the limited amount of real estate on the blog anyway.

How to disable animations in firefox

There are several ways to disable animations in the firefox browser, whether it is an animated gif or a flash animation.

How to block .gif animations

• In order to temporarily disable .gif animations, simply press the escape key while you are in the browser window.
• In order to permanently disable .gif animations, you will need to open the firefox configuration file. To do this, type about:config into the address bar. Then, look for “image.animation_mode”, double-click it, and type none.

How to block flash animations

• To disable flash animations, you will need to install the flashblock firefox extension.

Try it out!

Buying a phone on ebay? Read this first!

If you are considering buying a phone on ebay, there are several things to consider before making the purchase. One consideration is whether or not the phone has water damage. The motorola razr and other phones (check your model) have a water detection sticker that turns red (or perhaps another color) when it is exposed to water, meaning that water at least got inside the battery compartment.

Ask the seller whether or not this sticker, if the phone as one, is activated. I made the mistake of buying the phone in the photo and it died soon after I bought it. Whether or not this was because of water damage, I don't know, but it would have been nice to get a refund for the phone in hind sight. Most sellers will likely exclude this information if the phone still works, thinking that their customer won't notice.

Weird entrecard screen

When I click on a link, a lot of the time I will middle-click on it in Firefox, to open it in a new tab. Well, I accidentally hit the middle-click (the button under the scroll wheel) to drop on someone's entrecard, and this is what opened in the new tab.

When the button says "thanks", it is inside an iframe with the background image the yellow button. So when it is opened in a new screen, the yellow button background just fills the entire screen. Fun.