Category: News & Chatter

News & Chatter

MarketClouds.com: Stock Market Trading Clouds

Indroducing Market Clouds – www.marketclouds.com – stock market activity and popularity indicator using clouds.

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!

Market Links

Are you trying to become a more successful trader or investor? I know I am.

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!

Gold

As we all know, gold commodities have been extremely hot lately. On Wednesday, gold, silver, and oil prices surged, much to the delight of commodities traders and investors.

Commodity: GOLD
Price: 636.00
Today’s change: +12.70

US Mint Gold Coins GOLD Gold, a precious metal, is hot. Gold prices have been steadily increasing for months now. The reasons are many: rising oil prices, weakened US dollar in currency markets (forex trading), the strength of China’s and India’s economies, and many other reasons.

In a previous post, Buying Gold, I had said the price of gold in my opinion was inflated. Now I’m eating my words. Gold has surged 91 points since my previous post on February 17, 2006. Incredible. With the strength of gold, and current economic situations, I see positive upside for gold investments.

Since February, I have done a lot of research on gold investments, particularly on gold coins. I currently do not own any gold coins or investments, but I am hoping to start buying very soon. My favorite coins are the American Gold Eagle by the US Mint and the Canadian Gold Maple minted by the Royal Canadian Mint. Both coins come in varying weights, but I’m primarily interested in the 1 ounce coins. Both coins look fantastic, in addition to their value. The American Gold Eagle is 91.67% fine gold. The Canadian Gold Maple is the most pure coin on the market, at 99.99% fine gold. Generally speaking, the price of gold coins will be slightly higher than gold bars, due to the artistry and minting involved.

Related links:

Eye on China Internet Stocks

I have been watching Chinese internet stocks recently. The China stocks I am most interested in are: SOHU, SINA, and BIDU.

The growth of internet users in China is tremendous. Some estimates place the number of people online in China at just under the number of internet users in the US. Other estimates say China has now surpassed the US in online users, making China the country with the most online internet users.

So where are Chinese people browsing to? The answers are baidu.com, sina.com.cn, and sohu.com.

According to Alexa, all 3 of these websites are in the global Top 10 of all websites. This means each of these websites gets enormous amounts of traffic. For online businesses, this means they can show lots of ads and promote their own pay services and products.

Each of these websites gets more web visitors (or “hits”) than Amazon.com or Microsoft.com. Wow.

Here’s a breakdown of the web rankings, web traffic graphs, and stock charts for SOHU, SINA, and BIDU:

Symbol: SOHU, global web rank: #9

SOHU web traffic graph:
sohu.com web traffic graph
SOHU 1 month stock chart:
SOHU stock chart

Symbol: SINA, global web rank: #6

SINA web traffic graph:
sina.com.cn web traffic graph
SINA 1 month stock chart:
SINA stock chart

Symbol: BIDU, global web rank: #4

BIDU web traffic graph:
baidu.com web traffic graph
BIDU 1 month stock chart:
BIDU stock chart
Anyone else watching these stocks? I personally would like to get a good entry on SOHU and SINA. My opinion is that BIDU is bloated right now and should dip some more, then BIDU will also be in a price range I would buy at.

My trade for SOHU, SINA, and BIDU stocks would be a swing trade or longer term investment, not a quick daytrade.

Google Founders Keep $1 Salary

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have turned down a raise and instead decided to rely on the success of GOOG (Google) stock. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin each have a $1 salary. In addition, Google CEO Eric Schmidt turned down a raise, also sticking to his $1 salary and stock options. Read the entire CNN article: Google leaders stick with $1 salary

I wish more CEOs and overpaid executives would take this approach. By keeping a $1 salary, the Google leaders are completely relying on the performance of GOOG stock prices to make them money. Shareholders love this because the Google execs have to think about their own fortunes – about $5 billion for Schmidt and over $12 billion each for Page and Brin – when running Google. If Google fails, they lose everything. Also, Google’s revenues and profits are not foolishly spent on over-abundant salaries, like some other publicly traded companies.

By keeping a $1 salary, the Google co-founders are letting shareholders know they are looking out for best interest of the shareholders. The $1 salary with options is also a way of telling shareholders Google has a profitable and successful future with steady leadership.

I’m a huge fan of Google as stock and as a company with innovative, useful, and efficient products and tools. Unfortunatley, I don’t currently own any GOOG shares. I am kicking myself for not buying in at the GOOG $340 price dip!

What are your thoughts on the $1 salary? Any Google shareholders out there?