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Forget such magazine headlines as Ten Stocks You Must Buy Now. Market success has next to nothing to do with the stocks you pick. It has everything to do with [...]

From chartiststo astrologers there are websites dedicated to the serious and the seriously weird stockpicker. But do any of them work? Statistical forecasting systems such as 'neural networks' are 'artificial [...]

What if I said I could add 27 per cent to your investment returns over five years? Trading the Fortune 500 tracking stock recently, I remembered exactly how such returns [...]

Hydrogen fuel cells, gold and timber may be esoteric, but there are serious websites that explain how such alternative investments can feature in a diversified portfolio. Some of the returns [...]

Cynics have always said there is little difference between gambling and trading. Now they are being proved right, at least in part, by a proliferation of websites offering bets. These [...]

Last year the Bombay Stock Exchange shot up 91 per cent, thanks to a vast increase in foreign investment into the market. Cheap IT labour in countries such as India [...]

Most investors collect stocks like socks in a hotchpotch accumulation over time. But do you know how much risk you are taking with each investment? Most private investors would be [...]

There's so much information about markets online that it can be hard to avoid stock ideas overload. Try using a new breed of web tools called trade spotters to hunt [...]

As the year comes to an end, you may be thinking about reviewing fund performance in 2003 to help you pick a good one for 2004. Don'tbe tempted. The legendary [...]

'Elephants don't gallop,' says investment guru Jim Slater in an oblique reference to the sluggish rate of increase in the prices of shares of large companies. For example, a large [...]

If you spend much time looking at internet bulletin boards you will be familiar with the widespread view that it is often sensible to add toa losing stock position on [...]

Commodities trading sounds like something best left to professionals. Yet it is increasingly being offered to private investors by online brokers. It is often cheaper and less risky than share [...]

It's a man's world, at leastin finance. Therecan be little doubt about male dominance whenonly one in 100of the UK'slargest companies is headed by a woman. That company is Pearson, [...]

The rapidgrowth of share trading throughderivatives such as contracts for difference raises the question of whether some people are simply addicted to trading. The problem appears widespread in the US [...]

You have a PC and aninternet connection and have read a dozen books on investing. You may well think you are ready to operate alongside the 400,000 other UK online [...]

Since 1945, the US markets in the third year of a president's term have outperformed all other years with anaverage gain of 17 per cent. To benefit from this, wewant [...]

Many investors are close watchers of sales and purchases bydirectors of stock in their own companies.If these deals are telling us something, how can we profit from it? Simply mimicking [...]

With the FTSE100 andthe Dow Jones IndustrialAverage both up 25 per cent from their March lows, online traders who dropped out after the end of the stock market boom in [...]

The phenomenal growth of share trading through derivatives such as contracts for difference raises the question of whether some people are simply addicted to trading. ? Several websites are dedicated [...]

With all the talk of the euro and a declining dollar, are private investorstempted to trade currencies online? Online share brokers seem to think so and are increasingly offering currency [...]

What happened to all the talk about value investing after the dotcom bubble? If investors can find at the click of a mouse what constitutes a value stock, a growth [...]

After three consecutive years of market declines, investors want some security. They are attracted by any investment offering upside but guaranteeing limited downside. Sound too good to be true? Charles [...]

A big spread betting company has just launched online trading in weather. That may seem odd, but it is easy for investors and businesses to forget the impact of weather [...]

At the height of the dotcom boom, JP Morgan forecast that 17.1m Europeans would be trading online by this year alongside 27m in the US. As it turned out, of [...]

I thought all this online trading lark was behind us. Are you seriously telling me online investing is growing? Active online trading is booming, but not necessarily in shares. For [...]

In this market you areeither a spectator or you arebeing wrong-footed. Recent FTSE gyrations should have occurred only once in six years according to Metastock software. So should you wait [...]

Mentioning 'diversification' when the FTSE 100 stands at a seven-year low mightseem odd, but it isn't. Excusesfor failing to diversify are unacceptable. Yet,most traders have probably not realised that heeding [...]

Markets go through cycles and so, therefore, do the types of investment style that make money. Four years ago, buying technology stocks made money, then from 2000 'shorting' (selling falling [...]

What's the best investment? Stocks could go on falling. Derivatives, like stock futures or contracts for difference, allow investors to profit from falls. But with markets at seven-year lows, we're [...]

I am getting worried. The e-mails I receive from investors increasingly have a hint of desperation. More and more investors want to try websites generating automatic buy and sell signals [...]

Here are five forecasts to help you in what promises to be a difficult year. * The winners will be traders using online tools to piggy-back on Nobel Prize winning [...]

We've been through three years of the worst US bear market since the Great Depression and the number of online investors keeps on rising. Europe alone has 4m of them, [...]

We've been through three years of the worst US bear market since the Great Depression and the number of online investors keeps on rising. Europe alone has 4m of them, [...]

The FTSE 100 has just had its best two months for four years and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has had its best two months since 1975. The Nasdaq is [...]

The Dow needs to rise by an improbable 20 per cent in the remaining 5 1/2weeks of the year toavoid a third consecutive year of losses. Luckily there are gems [...]

I want a 35 per cent gainif the Dow rises by 5 per cent in the next 30 days. I want a 20 per cent gain if the FTSE 100 [...]

Hidden charges are pushing up the cost of dealing for online traders, but many will stick with their expensive tried and trusted ways. This is a growing problem, illustrated by [...]

I ignore analysts' headline 'buy' recommendations; their 'sells' tend to be a much better indicator of the stocks that are worth acquiring Performance is the only thing I trust for [...]

The number of European stock investors trading online will rise to 10m infive years, according to a report this month from Forrester Research*. Online traders already account for 32 per [...]

September is the worstperforming month for stocks, according to market historians. Little wonder, then, that a CBS poll suggests that almost two-thirds of US investors believe stock markets haven't hit [...]

You may not have heard of swing trading even though it is steadily growing more popular. As a veteran swing trader, I consider that the case for it is compelling. [...]

How much have your investments dropped in the past month? If you have lost more than you expected then you probably took more risk than you realised. Sadly most people [...]

Web technology is the answer if you want to profit from volatility. Ignore the endless theorising about whether we've reached the market bottom. Volatile markets are to be embraced, not [...]

Corporate scandals are good.As traders we're an amoral bunch who look toprofit from defence stocks in wars and from corporate scandals in peacetime. After Enron and WorldCom there have been [...]

'Stomach-churning' and 'gut-wrenching' are sentiments familiar to traders, especially those trading this past fortnight. But better than any antacid is a financial product that again has saved my hide and [...]

I guess that many of you owned several of the stocks that dropped out of the FTSE 100 or FTSE 250 in last week's quarterly reshuffle. This is even though [...]

Internet investing is not associatedwith playing it safe. However, some ofthe safest ways to invest are available online, indeed some can only be accessed online and are even 'patent pending'. [...]

With the Queen's Golden Jubilee, the thoughts of this online trader have turned to gold. Well, it is not just the Jubilee, but also the five-year high in gold prices [...]

Day traders are, of course, an endangered species. These individuals who move in and out of stocks by the minute, placing large bets on small price moves, find it hard [...]

In the spirit of the BBC's recent national IQ test, here's a spot quiz tomeasure your trading IQ: in playing the national lottery, which is the worst combination of numbers [...]