www.TradeTheNews.com
News moves the markets, and it's in the best interest of every trader to keep abreast of the financial news. Because of this, most traders tune into some news channel, whether it be radio or television, to hear the financial news throughout the trading day. But now, with TradeTheNews.com (TTN), you have the option of receiving real-time audio news via the Internet, the benefit being that you can keep your eyes and ears focused on the screen or screens in front of you.
TTN is a closed-circuit network, so you'll need to download the Withit
IP Dealerboard (Figure 1) before you can receive any news. Note there are
four spaces for channels, and you can assign each by selecting from the
authorized channel list. As of this writing, your options are Trade The
News, S&P Futures pits, and the Nasdaq futures pits.
FIGURE 1: TRADETHENEWS.COM
But what, you may ask, do you get that is different from all the other news channels? Glad you asked. TTN is an independent and unbiased news service that receives its news from more than 300 sources. You receive live breaking financial news as it happens on the trading floor. In addition to audio news, you can access market forecasts through the home page. Not only that, subscribers to the service receive an email every day with an earnings report.
When you opt to tune into the Trade The News channel, you can hear anything
from economic data to unusual trading activity in any equity. In the Standard
& Poor's 500 and Nasdaq channels, you receive live broadcasts from
the respective trading pits. You can hear the bid/offer, the size of the
trade, positions, trading volume, and so forth. It was interesting hearing
all the chatter from the pits in the background.
FIGURE 2: THE WITHIT IP DEALERBOARD. You can listen to up to four channels simultaneously.
Essentially, this is a product that would benefit anyone who participates in the markets on a regular basis. Equity traders can keep track of analyst upgrades/downgrades, earnings announcements, IPO and merger activity, and economic numbers announcements. In addition to receiving market news, futures traders can get key support and resistance levels and program trade alerts. International news is also broadcast throughout the trading day. So you get the live news coverage, but whether you can trade the news before it moves the market is something only you can answer. -Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan, Editor
TheKirkReport.com
I have no idea who in the world Charles E. Kirk is. But after only a few months of peeking in on his website/blog, TheKirkReport.com, I'm sold. I don't know if there is a more worthwhile location on the Internet to go for reasoned, agenda-free thought and commentary on the stock market. That Kirk's website is updated regularly, is chock-full of interesting hyperlinks to other resources on the web, and has the sort of casual chatting-over-lunch-the-other-day tone that helps make the best weblogs so readable is all the more reason to read The Kirk Report.
SO WHO IS HE?
Kirk's anonymity is hardly his fault. Not only has he and his website/blog
been discussed (albeit too briefly in my opinion) in prestigious financial
publications, but TheKirkReport.com features an informative "About Me"
page that tells visitors just who Kirk is, what his background in the financial
markets is, and what his intentions are for his website. At the risk of
spoiling the surprise, Kirk is an individual investor who has been trading
stocks for more than a decade. He's got a juris doctor (law) degree, a
little history as a newsletter founder and contributor (the newsletter
is called MoneyXperts), and even spent some time as a private investigator.
FIGURE 1: THE HOME PAGE OF THEKIRKREPORT.COM
And now, all he wants to do is help "the little guy," the average investor, get rich? Well, yeah. Like a lot of talented stock traders in the late 1990s, Kirk did well enough for himself (and subscribers of MoneyXperts) to be able to dedicate himself professionally to trading stocks and writing about trading stocks. But unlike many who cut their teeth on the soaring bull market of the late 1990s, not only does Kirk still have plenty to show for his efforts, but he's among the few who still think the stock business is a worthwhile place for the average punter to ply his or her trade (pun intended).
THE WEBSITE/BLOG
So what will visitors find when they surf over to TheKirkReport.com? The website reads more or less like the blogs you have probably come across: Kirk makes daily entries based on his own observations of what matters to people trading stocks. Some days you'll find an entry about an impending earnings season. Other days he'll have a list of interesting stocks worth watching because of some technical or fundamental criteria that he either watches himself, or thinks he might want to start watching. And still other days he will provide a smorgasbord of current financial and economic commentary from around the country, loaded with hyperlinks to make it easy for readers to track down sources and original authors on their own. What is wonderful about Kirk's writing is that while it is so obviously well-thought out and cautious (that is, no wild man jumping up and down on his desk screaming, "Buy!"), there is a freshness and spontaneity to his delivery that makes TheKirkReport.com consistently readable.
PROVIDING FOR THE LITTLE GUY
Kirk emphasizes that he is just trying to provide "little guy" investors with "food for thought" as opposed to the sort of "blind recommendations" or touts for which many independent traders charge an arm and a leg. As he writes in his "Objectives for this website": "[U]ltimately, my end goal is for an individual investor who reads The Kirk Report frequently to make much more informed, intelligent, unemotional and therefore, ultimately very successful investment decisions."
If the idea of getting all of this pretty much for nothing seems a little too good to be true, Kirk provides a copy of his "track record" online. Again, I don't want to spoil all the surprises, but if his future performance bears any resemblance whatsoever to his accomplishments in the recent past (any year since and including 2000), then those who elect to stay in touch with TheKirkReport.com will likely be very glad they did so.
I should add here that, as of January 2004, TheKirkReport.com has added a members-only component. What exactly are the, ahem, privileges of membership? The most immediate, of course, is the pleasure of knowing that you're helping defray the numerous administrative costs of running a website as worthwhile as this one. Beyond that, those who do donate ($50 is recommended for new members; those who've been around for a while are allegedly more likely to kick in two to three times that much) get access to current portfolio holdings (which are updated on a daily basis), as well as Kirk's "trading notes" and explanations behind the trades.
By the way, that's $50 a year - an unqualified steal compared to even the most affordable trading newsletter subscription.
THE BEST AND THE WORST
But for the skeptical or cautious, feel free to make your own examination of TheKirkReport.com. The fact that Kirk keeps his weblog current means that there is always something interesting to read, think about, and research on your own. And the fact that he doesn't seem to have any irresistible urge to be too clever or too controversial (you'll find precious little "guru-bashing" here) or too confrontational is another feather in his cap, as far as at least this reader of TheKirkReport.com is concerned.
In this, TheKirkReport.com has many of the best qualities of the weblog world and a refreshing absence of the worst. If the George W. Bush era has ushered in the likeability litmus test of "Would you like to have a beer with this guy?" then it is hard to see how someone like Charles Kirk wouldn't pass with flying colors. Like a number of other independent trader/analysts who came of age as market wizards in their own right during the last decade, Kirk manages to come across as someone who is both laid-back about his life and passionate in his pursuits. An excellent example of this comes when he asks himself - critically - "What makes you a pro?"
In my view, anyone who spends years of time studying and making money off the market, is a pro. While I don't currently run my own mutual fund, hedge fund, or trading floor-my only source of income is by trading stocks. I live and breathe the stock market every day and I do because I love it.
Put that together with a trading track record that would be the envy of 98% of this country's mutual fund managers (and the lion's share of the hedge fund managers as well), and you've got "one pro's view of the stock market" that might be worth adding to your own.
-David Penn, Technical Writer
Originally published in the March 2005 issue of Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES magazine. All rights reserved. © Copyright 2005, Technical Analysis, Inc.