04:28 PM
TraderPlanet.com Aims to Help Improve Trading Strategies
TraderPlanet.com, a new social networking platform for active traders and investors, has launched with the aim of helping improve trading strategies in the midst of the current economic crisis.
The portal supplies market research and news through articles, tutorials, commentaries, webinars, audio broadcasts, books and software. It also offers data and technical analysis tools, which according to TraderPlanet.com are designed to enhance trading performance and level the playing field between institutional and individual investors.
The portal, which launched last week and already counts almost 2,500 members, also provides traders with chat rooms, e-mail, blogs, forum discussions and bulletin postings.
"We have found the traders and investors are telling other traders and investors about the site," says Lane J. Mendelsohn, publisher of TraderPlanet.com. "The content is very diverse, from stocks, futures, forex, ETFs, etc and coverage is from novice to expert. More importantly, the content is not advertorial in nature, nor is it written in a way to try to induce someone to buy something. Just pure market analysis."
If traders are having a problem with a particular trading issue, Mendelsohn adds, they can do a search and find articles or webinars that are on those topics. "You can ask the expert and figure what you have to do to find yourself on right track," he says. The site's experts include successful investors as well as analysts.
The Tampa Bay, Fl-based site positions itself as a cross between MySpace and WebMD for the financial community, and sees its main competition as The Motley Fool and Cake Financial.
Online expert communities have recently been proliferating, with investors and traders finding a safe haven to communicate with fellow professionals in communities provided by brokerages such as Charles Schwab, as well as through new portals such as Stockhouse.com.
Mendelsohn points out that unlike its competitors, however, TraderPlanet.com also allows traders to interact on a personal as well as a professional level, and to post family photos and share them with members of the trading community they know on a more personal level.
TraderPlanet also encourages its members to donate some of their trading profits to charity. As such, the portal has established The TraderPlanet Charity of the Month, a poll which encourages members to donate to the featured charities and ultimately decide the most productive way to apply these proceeds.
To date, the community has donated almost $20,000 to charity, says Mendelsohn. Melanie Rodier has worked as a print and broadcast journalist for over 10 years, covering business and finance, general news, and film trade news. Prior to joining Wall Street & Technology in April 2007, Melanie lived in Paris, where she worked for the International Herald ... View Full Bio