www.TraderPlanet.com
With social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter gaining so much popularity, I have no doubt that one dedicated to traders and investors could do the same. TraderPlanet.com, founded by Lane Mendelsohn, was created to provide traders and investors specifically a place to interact and network with like-minded individuals. Some of you may recall Lane Mendelsohn from TraderEducation.com and Market Technologies. You’ll see some similarities between TraderEducation.com and TraderPlanet.com. The difference is that TraderEducation.com is more focused on educating traders, whereas TraderPlanet is more focused on building a community of traders. The objective is still to educate traders.
Features
Across the top of the home page are tabs titled education, forex, futures, stocks, and community. The education section contains several educational articles, quizzes to test your knowledge of the markets, newsletters that require a subscription, videos, webinars, various resources, tools, and calculators. From the currency tab you can access quotes of more than 40 currency pairs/crosses. Clicking on any of these pairs/crosses will bring up detailed quotes, some technical points such as moving averages, price change, % change, stochastics, average true range, relative strength, %R, historic volatility, and the moving average convergence/divergence (Macd) oscillator. You can also see various opinions and projections. Other features include news, chats, and commentaries. You will find similar features for futures and stocks.
Given that this is a social network, I will focus more on the community feature. If you roll your mouse over the community tab, you will see a list of your options in this category. The forums are probably the heart of the social network aspect of this site, so I was a little disappointed when I didn’t see much activity here. I am assuming this is because it is a relatively new site. So I moved over to the blog area, where I was happy to find that there were far more members. Registered members can create their own TraderPlanet blogs, giving them an opportunity to comment on the markets and share their knowledge with others. Going through the list, I recognized the names of some bloggers. The blogging is a more active component of the site, with blog entries receiving several comments.
Other features include the TraderPlanet Index, which is a compilation of trader opinions on different market sectors. Once you log in to the site, you can give your opinion on a particular market sector, which then gets compiled with the opinions of others and is summarized as a chart. An interesting component of this community is the “Mendels,” the official currency of TraderPlanet.com. Those of you familiar with Second Life, the virtual life game available on the web, will find this similar to the concept of the “Linden dollar.” Basically, members can earn Mendel dollars through several means and then use them to buy or sell products or services or donate to charities. TraderPlanet features a charity every month, which is selected based on member votes. TraderPlanet supports charities that focus on health, the environment, human rights, and animal welfare issues.
I was very impressed with the design of the site. It’s easy to navigate and has a clear purpose, which is to educate traders about the markets. If you are interested in becoming a member, you can either sign up for a trader profile or company profile. Both are free of charge but if you opt for the company profile, you are required to contribute resources. You need to be a registered member to gain access to all features of TraderPlanet.com. The website is worth a visit whether you are a registered member or not. You can still access most features as a guest. Since the site is dedicated to building a community, consider it a destination where you can socialize and learn at the same time.
—Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan, Editor