Learning to trade in the Forex currency market can be a daunting task for investors wanting to diversify their stock portfolio to hedge against the weak US dollar. The Forex exchange may appear a bit too “foreign” to stock investors who are only familiar with trading on the stock markets. There is a better option in which an investor will not have to open a Forex broker account or change trading platforms just to add currencies to their investment basket.

Thanks to Rydex Investments, investors can now trade and own currencies using Rydex’s currencySHARESSM Trusts. They currently have 8 different currencies corresponding to 8 different currencySHARES^SM Trusts. An investor has the opportunity to trade the currencies of the Australian Dollar (FXA), British Pound Sterling (FXB), Canadian Dollar (FXC), Euro (FXE), Japanese Yen (FXY), Mexican Peso (FXM), Swedish Krona (FXS) or Swiss Franc (FXF).
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Are you having a difficult time finding a Forex signal provider to automate your currency trading? Maybe the ones you have found are a little bit too expensive for the service. Fret no more, because Zulutrade gives you a choice from numerous signal providers at no cost.

“Zulutrade receives rebates from the brokers, for the trades generated and splits them with the experts that provide the advice.”

Thousands of buy/sell recommendations are received by Zulutrade each day from some of the most popular signal providers. There are also professional and talented traders from around the world that can be tracked. You can choose from their individual performance and then the signal is automatically sent to your broker account to trade with.
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Happy Holidays! And no, I’m not talking about TREX the stock ticker, but T-Rex of the Jurassic kind. If you are having a hard time finding that perfect gift for the paleontologist or fossil collector that is on your Christmas list, you should swing by Paleodirect.com and browse around. You will receive many thanks and accolades for years to come from your fortunate gift recipient.

As an investment, high quality rare fossils do not depreciate –unless you break it. Fossil collecting is one of the most undervalued markets in the field of rare collectibles. With international demand growing, deposits being depleted and new laws imposed on the trade of rare fossils; the price of the finest and rarest specimens will appreciate year after year.

High quality animal and plant fossils and pre-historic artifacts are much sought after by collectors from around the world. They have good reasons. Rare fossils are a finite commodity. While Mother Nature can still churn out other collectibles like precious stones, there are no more dinosaurs or pre-historic fauna to fossilize.
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Founded in June 2005, Trademaster has offices in both London and Dubai to offer investors managed Forex investing. Even though they are a fairly new company, they have had a strong trading record. Since its inception, the live Broadcast Account with the Velocity4x broker has shown a 37.43% cumulative return as of September 2007. Triple digit gains were realized with the using IFX Broker as of March 2007.

While the performance data found on the site is a bit outdated, Trademaster prides itself as a company that protects the client’s investment and offering transparency. So once you become a client, you will have online access to view their trading strategies and performance in real time. Below is more information as gathered from their website.
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The Banking sector has taken a beating this year because of the subprime mortgage fiasco. More share price decline is to come as bigger banks continue to write off billions of losses from bad mortgages. Smaller public community banks that do not even have subprime mortgages on their books are being punished as well.

The market is sometime quite “irrational” when it makes no distinction in pummeling a good stock from a deservingly bad one because of guilt by association. If history repeats itself, now would be a good time to pick up cheap shares in these smaller banks to see double to triple digit returns in the next two to four years. Similar situations have happened at least three times in the Banking sector as small banks were dragged down because of issues with bigger banks and an irrational market sentiment.

By owning an index of small community banks during the 1980s, between September 1982 and July 1986, an investor could have made over 250% returns. This same index of small banks would have made over 188% between November 1990 and October 1993. Another scenario appeared during 2000 when small banks were punished because of losses by big banks during a difficult rate environment. Over the next four years, the share price of the smaller banks skyrocketed once the market realized its errors with the smaller banks.
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We may not all have the talent or star qualities of a George Clooney or Angelina Jolie to appear on the silver screens and pull in million dollar pay days. However, the profits to be made in Hollywood’s largest blockbuster movies are not limited to “A-Listers” and famous movie producers. Do you know what Oscar Winners like Crash, Brokeback Mountain, Million Dollar Baby and Capote have in common?

These films were a few of the many independent films that were financed by private investors. The majority of movies produced today have been independent feature films that are privately funded. Independently financed movies have set new box office records as well as record annual growth rates and returning billions in profits to their investors.

Growing demand for outside financing of independent films gives investors an alternative investment opportunity to participate in the movie industry and profit from it. One company, which can help introduce you to producers and “indie” film projects, is Indiefliks.com.
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What is an alternative investment? First, let us define what an “alternative investment” is. When the average investor is asked about his investments, you are surely to hear the most common answers. Usually, it is with a company’s 401K, an IRA, bonds, stocks and maybe even options. If he is a bit more diversified, it may include real estate or annuities.

In the past few years, you may have heard about hedge funds or trading the Forex currency market as a form of alternative investments. While this is an “alternative” to mainstream ways of investing, it does not encompass all the varieties of investments available to those that want to look outside the box.

An alternative investment can be any type of investment that can bring you an above average return from investing in areas outside the norm of stocks and bonds. It does not always have to be a form of tradable securities to be classified as an alternative investment. Examples of this would be rare coins, books, stamps, art, or even precious stones.
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Avantage Financial GmbH located in Baar, Switzerland is considered a Financial Intermediary under Swiss Law. They are registered and regulated by Polyreg, a self-regulatory organization recognized by the Swiss Federal Money Laundering Control Authority.in Switzerland. They offer clients account management and trading services in the Forex and Futures market.

Their managed Futures account is up 16.39% for the year, unfortunately, due to regulations, US residents are restricted from participating in Avantage’s Futures offering. The good news is that the Forex managed accounts are available. They have three Forex managed accounts available, the newest FX Morning Star, FX Event and FX Trend.

The FX Event managed account has performed well since its inception on March 2006. End of year 2006 saw a gain of 91.18%, while YTD in October 2007 saw only an 18.54% gain. The lower gains for 2007 can be attributed to the change in leverage from 20 times to a safer 10 times.
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