Online Investing on the Australian Sharemarket, 5th Edition

Introduction

Share trading and investing are ideally suited to the online world. Share trading can be defined simply as buying or selling shares, whereas share investing is about longer-term share ownership and management. Naturally, in order to become a share investor you must first be a share trader by purchasing shares, but from that point on share trading and investing are essentially different activities. Share traders aim to make profits from short-term trading by selling shares at a better price than they paid for them, whereas share investors aim to grow their wealth over the longer term in order to create a nest egg for the future.

Traditionally, share investing and trading were carried out by offline brokers and advisers who arranged the trades and provided the information their customers needed. Nowadays this information is readily obtained on the web, and share trading can be carried out quickly, conveniently and cheaply online. Some investors still prefer to use a broker, and it is not my purpose to denigrate the offline method, but many investors and traders have moved online entirely. The reasons for this aren't hard to discover. Online trading and investing is cheap and fast, and a huge amount of information and resources is readily available, much of it at no cost. I am constantly amazed at the amount of free information and facilities that are only a keystroke or two away. For example, there are some excellent charting sites offering a wide variety of resources ...