Apple Investor's Beijing Olympics

I reported in a previous article, that China, along with several other countries around the world, will be getting the 3G iPhone this year. Well it appears that it may happen sooner than anyone thought. According to China Tech News, Apple (AAPL) has chosen Beijing's Sanlitun area to open a 3,000 square meter store. And knowing Apple, there will undoubtedly be heavy use of Apple and iPhone imagery during broadcasts of olympic events.

The Wilderness Triathlon
In the spirit of the upcoming Beijing Olympics, I've held a special event that spotlights three very useful, and free online resources for investors. And the winners are:

Bronze: The first category is economic news; and the medal goes to CNN Money. As a general information site they're pretty good. Where I think they excel is in their futures or pre-market reports, and their economic calendar of events, where I can see that day, or the entire week's scheduled events at a glance. I can even drill down and find useful information on each event. These are the first two web pages I visit in the morning.

Silver: The second category is charting; and with the silver medal is, StockCharts.com. hands down, StockCharts has the best charts on the web, and it's free for the 15 minute delayed quote. With a subscription you can get real-time quotes. This site is not just about charts, but there is also educational material in the "Chart School" and a market summary feature where you can see all the indexes at a glance, allowing you to easily drill down to several different kinds of charts. You can also annotate the charts with a Java-based chart tool and publish the link to your annotated chart.

Gold: The final category is Apple Investor research; and for sheer completeness and simplicity, the top honors goes to Apple Investor News. This site scours the Internet every 15 minutes, and using sophisticated algorithms, it finds stories and organizes them by category and type. The website presents them in such a way, that at a glance I can see dozens of stories and quickly find one of interest. Just click on the link and I'm at the originating website.