nomad4ever

If you invest in stocks, shares, funds or currencies like me, you want to know constantly, how the markets stand. This way you know what the clock is ticking and are able to react quick, if necessary. When traveling in foreign countries, this can be quite difficult. Even more so, if you are a Permanent Traveler or Nomad.

Of course you can read a newspaper every day, surf the internet until you drop or log into your Online Banking or Brokerage Account to check, what time it is for your investments.

This will be even more complicated and time-consuming, if you use more than one banking or brokerage account, invested in a lot of different products (as you should – it’s called diversification) or just want to check the daily rates of currencies as well. Surely it pays off to know, what ATM Card to use for the best rates, if you hold savings account in more than one countries.

So what to do with that dilemma?

Use a Pocket PC! It’s small, easy to use and very flexible when traveling around. There are different models from all kind of popular makers, like HP, ETEN, O2, Palm, T-Mobile, iMATE, HTC and on and on. Check out msmobiles.com for the latest models.

You can use it for all kinds of different purposes, i.e.

• using it as a mobile phone (as most people do)
• use it as your StockManager
• Store all your contacts and Travel Addresses as well as Notes about visited Sites
• Shoot pictures with it for your website
• equip it with a GPS unit to find your way around easier
• surf the net at Hotspots around the globe (need WiFi inbuilt or as added module for that)
• Call your friends/parents at home for free or cheap rate, using Skype at WiFi Hotspots
• check your e-mail without being afraid of Spyware or Keyloggers on Internet Cafe PC’s
• Maintain a Travel Diary using Pocket Winword
• Monitor your Travel Expenses using Pocket Excel
• Download Weather Forecasts using Fizz Traveler or similar Programs
• Use it instead of an MP3 Player, thus saving on yet another gadget (a 4 GB Card can hold quite some songs)

One of those PPC I mentioned here – it’s one of my trusty travel mates for the last 2 years.

The application I want to introduce for the above mentioned purpose, is called Tiny Stockmanager.

You just download it here, install via setup.exe or ActiveSync and off you go. There are different language version available and a Free Trial Version as well, which has the only restriction, that you can only monitor 3 stocks per portfolio. The full version costs USD 24.99, if I’m not wrong – and it’s well worth the money! I use this program the last 2 years know, first on a smartphone, then on a Pocket PC – and it works completely flawless, easy to use and uncomplicated.

So what can you do with that tool?

Basically you can monitor all kinds of investments around the globe. You just need to know the Stock Exchange and the respective number of the Stock or fund at that Stock Exchange.

The picture to the right shows you one of my current Watch Lists, which contains Stocks in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, NASDAQ/Nyse and European Stock Exchanges and a Fund as well (ABN Amro), all in one Portfolio. Of course you can organize your Investments and Watch Lists differently.

You can monitor the stocks performance of decrease/increase in percentages, as you can see for instance on Bloomberg or other Business Channels. And you can monitor and analyze the Charts of your investments or watched items over a period of time, as can be seen in the left picture.

And how about currencies?

Surely you can do that as well! You are traveling in Peru, Mexico or Philippines? Just add its currency symbol and your home currency, syncronize the program and – Voila! – you know how much bang for your buck you can get. Check out the lower right picture for some examples.

Ahhhh – did I mention synchronizing?

This of course you have to do regularly. Either via connecting it to a laptop or desktop computer, which can be difficult, when traveling. But, there is always WiFi or GPRS, which works just as fine, or even faster! When still living in Thailand, I synchronized just once a day at the nearest free hotspot, which was luckily directly at the place I lived, hehe. It was a breeze and I was always up-2-date with my funds, currencies and shares.

Check out the screenshot to the right: this is an example of the currencies I’m currently tracking, mainly Asian Currencies against the Euro and Singapore Dollar.

You can actually leave your laptop at home and don’t need to use Internet Cafe’s, which can be unsecure, noisy or costly over time.

Any questions left open? Further ideas?

Feel free to comment!

Technorati : currencies, currrency rates, finance, funds, income, investment, laptop, money, nomad, permanent traveler, pocket pc, stock management, stock manager, stocks, track investments, travel, wealth, wifi

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written by Chris