Products We Use and Love

At Spear Publishing, we use and love these products. We've spent countless hours researching and testing these products and their competitors in our 15 years in business, and we would love to save you, our loyal readers, the headaches that we endured in this process. These folks rock! Please tell them we sent you.

We welcome your comments on any of them. Just click the product name then "Comment" link at the end of the full description.

Brokers

Interactive Brokers

An incredible place for individuals, hedge funds or advisors with clients. We left Fidelity for them and most of our accounts are here. Downside: not easy to get signed up. Upside: everything else! Trade on the U.S. markets from 4:45 AM to 8:30 PM with seamless pre-market and after-hours trading. Trade dozens of other markets around the world 24/7. Trade stocks, funds, options, futures. One-click trading (if you want it). Trade right from your charts if you want to. More tools than we will ever figure out how to use. Commissions and fees are extremely low.

folioFN: Free trading

Free trading. Yes - if you are comfortable with your trades being executed in two windows per day, 11 AM and 2 PM, there is no commission. Commission for trading at other times is generally $3.95 per trade up to 1,000 shares. We recommend FolioFN especially for smaller accounts where even low commission charges at some other brokers can turn into a significant percentage outlay. Folio's second claim to fame is over 200 Model Portfolios that they maintain. Examine the strategy and the performance, and pick your model. Then change the weighting of the holdings if you like, or combine models and weight each model differently! Then push the button, and presto, your account is invested exactly according to the model or models you've selected. Rebalance at any time using window trades (see above). And it's all free! FolioFN even allows the purchase of partial shares, so if you want a $500 position in Berkshire Class A shares (at $90,000/share) you can do it!

thinkorswim

Focused on options, with lots of specialized options trading tools. Great real-time charts. Low fees and commissions.

Charting Software

TC2007

The best stock market charting software we've found. Be up and running in minutes, and then spend years uncovering more value every week! With the PRO version, you get real-time charts and you can chat right on the chart windows with thousands of other users, join specialty groups, and even view and swap chart settings with other users. Plus, company and market news is available right on the charts, you can add your own comments, and there are tons of training videos and other resources. Blinding speed, even on whole market sorts and scans. More Info

Hardware and Accessories

Battery Backup Replacement Batteries

Don't throw that UPS away - replace the battery at 1/4 the cost of a new unit! Every PC in our office has a battery backup, and over the years, we've gone through a lot of batteries. This vendor sells batteries with a three-year warranty and at a price that nobody else can beat.

Hosting Services

Rackspace Hosting Services

Put your website here. When they say "Fanatical Support," they mean it, and the price is great, too. There's no better product at any price, and the price is right!

Print Shops

OmniPrint

OmniPrint: With a turnaround time of just a couple of hours, they beat every other commercial printer in the business, and their handling of our marketing mailings has been flawless and friendly at every turn for many years. From a few boxes of printed envelops and letterhead, to a million-piece mail drop, they do it all, and do it extremely well. We still shop the competition, and they just don't have any.

Subscription Management Software

Via Subscriptions

We've just spent the better part of a year converting all of our products over to this vendor from our own legacy, in-house databases, and that was after about two years of researching which product to use. It's online (our #1 criteria - no more server maintenance headaches, and we can access our customer databases from anywhere), it's extremely robust, and it's a fair value.