Education stocks were big losers today as fears that the government takeover of the student loan programs and tight controls over those that don't come under control of the behemoth of Uncle Sam.

The Dow started off the day in negative territory dropping nearly 125 points almost immediately and then recovered those losses and moved into positive territory for most of the mid afternoon riding low volume. The afternoon rally had exceptionally low volume signaling that not that many individuals were interested in the increase in prices and risking their money.

For candlestick watchers today's flat market is known as a doji pattern that could signal a significant movement in the market in the next couple of days meaning that we could see a large drop very soon...or not. With much of the data coming out about the economy lately such as jobs reports, industrial production, the Baltic Dry Index still quite low, foreclosure rates and housing starts low as well, the economic outlook isn't all that great and investors are worried.

And let's not forget the current administration's unwillingness to even consider the possibility of doing something about the national debt. With Obama trying to spend this country into oblivion and his answer to everything being to thrown tens of billions of dollars at problems in the hopes of buying votes or that unemployment or other issues might simply go away, the looming debt just keeps growing and is a monster that is probably too big to tame at this point. A day of reckoning is coming some day whether we like it or not and it will be a day that will simply won't be able to spend our way out of, although that seems to be what the current president is trying to do.

Maybe the smart thing to do is to buy a few gold coins and stock up on food with what little time we have left before the crash.

Many people are not satisfied with traditional investing any longer because of the instability of the current US stock market, gold coins, the Iraqi Dinar, and other alternative investments to add some stability and diversification to their portfolios. People are also getting involved in Forex trading and making a killing in this market. There are all kinds of investments to put your money in instead of traditional markets. Of course if you know what you are doing, you can also make a killing in the stock market as long as you time it right.

Here's the list of the top Iraqi Dinar speculation and investment websites:

IraqiDinar.org
DinarTrade.com
eDinarFinancial.net
DinarProfits.com
InvestorsIraq.com
DinarSpeculation.com
TrackIraq.com
TheIraqiDinar.com
SuperiorInvestor.net
XE.com

Happy dinar trading and investing!

The Iraq Stock Exchange opened in June 2004 after replacing the Baghdad Stock Exchange being in place since before the 2003 invasion of Iraq by coalition forces. In 2004 the ISX opened with 15 companies being represented and at the present time there are now more than 100 companies on the exchange. When the exchange opened in 2004, trading was done th eold fashioned was, with pen and paper and traders yelling trades across the floor where brokers then wrote on whiteboards the current price of a company's stock.

Fortunately in February of 2009 that all changed and a computerized system of keeping track of trades, but not electronic trading itself, was put in place. On April 19, 2009 electronic trading was put into place and there are currently only 5 stocks available to be traded that way with more being added in the next several months.

The Iraqi Stock Exchange is small compared to the NYSE as in 2006 there were only 92 trading sessions held trading a total of 58 billion shares. The trades had a total value of 146 billion Iraqi Dinars or $146 million USD and were actually 38,000 individual trades made. Currently the trading floor is only open 6 hours a week.

There you have a simple run down of the ISX as a fledgling market. The market is currently dominated by very wealthy Iraqis and the trades are called in from outside the country. Is it worth your time to invest in this kind of market? Maybe you should just buy Iraqi dinars on eBay and hope they will go up some day.

You must be careful when you buy the dinar and make sure that you get the new Iraqi Dinar and not the old one. While a few examples of  the old dinar may hold some numismatic value, they are no longer accepted as a legal currency in Iraq. Therefore, if someone trys to sell you the old dinar as a good investment, please don't waste your money because they are worthless as an exchange for goods in the country.

There are several places you can purchase dinar and one of the more popular places is eBay. At any one time there are usually several hundred auctions for the Iraqi dinar on eBay. Of course, you always must be careful when doing business on eBay to make sure you are not being scammed. However, If you know what you're doing you will more than likely always end up with a good deal.

The trick when purchasing the dinar, or anything for that matter, is to just make sure you read the sellers feedback that you are thinking of doing business with. Just because someone has a negative feedback doesn't necessaily mean they are a bad seller because sometimes there are bad buyers. If you read the individual feedback it will tell you what's up. But if you do find too many negatives, it's probably not a good idea to do business with that person.

You can slo buy Iraqi dinar from dealers across the nation, but here again, you must be sure of who you are dealing with and what you are buying so you don't end up with something you didn't want. At the present time banks and other financial institutions are not exchanging the Iraq dinar, it must be sold to private buyers or through eBay.

If you are interested and want to own the dinar Iraqi dinar as an investment, you can purchase dinar here.

Now that violence has subsided somewhat since the US invasion in 2003 there was hope that foreign investors would be putting their money into Iraq and helping with housing, infrastructure and other much needed fiscal influx. But because of the bureaucracy, regulations and miles of red tape, investors had been very warry of risking their capital in the flegling nation. That concern now has gone out the window and many see this as a possible boom time for Iraq.

The new law basically only covers housing and not oil or hotel construction, which is much needed, but there is a huge opportunity here for foreign investors. Outdated Iraqi real estate laws had only allowed for foreigners to lease land for a limited amount of time, but not actually own it. Millions of new homes and apartments are needed in Iraq after year of war and political turmoil and there are construction companies in Dubai and other Arab and western nations that are eyeing Iraq for real estate development.

Iraq boasts the 3rd largest oil reserves in the world and the hopes are that as oil money is poured into rebuilding the nation's infrastructure of roads, bridges and public works, this new law will bring on much needed housing. While this law still needs to be passed by the Iraqi Presidential Council, the hope is that this will happen soon and new investment can begin as quickly as possible.

Of course if you can afford to invest in Iraqi real estate, you can always invest in Iraqi Dinar or trade the dinar through the Forex currency exchange.

Here's the senario at present and you decide whether you think it is in your best interest to invest in a foreign currency at this time. Right now, the current rate of exchange for the dinar is somewhere around 1,150 Iraqi dinar for every American dollar. Now, back several years ago in the early 1970's the dinar was values at around $3.25 US for every dinar. That's correct, the situation was completely reversed and the dinar was actually more valuable than the US dollar. If that were to happen again the obviously those who had invested wisely, would reap the rewards of what they had been holding and become very rich.

Owning dinar outright is one way to get involved in Iraqi Dinar speculation, another way to speculate on the dinar is to get involved in Dinar Forex trading with a program called Fap Turbo. This is different than actually owning the phyisical currency, in Forex you only take ownership of the currency when you buy it on the Forex exchange and as soon as it increases to the price you like, you then sell it. Sometimes this can happen in a matter of minutes and sometimes it can happen in a few days, but you never actually take possesion of the currency, it is only done on your computer.

As Iraq becomes more stable, the dinar is sure to increase in value. This will happen because more businesses and other nations will want to invest in the Iraqi economy and the Iraqi people. As hostilities and the ever present threat of harm or death hangs over Iraq and those that live there and invest and work there, the Dinar will likely not increase in value much. But as peace slowly returns, those that hold the paper currency known as the dinar will see an investment they speculated on grow in value. Will you be one of those investors?

The question about such a huge purchase is, why would Iraq be buying that much gold? There is a line item in the Central Bank Of Iraq's report on Key Financial Indicators that indicates the purchase of gold and SDR's. They're adding this amount to an already large stash of 726 billion Dinars worth of gold. With gold coming in at $1210 an ounce at the time of this post, that would give Iraq a handsome $223 million in profit. But the bigger question is, what are they doing with that much gold?

The speculation is that they may be doing it to distance themselves from the ever unstable and at the present time, falling value of the dollar. We know that last year, Iraq wanted to switch all of its gold reserves held in Federal Reserve Banks in the United States from what is based on US dollars to Euros. However, the Fed wouldn't let them, more than likely because of the show of a perceived lack of confidence in the US dollar.

Isn't that funny, the US dollar is tanking because of the completely irresponsible spending by government leaders, both Democrat and Republican for decades and financial institutions in the United States, and they have the audacity to tell Iraq it can't do what it wants with its own money.

Another irony is that while the country of Iraq is still struggling to have some sort of a lasting peace and get rid of radicals it is trying financially to create more stability by investing in gold and we won't let them. What an arrogant policy the US has against a country trying to come to grips with stability.

Do we want Iraq to be stable financially or not. I wonder how much more gold Iraq will try to buy as the dollar slips further?

Anyone can enter into trading Forex as long as you know what you are doing. It is a huge market and trades what is extimated to be almost $4 trillion in currencies every day. There is plenty of room for small FX traders and large traders who handle millions of dollars in currencies daily, but it is not for the faint of heart, you must know what you are doing so you can make a profit or you may lose your shirt.

Because of the complicated nature of the Foreign Exchange Market there is a lot of automated Forex trading software on the market to help people make thir trades and keep track of their currencies. What some of these forex programs do is automatically trade for you. All you have to do is set up the software with your own parameters and the automated trading robots do all the work for you and hopefully you will profit.

Because of the sheer numbers of currencies such as the Iraqi Dinar and the incredible amount of volume that is traded every day, you do need some kind of a program to help you keep track of what you are doing and to identify potential trades that can make you money. There's astandard trading software known as the MetaTrader 4 platform available from most Forex brokers, but on top of that many people like these automated Forex Robots for to take the hassle out of currency exchange.

There are several Forex trading robots on the market including No Loss Robot, Forex Megadroid, IvyBot, Forex Rebellion, Forex Godfather and the most popular one, FAP Turbo. FAP Turbo outsells all other trading robots and even the next closest one by almost 3 times the volume. There must be some reason for that.

FAP Turbo Review

The main reason people add FAP Turbo to their trading arsenal is because they want a piece of software that will do their Forex trading for them without having to understand everything there is to know about the market. There is all sorts of technical analysis, charting, global news and lots of other data that many people just don't have time to sift through.

The great thing about the Forex Market that is different than the DOW stock market is that it is open 24 hours a day except on weekends. FAP Turbo is designed to work on your computer 24/7 the full time the markets are open. If you can't keep yout PC on all the time, some people recommend getting a VPS server to host your Forex software so it can trade all the time for you.

You don't need any previous knowledge of the Forex market to trade with FAP Turbo. All you have to do is download it, install it and it does all the work for you. Of course any knowledge you have of trading currencies is always helpful. The creators of FAP Turbo claim that the software is capable of doubling your money ever single month. While that may or may not be true, it is important to check it out for yourself before you start trading real money.

Fortunately, you can open up dummy accounts with most traders and install the MataTrader 4 platform on your computer, download and plug-in FAP Turbo to the main platform and go about trading with make believe money until you are comfortable with how the systems work. Once you are comfortable with how everything works, then and only then do you start trading with your own real money.

If you are interested in Forex Trading the Iraqi Dinar and any other currency, you should consider checking out FAP Turbo to see if it can make the job easier for you.

However, after scouring eBay and other sources, there seems to be little Iraq gold available anywhere. Maybe that's due to the fact that it is extremely hard to get it out of the country because Iraq itself obviously needs the gold or maybe there are other factors I'm not aware of.

As far as old Iraqi coins or even modern Iraq coins, they are equally hard to find. There are a few Iraq 25, 50 and 250 FILS coins available, but they are in quite limited quantities. At the present time of this posting there are only 45 listings for Iraqi coins that include silver dinars, 25 FILS Palm Tree coins, and a few coins left over from the era of Saddam Hussein.

Gold Coin Investing

If you are interested in buying Iraq gold maybe you should consider buying other gold coins since they are in a much bigger supply. There are many thousands of US gold coins available on eBay, from local dealer shows and from many different websites in the net. One of he more popular investment coins that people like is the St Gaudens $20 Double Eagle minted from 1907 to 1933. These cons contain one ounce of high quality gold plus they have a numismatic value above that of the price of gold. Some rarer specimens bring exceedingly high prices fr enough above the current gold price that it is not even a factor in their value.

You can also find gold bullion examples such as the Gold Krugerrand from South Africa that are much more in line with the current value of gold. They are a great investment for those that want something which closely follows the current markets. And since they are so popular, they are easy to sell when you are ready to cash your in.