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A Facebook to educate investors


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  • | 8:50 p.m. April 3, 2009
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Wesley Chapel entrepreneur Lane Mendelsohn created a Web site to educate investors in 2005. But it lacked the two-way communication of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

So Mendelsohn, 29, has started Trader Planet, a Web site with the educational information for stock traders and investors, but with the capability for community dialog and information sharing.

There is no fee to join. The site makes money from advertising. Its goal is to help investors succeed. A staff of 10 keeps it going.

“As individuals we're circling the wagon to protect what we have and position ourselves to come out of this crisis stronger,” Mendelsohn told Coffee Talk. “Investment opportunities are there. Those who can find them will make out really well.”

A lot of people on Trader Planet are looking at investments such as commodities and foreign exchange.

Mendelsohn, is also vice president of Market Technologies, a firm his father Louis Mendelsohn founded 30 years ago in Wesley Chapel, which develops software for traders and investors.

The son got the idea for the education Web site after clients bought his dad's software, but still struggled. They needed investment education.

“It wasn't the tool they bought, it was them,” Lane Mendelsohn said.

Trader Planet has around 4,500 visits per day and about 6,000 registered members. Most of those are not high-powered Wall Street traders.

“Trader Planet is less pinstripe, more Joe trader,” he said.

 

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