A short list of investing resources you may not know -- but should

It's a general rule in on-line investing that the richest, flashiest, most widely publicized Web sites are the best.

Sites like Yahoo Finance, SmartMoney.com and our very own Globeinvestor.com have better tools and content than most, and they're not shy of telling you about it in the advertising they do.

Every so often, though, I come across more obscure on-line investing resources that are also first-rate. In some cases, it's an entire site, while in others it's a single research tool on a larger Web site.

What follows is a short list of investing Web resources that you may not know about, but definitely should.

About.com's Investing: Canada page (investingcanada.about.com): With the stock markets so unpredictable these days, many Globe readers have been asking where on the Web they can find out about real estate income trusts (REITs) and oil and gas income trusts. The answer: About.com's Investing: Canada. About.com is a U.S.-based network of more than 700 Web sites, each covering a specific subject by providing dozens of links to other Web sites, and to articles of interest by experts in the field. Investing: Canada covers all the big subjects, including registered retirement savings plans, mutual funds, stocks and so on, but there's also more specialized sections on such areas as income trusts, investing newsletters, ethical investing and the energy sector.

For income trusts, there are tables of REITs and oil and gas trusts traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, as well as informative articles that will appeal to investors who are new to this type of security.

Don't just scan the income trust information, though. There are lots of great nuggets laced throughout this site and it's worth taking some time to find them.

BigCharts (http://www.bigcharts.com): Most on-line investors have used BigCharts, which offers excellent tools for charting stocks and stock indexes. Not only does BigCharts run its own Web site, it also supplies graphing tools to many other sites and to on-line brokers. What you may not know about BigCharts is that it also provides historical stock quotes. Maybe this is just a journalist thing, but I've often wanted to find where certain stocks or stock indexes stood on a certain date. For individual investors, this type of information could be useful if you've forgotten what you paid for a stock purchase several years ago.

To find out, just click where it says "Historial Quotes" on the menu at the top of the BigCharts home page, and then enter the stock symbol and the date. BigCharts will then tell you the open, high, low and closing prices for the day, as well as the volume. There's also a chart to show the stock's performance in the months before and after your chosen date.

One frustrating thing about BigCharts' historical database is its inconsistency. There's information going back as far as 30 years or so for some major U.S. stocks, but other stocks go back only a few years. If you want data for Canadian stocks, type CA: in front of the symbol, as in CA:NOR.

Adviceforinvestors.com (http://www.adviceforinvestors.com): There are a few free features on this Web site, but they're inconsequential. To get the best material on this site, you have to buy one of its subscription packages. Generally, I'm not interested in pay sites -- there's just too much free stuff on the Internet.

I'm making an exception for Adviceforinvestors for two reasons. One, it offers some very good content and, two, the site has some special offers going to introduce itself to people.

To start, there's a lot of useful, unbiased stock commentary that you can't find elsewhere unless you pay for it. Adviceforinvestors is owned by MPL Communications, publisher of quality investing newsletters such as The Investment Reporter and Investor's Digest of Canada, as well as the Blue Book series of stock reports. If you subscribe to Adviceforinvestors, you get access to the same kind of material as you'll find in these sources.

Another solid feature on Adviceforinvestors is a portfolio tracker that assesses the riskiness of your stock holdings, and monitors your tax situation by separately breaking out your capital gains/losses, dividends and income.

Adviceforinvestors now has two special offers running, one of which is access to almost the entire site for five weeks at a cost of $4.37, plus GST. The only things you can't access for free under this offer are the downloadable Blue Book stock reports. However, you get 10 free report downloads, plus access to the rest of the services on Adviceforinvestors.com, under a separate special offer of $37 for a one-year introductory subscription. At these prices, Adviceforinvestors is worth a look.