It was an answer that I really liked because that is exactly the number I had previously published in the top banner edu-section of my website.

Then I began to think that Haines was possibly surprised because he's in the media business, and he believes the average viewer has nowhere to go to get essential pricing information on these foreign stocks.

It's hard, right, for the average person to get access to quotes, charts, etc on stocks that trade in Russia, Germany, Singapore, etc?

Well, actually no, I access this info every day, and so should you.

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About ADVFN

I use ADVFN, which is a partial-free, partial-premium, desktop information tool for active investors. The service covers many international markets.

ADVFN was established in 4Q1999 in the U.K. and floated as a public company in March 2000 on the AIM market in London.

The company website is already the number one capital markets website in Europe, with over 25 percent market share for capital markets web pages viewed. It has received accolades such as winning the Investors Chronicle 'Best Investment Website' Award in 2003 and 2004.

ADVFN now has over 400,000 registered users who generate in excess of 38 million page impressions a month. The site has 120,000 monthly unique users, making it a true dot.com success story.

The ADVFN website caters to the active securities trader, offering real time share prices, news feeds, portfolio management, monitor lists and the most active stocks bulletin board in the UK. It is the preferred choice of European day traders as well as less active traders, and the good news is that the company is now making a concerted effort to crack the North American market.

They offer extensive free trials, and I recommend them.

After listing the key points from the company's marketing, I'll then review, as an independent user, the ADVFN service:

Highlights for the Year Ended 30 June 2004
· Close to break even"net loss after tax reduced by 91% to £79K (2003: £914K)
· EBITDA profits up 111% to £852K (2003: £404K)
· Net loss per ordinary share reduced by 93% to 0.019p (2003: 0.26p loss)
· Net loss before tax reduced by 93% to £86K (2003: £1.2M)
· Revenues up by 30% to £3.0 million (2003: £2.3M)
· User numbers up nearly 50% to 370,000 (2003: 250,000)

A breakdown of the free and premium ADVFN services

Free services:

The ADVFN website provides free real-time U.K. and 15/20-minute delayed U.S. and Canadian share information with new features being added regularly. On average the ADVFN development team adds one new feature a week to the site.

The free service comes with a comprehensive set of analytical tools including:
· Quote: Provides streaming quote data and price information and company data on many exchanges. It also includes intra-day and customisable one-year charts, news and links to related discussions on the bullboards.
· Charts: Provides both static and streaming real-time and historic charts. These charts allow you to overlay multiple stocks, indices and studies. Fully customisable charts can display stock information in line, bar and candlestick modes.
· Monitor: Allows you to display multiple real-time quotes (up to 110 stocks per monitor, and as many monitors as you like). Price information fields are fully customisable.
· News: Provides Regulatory, Non-Regulatory (RNS) and AFX news as well as access to WI-link free annual reports.
· Fundamentals: Provides some of the best Company Fundamental information available, allowing you to undertake your own in-depth research. These are the informative tables and charts that I use when publishing my investment reports.

Equity markets covered:

· NYSE, Nasdaq, Amex, Archipelago, OTC, OTC BB
· Toronto Stock Exchange and Venture Exchange
· London Stock Exchange and OFEX
· Euronext-liffe (the Pan European Exchange): Paris, Brussels, Lisbon and Amsterdam exchanges
· German stocks and indices (Xetra)
· Russian stocks and indices
· Canadian stocks, indices, options and derivatives
· Irish stocks and indices
· Greek stocks and indices
· Other free exchanges (beta), include:
o Finland
o Sweden
o Norway
o South Africa
o Poland
o Singapore

Other free capital markets and features include:

· Forex: GTIS, CME
· Futures: NYMEX, COMEX, Winnipeg, CME
· Equity Index Futures: CME
· Interest Rate Futures and Options: CME
· Equity Options and Futures: CME
· Warrants
· Sector Sheet
· Portfolio
· Top lists
· Alerts (e-mail and SMS)
· Trades
· CREST - Stock loan data
· ADVFN Talk (Inter-cast)
· Directory
· Sport
· Events
· News Monitor
· Scatter X
· Filter X
· Search
· BullBoards (FREE) (The busiest financial in the U.K.)

Premium services

ADVFN also provides a comprehensive range of premium products. Pioneering realistically priced Level 2 services, ADVFN's agenda has always been to level the playing field for the private investor. ADVFN premium services include:
· Level 2 - Basic, Enhanced and Advanced
· Real-time US prices - NASDAQ, DOW, NYSE, AMEX, S&P
· Real-time FTSE
· Trading signal systems - Tradequant, Nasquant and iQuant
· Real-time Futures & Options
· Premium Bulletin Board
· Historical data downloads

In addition, ADVFN provides a range of Investment Training Tutorials, Seminars and Courses and Investor Relations Website Solutions.

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An objective look at ADVFN

I'd rate the ADVFN service to be a good one overall, and one that is evolving for the better. I found many very positive aspects to the ADVFN service, but also some deficiencies, which I hope and expect to see resolved:

1) The brand name (ADVFN stands for Advanced Financial Network) needs to be changed to Afinet (as people say words, not spell letters)

2) The user facility needs to be modernized:
a) Screen presentation
i) More white space needed
ii) Fresher graphics needed
iii) Monitor needs full two-digit justification (do not truncate zero)
b) Navigation
i) Listing of international markets needed for ease of use in Monitor
ii) ETF, country, sector, industry groupings
iii) One click from Monitor to Intra-day charts for stock & industry
c) Print screen facility
d) Correction to title of chart for USD/Yen
e) Re-org of charts for Commodities (energy followed by gold and other precious metals, etc)

3) The Trading facility needs upgrading, including:

a) Order Management Platform integrated to various execution brokers
b) Integrated STP Portfolio Manager System

4) The Market Data facility needs upgrading, including:

a) Additional international equity markets, like Japan, Brazil, China, Korea, Taiwan, etc, which are being quickly added. Those like RSA, Singapore and the Scandinavian exchanges are still in beta, and need to be supported with additional historical data for each market
b) The U.S. Equity options market absolutely needs to be added. This is a key feature, I'll be looking for

5) The Chat Room / Message Board facility has limited value:
a) RSS needed (for direct links to popular trader's blogs)
b) A coach is needed (e.g., Trader Bill Cara's insights and dialogue?)
c) Audio channel (squawk box) is needed
d) Video archives like at www.ROBTV.com is a requirement

6) Alerts facility
a) After Hours On/Off needs to be implemented because the system sends out so many alerts in the pre-open and post-close that I had to turn off this feature

7) The Shopping Cart facility needs more sophistication
a) Premium reports
b) Books and Newsletters

8) I was logged out by the system after a message came up on my screen that read: "Another user is logged in using your co-ordinates (paraphrase)" but at the time it was the only window open on my desktop and I have not given my co-ordinates to anybody. Maybe the ADVFN staff was looking in on me?

9) There obviously needs to be a HOME tab, and a markets covered tab on every page, so the user can go back to a starting point or one that lists all the markets covered by ADVFN. The present system expects the user to know the navigation protocols, which is unacceptable.

10) The navigation tabs don't make sense with the present lay-out. For instance, Message Boards should be in the second row. News should be up in the top row, and news should be tied to the ticker symbol in the Monitor. Also, Quote should be after Monitor and Charts. However, what one person likes, others may not.

11) The Monitor feature clearly needs a time-stamp displayed on the top in addition to the Last Trade Time Stamp.

12) The Search facility needs a significant improvement. The present one is so bad, it is practically useless. Nobody would wish to frustrate themselves to the extent will happen if this search facility is used more than once per week.

13) The present Chart facility I like, but it needs:

a) Multi-chart pages presentation like Investertech.com

b) a feature that locks out accidental intervention by browsers who click on another IE use. That action immediately clears the ADVFN chart (or whatever) from the screen. But, if I have previously drawn trend lines etc on my chart, that I wish to save, I lose all this. This annoyance happens at least once every couple hours.

14) The Forex charts need to have USD strength or weakness for the cross rates all pointing in the same direction. The chart for the USD:Yen on the right of the British Pound and the Euro is reversed. It shows Dollar to Yen versus the two other charts that show Pound and Euro to the Dollar. So, weakness in the USD against all three currencies shows on the ADVFN chart as being two that point upwards and one that points downward. That is confusing.

Summary

I like the fact ADVFN offers FREE streaming stocks and shares data from around the world. SEE MORE because it gives me access to a lot of current info in a lot of capital markets, but especially because it is adding the major equity markets around the world to my desktop. For somebody who believes that 50 percent of your portfolio (or more depending on your jurisdiction) should be foreign holdings, I think ADVFN does a good job.

As noted, ADVFN can do a better job, but as I say there are significant improvements being made every month. I think you should give it a try. I've given you some links.