You are borrowing on what your house is worth. If your house is paid off, term is "mortgage" and if your house is not paid off but has equity, term is called a "second mortgage". For ease of understanding however, this article will refer to these loans as Home Equity Loans.

A home equity loan is a second loan that you take out on your home in addition to your mortgage. This is also called a second mortgage. This enables you to tap into your equity to get cash without refinancing your first mortgage. Many people think that only way to access this cash is to sell their homes. The reality is that you can take out home equity loans to free it up without having to move at all!

Equity is difference between amount you owe on your current home mortgage and current value of your home. Lot of finance companies today offer good deals on home equity loans, letting you borrow money based on available equity on your home.

Or maybe you're disappointed with your performance so far? Does it sometimes feel like every time you take plunge and buy into market, price goes down?

That's understandable...

You've probably attended seminars, read other newsletters or broker reports telling you to buy this or buy that ..... you've probably heard or read a lot of confusing and sometimes conflicting information?

The real surprising facts are that very few online investors actually make money long term.

You've worked hard in your life to get your investment nest egg together so far - but now where to from here?

Maybe you want to develop some extra income or even manage your own superannuation retirement fund? For instance, from 1 July 2005, as a result of new rules on ‘choice of superannuation fund’, for first time millions more Australian employees will be able to choose a fund for their future superannuation guarantee contributions.

Maybe you're attracted to charts you've seen showing power of compounding investments & have worked out benefits to you of having a higher percentage return?

If you don't want to be saddled with a "do-nothing" portfolio that adds nothing to your bottom line or even worse, goes backwards, then please take a moment to read on.....

The reality is that only very few achieve long term success by online trading or investing in stock or share markets around world. Even less for those who are online trading in highly leveraged CFD’s, futures, options, FX & other commodities markets.

The good news is that skills can be learned from expert investors and traders who have gone before you and can lead you across minefield. You will still lose - and may lose regularly sometimes - but key difference between those who win or those who lose overall is to keep value of your total losses low compared with your profits gained.

In his definitive book ‘Trade Your way to Financial Freedom’, Dr Van Tharp calls this ‘expectancy’.

Improving your own online investing or trading performance in stock or share market & developing your own home based business requires investors and traders to learn how to strengthen each of three legs of your investing or trading stool, as first described by Dr Alexander Elder in his books 'Trading for a Living' & 'Come Into my Trading Room':

•Technical Analysis

•Money & Risk Management and •Your own personal Psychology

At very least, you need all three legs to be very strong - in order to survive, then thrive to successfully make money & outperform in stock or share market. As Dr Elder says, stool will not stand on just two legs.

Very experienced online traders and investors John Atkinson and Jim Berg, authors of soon to be released Investing Online Newsletter© and Online Trading Report©, prefer to add a fourth leg when they invest in stock & share markets - that of fundamental analysis.