The housing market is looking less and less appealing, finance companies are falling over at an alarming rate and you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket by joining just one retirement scheme. Where are you going to put your money, and how can the Internet help?

We can’t give you expert advice, but we can put you in touch with those who can. There isn’t room here, either, for an exhaustive list of sites, but you’ll find links to many other useful investment-related sites via those listed here.

First up, you probably want to get yourself at least a basic level of education. A good place to begin is NZX’s site (www.nzx.com/education/basics/tips), which has an education section featuring articles such as “What is a share?”, “What is an investment?” and “What is risk?”. You’ll also find up-to-date share prices, market announcements, company security details and everything else sharemarket-related. There’s also a directory of links to government departments, organisations such as the Shareholders Association, and overseas stock exchanges.

Sharechat (www.sharechat.co.nz) is another excellent resource for articles, news, links to market announcements and listed companies, and a host of other useful sites. It also has advice on investing for beginners, currency trading, brokers’ answers to questions, a calendar of seminars relating to the sharemarket and daily updates on currency trading.

For an even more in-depth education, Good Returns is a New Zealand online magazine on money management – see www.goodreturns.co.nz (it’s from the same stable of Web sites and magazines as Sharechat and Asset and NZ Property magazines). As well as news, advice and links to investment trusts and the like, Good Returns has a book section, where you can buy finance-related books and magazine subscriptions. There’s a good range of New Zealand and overseas titles here, grouped according to categories such as ‘sharemarket’ and ‘property’.

Sharechat news also features on the National Business Review’s site (www.nbr.co.nz), another useful source of daily news and more in-depth business stories. The major newspaper Web sites (www.nzherald.co.nz and www.stuff.co.nz) feature daily stockmarket and currency information and advice from financial experts, as well as business news, links to finance sites and sharemarket diary information.

The NZ Herald has a service called Bizwidget - a downloadable widget, or tool - that sits on your desktop and delivers news feeds to you directly. There are nine categories of feeds, including currency, analysis and the markets. See tinyurl.com/2j4vpw For a more multimedia approach, TVNZ’s Business Breakfast programme offers podcasts of its stories at tvnz.co.nz/view/page/803453

Email newsletters bring up-to-date market and investment information straight to your inbox, and there’s a wide range to choose from. The McEwan Investment report is a weekly sharemarket newsletter (www.datex.co.nz/irgpages/mir.php). Stockbroker Forsyth Barr’s daily newsletter (www.forsythbarr.co.nz/daily-commentary.asp) includes prices, news and events, while Good Returns (www.goodreturns.co.nz) offers a dozen or so free email newsletters, most of them weekly, with topics ranging from IPOs and capital raisings to seminars on investing. The NBR (www.nbr.co.nz) has a daily email newsletter, NBR:24, dedicated to market news. Stuff’s newsletter, also daily, is courtesy of The Independent Financial Review; see www.stuff.co.nz/4133443a23822.html

Stockbroker sites can be a good source of information for beginner investors. Direct Broking’s site (www.directbroking.co.nz) has currency information, a detailed sharemarket diary, market indices, a glossary on everything to do with investing, and downloadable articles (it also features monthly newsletters online, but these were a good three months out of date when NetGuide checked in).

Interest.co.nz’s directory of financial institutions includes a comprehensive list of brokers, at www.interest.co.nz/directory1.asp.

Of course you can do more than find information at these sites, too. You can buy and sell shares or currency online, monitor your portfolio and get instant quotes.

Fin Data (www.findata.co.nz), aimed at personal investors, offers free downloadable tools for things like portfolio management, tracking market information, and financial market calculators.

Gareth Morgan Investments (www.gmi.co.nz) is an investment management firm with a ton of advice about investing in the sharemarket. GMI will not only advise you on managing your portfolio and manage it for you (if you’ve got $50K plus to invest); it throws in hundreds of articles on everything to do with economics, politics, property, education and so on.

Fund manager INGNZ (www.ingnz.co.nz) is a global investment and insurance company with a New Zealand branch, with calculators, detailed daily information, a glossary, and many useful links.

If you have time to chat with other investors, try Sharetrader (www.sharetrader.co.nz), a forum devoted to just that. There are separate threads for different companies, as well as general NZX and Forex, etc. discussions.

Interest.co.nz (www.interest.co.nz) is all about interest rates, with comparisons of rates for everything from funds, to foreign currency, to overseas mortgage rates. The information is updated several times a day. This is a good source of links to finance companies and for detailed, more complex information on investing.

And finally, with the New Zealand dollar soaring against the greenback, it may be very tempting to buy up foreign currency. Our advice: do your homework first. Start with NZ Forex (www.nzforex.co.nz), which has separate services for personal and business investors. Banks’ Web sites also have sections dedicated to foreign currency investments.