There are some really cool technological advances coming almost daily that can help you with your financial life.

If you don’t know about text banking or mobile Web banking, you may want to investigate.

Basically, text banking means that you text a request to your bank, like you need your checking account balance, and within seconds you will get the answer.

You just call your bank and ask officials if they offer account information by text messaging.

Mobile Web banking allows you to really impress your friends by paying bills, transferring money, all sorts of things. There may be fees for texting and the like from your cellular provider also.

Call your bank and ask if it offers these services, and you may want to ask if there are fees.

Pretty soon I’m going to be able to feed Maddog with my phone.

Soon expect to have your cell phone scanned for your credit card info. You’ll be carrying no more plastic.

That would be very cool.

I think it’s Japan that is already doing a lot of this stuff way ahead of us.

The Apps available now for your phone are also cool. My son showed me Urbanspoon which helps you find restaurants no matter where you are.

Just what I need, somewhere else to get food.

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Ok, let’s take a serious look at what is happening in the stock markets.

This has been fun so far. The widely followed Dow Jones industrial average was up 2.8 percent in February. So far in 2011 the Dow is up 5.6 percent. This is a good thing.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index is up 5.5 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite is up 4.9 percent.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies is up 5.1 percent, the S&P Midcap 400 is up 6.5 percent as the mid caps lead the way.

Looking at the broad market as measured by the Wilshire 5000 index of most stocks, trading is up 5.6 percent. Fairly easy for us to say the domestic U.S. markets are up 5 to 6 percent so far in 2011.

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Incredibly, the world stock indexes on average are performing much like ours. The MSCI EAFE index of foreign stocks is up 5.5 percent.

Some of the foreign markets are doing well including Spain, which is up 10 percent, and Italy, which is up 11.4 percent. Some are not doing so well like India, which is down more than 13 percent, and Chile, which is down almost 10 percent.

Our neighbors are mixed with Canada up 5.2 percent and Mexico down 4 percent. The Asia/Pacific markets generally are weaker than Europe.

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The bond market continues to be near historic lows although some rates have started to move upward.

This is still not good news for those of you who buy certificates of deposit and similar instruments for income. As I noticed the other day, yields on a five-year CD were about 2.65 percent.

In the commodities market, oil is up 6 percent, corn 14 percent, pork 9 percent, silver 9 percent, cattle 2 percent, gasoline 19 percent, gold is about even and natural gas is down 8 percent.

Soybeans and wheat are about even, and coffee is still going through the roof.

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People ask me what I think. Understanding that I don’t know any more than anyone else, but it appears that the economy is trying to recover.

If that continues, then the stock market could do well.

But remember, the markets have doubled since hitting the lows in March 2009. It certainly would not be unusual to see a correction or at least a rather boring market.

Also remember that we have been in the October-March period of what some people call season strength. We may indeed have a little rest coming, but the market rarely does what I tell it to do.

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My wife was on the hunt the other day and she found me busily typing on my laptop.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I told her I was writing a fairy tale

She squinted her eyes at me and started reading over my shoulder: Once upon a time, a prince asked a beautiful princess...“Will you marry me?” The Princess said “NO!” And the Prince lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and went fishing and hunting and played golf and dated women half his age and drank beer and scotch and had tons of money in the bank and left the toilet seat up. The End

She didn’t think that was funny.

Howie Pentony is a Saxonburg client portfolio manager.