October 6th, 2008
Eight ways to track your portfolio on the iPhone
In case you haven’t been paying attention, U.S. financial markets are in a tailspin (Dow and AAPL both down 4 6+% today). Securities continue on their relentless roller coaster ride that could make veteran stock brokers lose their lunch.
If you’d like to stay more in touch with your financial portfolio there are a number of iPhone applications that can help you.
Apple includes a basic Stocks app on the iPhone based on the Yahoo! finance widget. It’s sufficient to check the major market indices and allows you to add your own holdings but it’s pretty basic. For example it can display changes in dollars or percentage, but not both.
Bloomberg Mobile 1.1 (iTunes link) is a free and powerful iPhone app that picks up where Stocks leaves off. It offers news, stock quotes, company descriptions, market leaders/laggers, price charts and market trends analysis. Version 1.1 adds more commodities, countries and shows progress for news downloaded in Wi-Fi mode.
If you don’t want to drop any (more) money on your portfolio there are other free Web-based tools that help. CNBC’s mobile Web site (mobile.cnbc.com) displays updated market quotes and their top news stories.
You can also use Mobile Safari to create a bookmark on the desktop for any security on any Web service by clicking on the little plus (+) sign in bottom tool bar. Google Finance is an excellent choice (i.e. www.google.com/search?q=AAPL) because it refreshes without reloading the page.
If you have an account with TD AMERITRADE you can track and trade stocks with iStockManager (iTunes link, free) and ipTrader (iTunes link, free).
TickerPicker (iTunes link, pictured) is a US$7.99 application that takes stock analysis to a new level by focusing on the technical aspects of stock trading. When viewing a stock it breaks it down into four charts showing price, moving average, volume, RSI (a technical analysis indicator that compares the days that a stock finishes up against when it finishes lower) and MACD (which uses different exponential moving averages to generate buy and sell indicators). It’s a tad expensive at US$8 and the fonts are small but the developer promises zooming and better visibility in the future.
AAPLPicker (iTunes link) is the AAPL-only version of TickerPicker (above) and will only set you back US$0.99. Track AAPL’s RSI, which many believe to be bearish when over 70 and bullish when under 30 and MACD which can be a buy signal when over the zero line.
If you’re more of a mutual fund investor then you should check out Fund Watch (iTunes link, US$7.99) which helps you monitor your funds and unit trust investments. After entering your portfolio information your funds historical prices are displayed and cached, increasing speed.
What do you use to monitor your portfolio on the iPhone?
