By USA TODAY
Mobile apps range from the valuable to the utterly worthless. For every helpful map and navigator app, there are hundreds of bodily noise generators
Banks and brokerages, though, are hoping to tilt the scale more toward the useful by launching many new tools and apps for everything from getting stock quotes to checking account balances and even placing trades. The providers of the apps all say they have safeguards in place, both on the phone and on their servers, to protect against security issues.
As ways to access investing information while on the road proliferate, investors might wonder if these new tools are helpful or just frivolous. Unlike other uses for mobile apps, investing isn't necessarily a mobile pursuit. Do you really need to buy that stock when you're reclining by the pool?
Very few investors use the technology so far. Just 4.1% of TD Ameritrade customers trade from mobile devices, says the brokerage's Nicole Sherrod, a statistic that other brokers agree is similar for them. It's growing quickly, though, with trades from mobile up 125% from this time last year, Sherrod says.
There's still resistance, too. Most people view managing their money, and portfolios, as something they do at home. Partly for that reason mobile investing, ballyhooed in 2000, largely fell flat with investors and was abandoned. Even today, Scott Meikle, 41, of Hudson, Ohio, says he'll check balances from his mobile devices, but prefers to place trades on his home computer.
Still, investors are being presented with new ways to access their accounts from smartphones.
Mobile apps range from the valuable to the utterly worthless. For every helpful map and navigator app, there are hundreds of bodily noise generators
Banks and brokerages, though, are hoping to tilt the scale more toward the useful by launching many new tools and apps for everything from getting stock quotes to checking account balances and even placing trades. The providers of the apps all say they have safeguards in place, both on the phone and on their servers, to protect against security issues.
As ways to access investing information while on the road proliferate, investors might wonder if these new tools are helpful or just frivolous. Unlike other uses for mobile apps, investing isn't necessarily a mobile pursuit. Do you really need to buy that stock when you're reclining by the pool?
Very few investors use the technology so far. Just 4.1% of TD Ameritrade customers trade from mobile devices, says the brokerage's Nicole Sherrod, a statistic that other brokers agree is similar for them. It's growing quickly, though, with trades from mobile up 125% from this time last year, Sherrod says.
There's still resistance, too. Most people view managing their money, and portfolios, as something they do at home. Partly for that reason mobile investing, ballyhooed in 2000, largely fell flat with investors and was abandoned. Even today, Scott Meikle, 41, of Hudson, Ohio, says he'll check balances from his mobile devices, but prefers to place trades on his home computer.
Still, investors are being presented with new ways to access their accounts from smartphones.
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