Choosing the right mobile trading platform is now a must for all retail traders, as stock markets and other asset classes remain pretty volatile. Trends are starting to mature and that means you need to monitor price developments and open trades constantly. You’re not always going to be close to your PC, which is why mobile apps can be useful.
Retail traders and investors are recently active on some of the most popular stocks. Tesla started 2022 with an impulsive jump, after reporting record EV deliveries during Q4 of 2021, and Apple reached a $3 trillion market cap, showing market participants still favor large-cap names. These are all the more reasons to adopt mobile trading, in order to keep your fingers on the pulse at all times.
Alt-text: trading online using mobile platforms
Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/chart-stock-investing-market-app-6511113/
Why should you use mobile platforms?
Beginners who are still learning how to trade might be focused on aspects such as trading strategies, understanding fundamentals, and market psychology. However, if online stock trading is what you are interested in, getting accustomed to a mobile trading app is important from the very start.
One of the main reasons for that is increased flexibility. As long as you have an internet connection, you can stay up to date with the latest market moves on the street – even while you’re waiting for your coffee to be ready at the coffee shop.
Advantages
When speaking of the advantages of mobile trading platforms, the variety of trading tools built-in is one of the main ones. Major brokerages have done a lot of work, optimizing these solutions, and the industry has reached a point where you are able to use the same strategies on a smartphone as you would on a PC or laptop.
Most mobile apps allow traders to set up price alerts or notifications. That way, they can know when a certain asset price reaches a pre-defined level, major market news is released, or trades are being closed automatically. These apps provide access to information, which can then influence your decision-making process.
Disadvantages
You should know that there are also drawdowns. One of them is screen real estate. Unfortunately, a smartphone is not as comfortable as a monitor, and because of that, it might be a challenge for you to notice subtle details in the price action.
Also, placing a trade via a mobile device can take a bit longer, since you need to navigate across windows. That’s the main reason why experts continue to advise traders to use these solutions as a supplement for a desktop platform and to avoid trading 100% of the time on mobile.
Market volatility can spike at any point, leaving unprepared traders poised for losses. Mobile platforms have their strengths and weaknesses, which is why you should not use them to place trades when prices move up or down impulsively, or when valuations are very choppy.
Ultimately, you should be using the mobile trading platform when it’s necessary to take action, be it closing a trade in order to preserve returns, adjusting stop loss/take profit, or checking how your target assets have performed since the last time you saw the charts.
