Investing is a difficult game to get into. You know it, I know it, we all know it. There are some people on social media or YouTube who try to make investing look easy. Perhaps some of the principles or techniques are easy to understand, but consistently making a profit on the stock market is as difficult as it gets. Most professional fund managers have a hard time beating the benchmark S&P 500 index each year. But we’re here to show you the best investing apps for beginners so you know here to start.
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Best Investing Apps for Beginners
Chances are that when you start investing in the stock market, you’re going to make some mistakes. That’s okay!
The reward for learning how to trade stocks and hold them is wealth beyond anything imaginable when you first begin. There’s a reason why compound interest is called the eighth wonder of the world. So if you are new to investing, there’s no shame at all in looking for help. There is literally an app for everything, so why not try a few of them out? Investing apps can be a great way to learn the ropes, gain valuable information, and educate yourself on the stock market.
It wasn’t too long ago that Yahoo was one of the largest search engines and email providers in the world. Today, it seems like people use them for two things; fantasy sports and the Yahoo Finance app. I think our association with Yahoo Finance comes from the fact that it’s always the first search result when we search for a stock.
Well luckily for us, the app is really intuitive and easy to use. I love that you’re immediately taken to your watchlist when you open the app on your phone. This watchlist is completely customizable.
And you can arrange it in any order you want. Anything you can invest in on an exchange, Yahoo Finance offers the ability to add it to your watchlist. You can even add stocks that are trading on non-U.S. exchanges! One of the best features is the amount of news and research you can conduct directly on the app. Not only can you look at each stock’s chart but you can check out the options chains.
And see the stock’s historic activity as well. Under each stock’s page, you can find related articles from publications like the Motley Fool, Barron’s, and the Financial Post. Yahoo has streamlined all of the information you need into one convenient app.
So while that was one of the best features, the chat isn’t great. I don’t know what Yahoo can do to clean this up, but the chats are full of spam and bots. It’s to the point where it’s not even worth entering a discussion.
You’re better off heading to a site like StockTwits. Another pet peeve of mine is that Yahoo lists any class action lawsuit articles against the company in the newsfeed. There just has to be a better way to do that Yahoo!
Yahoo! Finance Premium
Yahoo Finance also offers the Yahoo Finance Premium membership which offers users features like advanced portfolio analytics and enhanced charting with technical analysis. The premium membership will cost you about $34.99 per month or $349.99 annually. It’s not cheap, and to be honest, a lot of the premium features can be found for free on other sites. People also look at Yahoo Finance as a free site, so it will be difficult to convince members to start paying for services they can get elsewhere.
At the end of the day, Yahoo Finance is a staple app for investors of all levels of experience. It is free to download and use, and provides up-to-the-minute news and information on all your favorite stocks! And that’s why they’re included in our investing apps for beginners list.
A Wealth of Knowledge in 280 Characters or Less: Twitter
When you think of Twitter do you think of it as investing apps for beginners? I do! Twitter can be used in countless ways. But FinTwit or Financial Twitter is one of the strongest segments of the app.
Come for the knowledge, stay for the interaction! FinTwit can be a volatile area of Twitter. People can often get sensitive when discussing money. But if you’re able to wade through the drama, there’s a goldmine of free information at your disposal!
First of all, don’t ever believe what people post about their portfolios. Screenshots can be edited. And many FinTwit furus have been exposed for being frauds. So how do you find the ones that are actually helpful? I like to find people who consistently tweet about stocks I follow. You can find them by searching with the cashtag and the stock ticker symbol: $TSLA or $AAPL.
People on FinTwit also like to give each other a lot of shoutouts. From here you can decipher who to follow and who to avoid. Once you’re able to narrow it down to a select group of investors who share their knowledge and thoughts, it’ll open your eyes to the world of investing.
Twitter is easy to use. Do you want to learn about options? There are tons of active options trades. Do you want to learn about cryptocurrencies? Crypto Twitter is even more volatile than FinTwit!
Ultimately, Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool that can really help you out if you learn to harness it correctly. Find great investing minds and avoid the ones who want to charge you to join their Discord channel. FinTwit is an endless ocean of priceless information, you just need to make sure to avoid the garbage.
Ranking the Best Financial Bloggers: TipRanks
TipRanks is an app that simply doesn’t get enough love in the investing community. This is why we added it to our list of investing apps for beginners. It’s incredibly helpful and easy to use for investors of all experience levels. So what is TipRanks? It is a database of nearly every online financial blogger or writer and how they rank against each other. This really helps you to weed through the spam bloggers and find the ones who write articles that are actually helpful.
Of course, you should never blindly follow a blogger or writer on any investing advice. Always do your own due diligence before making a trade, because you just never know what their motives are. Remember that bloggers are taking the time to share their thoughts, while writers are hired guns that can turn water into wine on a page. Not that writers are not truthful or helpful, but always remember who is getting paid to pump those articles out.
TipRanks offers other helpful tools as well including stock screeners, stock comparisons, and managing your portfolio. You can integrate your own brokerage account directly into TipRanks if you so desire. There are two tiers of pricing for TipRanks which run $29.95 per month for Premium and $49.95 per month for the Ultimate service. Is it worth the premium charge? That’s up to you, but again like Yahoo, TipRanks is so helpful to new investors without even adding the premium membership.
TipRanks has a mobile app that is free to download and works on both iOS or Android. When you are a new investor, you have to learn early on who you can trust. Finding the best investing bloggers and writers is a great way to ensure you are getting unbiased and accurate information.
Conclusion
There are hundreds of other financial and investing apps available to new investors. I wanted to choose the three best investing apps for beginners that are free to download, use, and provide different types of information. Yahoo Finance is an excellent place to monitor your watchlist from day to day. The app has excellent and trusted sources for news, and provides up to the minute stock market coverage. Add any ETF, fund, currency or crypto to your watchlist as well!
Twitter is an app that is incredibly valuable to new investors. FinTwit can be a difficult area to navigate, but once you have found some core investors to follow, the knowledge you can extract is priceless. Finally, TipRanks is our favorite way here at BullishBears.com to determine how legitimate financial bloggers are. We want to make sure the articles we read are accurate and trustworthy, and TipRanks is the best way to ensure that!