One of my favorite movies of all-time is Trader. It’s a 1980’s documentary that follows Paul Tudor Jones for several months. Tudor Jones is a young, hot-shot Wall Street hedge fund manager with around $125 million under management. You get to see Tudor Jones screaming orders into the phone to his broker down in the Chicago and New York trading pits. Not only is there tons of great trading knowledge to gain from the documentary, but you really get to see how much different trading used to be. The days of shouting orders into a phone to a broker in the pit are long gone. In today’s world of hi-tech smart phones, you actually have the ability to not only pay bills like your working capital loan, but you can transform your phone into a hi-tech trading platform, where you can execute millions of dollars in trading volume with the swipe of a finger.
Getting Started
The first thing you need, of course, is a trading account. When you conduct research in order to find an online broker, make sure you choose one who has an advanced mobile application that is available in the iPhone App Store. If you are trading stocks, E*Trade is a great choice. If you are trading foreign exchange, Oanda has an exceptional mobile application.
The mobile platform should allow you to receive streaming prices, pull up charts on various timeframes, enter buy and sell orders, and modify open positions.
News
Every serious trader needs to know what is happening in the global economy every day. If you are at your trading desk, you most likely skim over Bloomberg and Reuters a few times per hour in order to stay on top of news announcements. With your iPhone, you can do the same thing. Bloomberg and Reuters both have incredible mobile applications that allow you to customize the stream of news related information that hits your phone. For example, if you trade commodities, you can customize both apps so that only relevant news hits your phone. You do not necessarily need alerted concerning bond and t-bill movement, so you can filter those releases out of your news feed.
Charting
Every serious trader must have a comprehensive web charting application. Now, your broker may offer stellar execution and streaming prices, but if they are weak on charting, then you will need to get a 3rd party application. Trade Interceptor is probably the best for foreign exchange traders. Trade Interceptor provides streaming price quotes from over half a dozen brokers. You choose the price feed you want to see, and then the app will generate charts based on that feed. The charts show a significant amount of historical data, which makes it easier to see historical support/resistance and other areas of technical interest.
News Announcements
Each day, there are several scheduled news releases that tend to move the market heavily. These news releases range from employment data to inflation to Federal Reserve Interest Rate announcements. While Bloomberg and Reuters provide quality analysis on these reports, they both typically release those pieces well after the news has hit the wire and the market has responded. In order to stay in touch with these releases throughout the day, there is a great mobile application called Forex News. This app will populate every major news release within seconds after it hits the wire each day. This is great if you are on the go and want to stay in touch with market movement when you are not in front of your pc or mac.
The days of shouting orders into your phone are long gone. With the swipe of a finger you can open, close, and modify positions at brokerage shops around the world.
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