But with so many applications out there – more than 50,000 for iPhone alone as of last count – it’s hard to tell which ones are worthwhile and which are just worthless. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of the best Investing Apps for the iPhone…

Now, with today’s release of the iPhone 3G S, traders will be able to make market moves even faster than before — in addition to checking the Penny Sleuth’s Twitter feed…

While we can’t provide an exhaustive list of every investing application available for the iPhone and iPod Touch today, this should get you started with investing on the go:

1. Apple’s Stocks App
One of the biggest changes in Apple’s just-released iPhone 3.0 software was the newly improved Stocks app.  The reason that this app took the number-one spot in our Investing app countdown is simple: everyone has it.

Since Stocks comes on every single iPhone and iPod Touch that leaves the factory, it makes a whole lot of sense to use this program to keep track of your portfolio and find news and share data on stocks. The single best addition to Stocks is the interactive chart feature that you can access by holding your phone or iPod horizontally.

2. iSwim and E*Trade Mobile Pro
iSwim and E*Trade Mobile Pro are two new apps that are available free of charge from Thinkorswim and E*Trade, two of the more popular brokers out there. If you’re a client, you can execute trades in real-time from anywhere where you have cellular or Wi-Fi service, something that sets these two apps apart from the slew of apps that just provide quotes.

If you’re not a Thinkorswim or E*Trade client, you can still download these apps and use them to check out quotes on stocks and options.

3. Bloomberg
If you’re on the lookout for economic and investing news, Bloomberg’s self-named application is your best bet. That’s because addition to the standard stock quotes that all the rest of our top apps can provide, Bloomberg offers a feed of its award winning financial news service.

While the app isn’t quite as versatile as the company’s Bloomberg Anywhere app for Blackberry users who have a $1,700 monthly subscription to their professional service, the free iPhone app is definitely still worth checking out.

4. iTrade Stock Market Simulator
If you’re looking for a way to trade without putting your money on the line, the iTrade Stock Market Simulator might be a good solution for you. The app gives you a $100,000 virtual stock portfolio that you can use to hone your investing skills.

iTrade also features real-time stock quotes and investment research to make the trading simulation as realistic as possible.

5. Morningstar
Morningstar’s investment application is one of the newest additions to the stable. The app features investing ideas provided by the analysts at Morningstar.com. It’s also the app that’s most adept at providing data on mutual funds.

6. Forbes Intelligent Investing
One of the more interesting investing apps on the iTunes App Store is Forbes’ Intelligent Investing. The entertaining program contains a repository of Forbes articles, including market forecasts and commentary, and – more importantly – one-on-one investment videos with the pros.

7. Black Gold
If commodities are your cup of tea, Black Gold should be on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The app features mobile price-watching and charts for crude oil, gold, natural gas, and heating oil.

8. FX360
FX360 is a mobile window into the world of currency trading. This free app offers real-time forex quotes and commentary from the minds at Global Futures and Forex. If you’re new to trading currencies, the analysis you’ll find at FX360 should give you enough guidance to get your feet wet in the FX game.

9. TheStreet.com Mobile
If you’re a Jim Cramer fan, you shouldn’t miss TheStreet.com Mobile. This app lets you download your favorite news, commentary, and analysis from TheStreet.com, and read it on the go – even when you’re not within range of cellular service. TheStreet.com Mobile’s Cramer section offers articles from the “Mad Money” guru as well as access to continuously updated market data.

10. iStockManager
Are you a TD Ameritrade customer? If so, iStockManager lets you perform real money trades with your TD Ameritrade account. While this piece of software isn’t from the broker itself, it does offer a number of attractive features like streaming level II quotes, option chains, and account information. The iStockManager software is also available for Blackberry.

11. StockWatch
Another portfolio tracker from the makers of Black Gold.

12. Stock Charts
An interactive charting app that’s designed for mobile technical analysis. While this app isn’t free like the top ten, its feature set makes it worth taking a look at – especially if you trade based on charts.

13. TickerPicker
This inexpensive investing application features real-time pre-fab technical analysis charts. If the free options don’t do it for you, this could be an inexpensive alternative.

14. Financial Calculator
While this app isn’t strictly for investors, the featureset of this financial calculator make it indispensable if you’re working on complex financial valuations – or trying to price out bonds.

15. iFutures
This app is a step up from the free Black Gold app that made #7 on our list. It offers commodity traders a way to keep tabs on dozens of commodities, currencies, fixed income securities, and indices at all times.

16. Mad Stocks
Keep track of Jim Cramer’s stock picks with this easy-to-use app.

17. Risk Manager
One of the biggest questions new investors ask is: “How big should my positions be?” Rick Manager answers that question by telling you how much money to invest based on your pre-defined risk thresholds.

18. Thompson Reuters News Pro
Forget that expensive financial news subscription… this new app from Thompson Reuters gives you free access to professional grade news and market data.

19. Daily Finance
AOL’s investing app helps you keep track of your portfolio with real-time quotes and professional grade charting.

20. Mint
This all-encompassing personal finance app helps you keep track of your money by gathering up to date info on your bank, credit card, and investment accounts.

Hopefully, this list of investing apps will help you score penny stock profits even when you’re not sitting in front of your computer. And remember, if you think we missed an investing app that you just can’t live without, be sure to let us know in the comments!

Cheers,
Jonas Elmerraji

June 19, 2009

The Top 20 Investing Apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

The iPhone is by no means the first phone to utilize Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). More sophisticated phones have had the capability for years. When a technology reaches the iPhone, however, it has gone mainstream.

So why are we still paying phone companies for phone calls? To a 3G phone with a mobile Internet connect, a phone call is the same as a picture of Angelina Jolie or a forwarded e-mail joke. It’s the Web connection that provides the value, not the dialing technology.

VoIP is basically software, so it offers options that old-style hardware switching simply cannot. It is also free beyond basic connections charges. There are no long-distance or country charges on the Web.

The phone companies, of course, have been fighting VoIP tooth and nail. Their business model is obsolete and they know it. Only Apple’s massive clout has allowed this small and long-delayed step forward. Nevertheless, iPhone users are already learning how to use the feature well. The Skype app transitions between Wi-Fi and AT&T almost seamlessly.

Old-school phone companies are, therefore, doomed. Only those that become full-blown ISPs will survive. If the past is any indication, current phone companies will resist the inevitable for so long that upstart ISPs and technologies will leapfrog the dinosaurs.

Speaking of dinosaurs, newspapers continue to collapse as I predicted. Bankruptcies have hit Philadelphia papers as well as the Journal Register chain. The Rocky Mountain News shut down and Hearst has turned the Seattle Post Intelligencer into a smallish Internet site. The San Francisco Chronicle is in a death spiral and the Minneapolis Star Tribune has filed for Chapter 11. The Miami Herald and the Boston Globe are teetering.

I suppose I ought to have more sympathy for those who work at those papers. In truth, however, I welcome their collapse. I left policy research, in fact, to help Jim Barksdale and the Netscape crew destroy the old media monopoly on information dissemination.

The mainstream media has done enormous damage by aligning itself with only one side of the political debate. On the one hand, journalists who are unable to solve even basic mathematical equations gave inordinate coverage to climate change hysterics.

On the other hand, they refused even to cover myriad warnings that Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking our financial institutions over a cliff. It’s conceivable that if not for that tribal media bias, we wouldn’t be in the shape we are in now.

Incidentally, I would be just as opposed to an incestuous monolithic media run by the right. It wasn’t, however, and the creative destruction of old media is a necessary part of our economic recovery. No matter what your political affiliation as old institutions fall, new ones will arise — making fortunes for those who know they’re coming.

They are not, however, always obvious. The collapse of newspapers is accelerating the trend toward online news sources. If owners of these decrepit businesses had been thinking, they would have leapt at the Kindle when it emerged. The New York Times, for example, could cut its delivery costs in half by abandoning paper and giving all subscribers new Kindles.

Kindles are only the tip of the convergence iceberg, though. The next generation of mobile devices will combine the features of Kindle, netbook, iPhone and more. We already own several companies that hold key patents in this media evolution. We’ll be adding more in the future.

For transformation profits,
Patrick Cox

April 8, 2009

Old Media Collapse Will Profit Transformational Investors was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

The text message explosion began between 2005-2007. The number of SMS messages grew from about 10 billion to more than 48 billion per year then. And texting isn’t the only huge mobile trend you’ll have to contend with…

Mobile phones have come a long way from their humble beginnings. Now your phone has become an entire media platform. The possibilities are endless…

The iPhone Changes the Game

With the staggering growth of content available on mobile phones, it’s no surprise that the mobile advertising industry is picking up steam. The first step was paid content. Mobile users could text certain numbers to download ringtones and other content for a small fee. Now we’re seeing advertisers take advantage of the new capabilities of smart phones like the iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm and the T-Mobile G1.

Back in 2007, the new iPhone got off to a rocky start. AT&T — the iPhone’s exclusive carrier — announced the disappointing data right after the release. Customers activated only 146,000 iPhones during the first weekend, much less than the 500,000 activations predicted by giddy Wall Street analysts.

Since then, we’ve seen a newer, cheaper, faster iPhone hit the market — this time on a 3G network. And AT&T has finally managed to favorably work the iPhone into its rotation — even with the hefty kickbacks it sends to Apple for its trendy multimedia device. Yes, AT&T has sunk some serious dough into this affair, including $450 million on 3G network upgrades, according to Forbes. These expensive improvements were a major factor in the 23% year-to-year decline in the company’s net income last quarter…

But the 3G iPhone is finally beginning to bear fruit. AT&T has so far activated 4.3 million of the second-gen touch-screen phones— 1.9 million of them in the fourth quarter, according to Forbes. This more than doubles last year’s activation numbers — and nearly doubles Verizon’s activation data for the new BlackBerry Storm.

Believe it or not, the iPhone has changed something… it has changed the way we consume media. AT&T’s wireless division CEO says it best: “The success of our iPhone 3G launch has driven wireless growth and helped redefine the wireless data space.” As these mobile devices become increasingly ever-present, there’s no doubt that advertisers and developers will find new ways to capitalize on this growing media consumption.

Best,
Greg Guenthner

February 2, 2009

The iPhone Helps Mobile Marketing Mature was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

The game, which he created in his spare time, made Demeter $250,000 in its first two months on Apple’s “App Store” — enough to entice him to quit his job as an ATM software designer and start his own game development studio.

But Demeter’s game earned mere pocket change compared with some of the other independent developers who’ve hit it big recently. Look no further than Ethan Nicholas, a one-man team who watched his own game, iShoot, climb to No. 1 on Apple’s list of most popular paid applications.

In just two weeks, iShoot netted Nicholas almost $400,000 in profits… and the application is still selling as we type. That mountain of money has prompted Nicholas too to quit his day job at Sun Microsystems to pursue game development full time.

The move was a decisive one for Nicholas. And his response to those who ridiculed his move to leave his lucrative day job was in the true spirit of a self-made businessman: This is why you will never be rich.

There’s also the story of the hit iPhone game, Tap Tap Revenge. The application is essentially a handheld version of Guitar Hero, in which the player attempts to tap the proper notes to the beat of a song. The game, which is available for free on the App Store, has been downloaded over two million times.

Tapulous, the developer of the game, recently started inserting advertisements in the game. With a strategy that has become increasingly popular during the broadband era, the company gave away their product for free, and then figured out how to generate revenue later (much like Google did with Gmail).

The potential of the mobile applications is enormous. Small software developers stand to make a great deal of money as smart phones become increasingly common.

But just because you don’t have any game-creation skills doesn’t mean that you’re precluded from getting a piece of the mobile game market — and who knows… maybe, you too will be able to quit your day job. We believe this mobile marketing revolutionary will make a significant impact this year, and the early small-cap investors stand to make some huge profits along the way.

Best,
Greg Guenthner

January 23, 2009

Mobile Game Developers Present Investing Opportunity was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.