I am not exactly sure why, but I'm a bit turned off by iStockManager. It may have something to do with all the inaccessible features of the software. It is offered as a free download but if you pay a fee other features will be unlocked for you. The problem I have with this is that there are to many parts of the screen taken up beckoning you to "go to login" for the paid Ameritrade account. Unlike Bloomberg's software, this software package allows you to not only track your stocks but you can also link it to TD Ameritrade to actually trade your stocks. Also, since I have shelled out the cash for the paid TD Ameritrade account, I can only receive 20 minute delayed quotes of the stocks. I can't get real time quotes the way in which I was able to do with the Bloomberg app. Anyway, I'm not sure that I want to keep using this software or not, just because I'm unhappy about the interface.As a side note, while using these stock software applications I noticed that sometimes my iPhone automatically will lock and turn off the screen. This gets on my nerves after awhile. I know that it is to save battery life but if I was really trading and every minute counted, I would want some feature to be added to the software that would allow this battery saving feature of the iPhone to be turned off when I had my stock trading software active.
At the top of the screen you are shown the stock prices but that's it. I don't think that is a very intuitive way to present the stock information. Sure I guess I can guess what those numbers mean but I see no reason for not providing some description. You can view a delayed "now" chart, as well as a 5 day, 3 month, 6 month, 1 year, and a 5 year chart. You can also link to news articles concerning this stock but I think the news is really lacking since I got no results for Apple's stock by clicking on the news icon. I went into Bloomberg's app and was able to get news.One feature that I do like about this app is that from the main screen or the "general" screen you get a 52 week range average and you can see where the price of the stock is falling currently. In my screen shot you can see Apple's stock seems to be a bit in the high range. It would be interesting if I could expand this average to a longer period of time, more than 52 weeks.
I didn't really fiddle around with the screens in relation to the trading features since I did not open an TD Ameritrade account, so I can't give much feedback about those features. I also don't know if it was just my Internet connection but I felt that this app loaded the charts so slowly. I started to get very aggravated after awhile. So then I went into Bloomberg and discovered that the charts and info loaded very quickly, the same for Fonestock as well.
I also really like the feature of being able to just search for the company name instead of being required to input the stock symbol.After using iStockManger and Bloomberg I'm not really sure if either is the best choice for me. I really do think that Bloomberg offers a great news feature but seems lacking in some aspects. iStockManger seems a little bit better since I can at least see the last 52 weeks average and know a little bit about what is going on with the stock but if you recall some of my earlier posts regarding technical indicators, I believe some of those can really help with making some decisions on when to buy or sell certain stocks, especially in regards to certain patterns that may develop overtime with stocks. But these two software packages have not shown me that they would be able to assist me in any trading decisions.
2 意見:
I had downloaded istockmanager servel months ago and wonder why I can not access some features. Your articles points that users have to pay fees to make those features available. But how shold I pay those fees?
Let me clarify things a little bit for you. Actually, you can access these other features and real time quotes but it is a bit difficult. The first reason is that you need to provide a social security number or an individual taxpaper identification number. If you are not a United States citizen or have not worked in the US to receive a taxpayer identification number, then it will be impossible for you to open an account with TD Ameritrade. Also, you'll need to have bank account information in case you'd want to actually trade with this account. I'm not really certain you'd need to pay but it seems that you wouldn't need to unless you really want to trade. Either way, I didn't feel safe yet (as some others might) with putting my social security number into another database on line. Therefore, I've opted to just use the free features for the system. Recently I've been using another software package called "Fonestock" that I think is better in many ways than iStock Manger. I'll try to write my reflections about this software within the next few days and provide some screenshots. You may wish to try that software out instead if you're looking for a great program that does not require the input of a Social Security Number or bank information.
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