How to Use the Apple Stock App on Your iPhone
Apple’s iPhone stock app is an essential tool for iPhone and iPad users, especially those who have investments in the stock market that they want to keep tabs on. Like a lot of Apple products, the stock app has a lot of functionality brewing under the surface that you might not be aware of unless you dig a little deeper into what it can actually do.
Here’s what you should know about the iPhone stock app, including basics like how to change your dashboard, and deeper tips and tricks that can help you use it more effectively.
How to customize the iPhone stock app display
If the information in the default settings when you open your iPhone stock app isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, you can always customize your display. Here are a few ways you can change what you see so that it’s a better fit for your needs.
Add stocks
You don’t have to be content with the boilerplate stocks that Apple displays for you. Customize what stocks you see when you open the iPhone stock app. Here’s how:
Select the iPhone stocks menu.
Click the plus sign in the top left-hand corner.
Type the name of your desired stock in the search bar.
From the search results, click the green plus sign beside the appropriate stock to add it.
Reorder your stocks
If you have a special way you like to read your stocks, you can reorganize them so that they’re presented in any order you’d like.
Tap the menu button on the iPhone stocks app.
Hold the reorder button — which looks like three parallel lines — next to the stock you want to move.
Drag your stock and drop in the location of your choosing
Change the units
Depending on what you’re trying to learn about your stocks you might want to see changes represented in different ways. Through the iPhone stock app, you can see the market cap, percent difference or price difference of your stocks.
Open your iPhone stock app.
Tap the value next to your desired stock.
Each tap will show you a different unit.
3 iPhone stock app special features
The iPhone stock app has improved over the years and now has some new features that make managing your investments easier than ever. Here are three features of the iPhone stock app to take advantage of while you have it open.
1. News
You can now read business news about the stocks you follow straight in the iPhone stock app. Swipe up from the main page to see news stories that pertain to your stocks.
2. Review historical data
Tap a stock to see current and historical data straight from the stocks app. You can also see news about the particular stock you’re looking at listed below the data. It’s not just historical data you can review in this way, you’ll find current data listed here too.
3. Watch your updated stock performance
Apple has added sparklines to their stock charts, small charts that show how a stock is performing throughout the day. This gives you more specific information about stock changes.
Why investors like the iPhone stock app
Investors who use Apple products tend to gravitate toward the iPhone stock app because it’s easy to use from both an iPhone and an iPad. Because you can track data and read news about your current stocks from within the app it makes the experience of following your stocks easier.
Despite the iPhone stock app being a convenient choice for iOS users, it’s not always the best one. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using the Apple iPhone stock app to monitor your stock investments.
Pros
Comes pre-installed on your iPhone so you don’t have to search for it in the app store.
Has data about your stocks built into the reporting features of the app.
User design is intuitive to most Apple customers.
Cons
Other apps may have more information about each stock, such as details about competitors and technical analysis.
The iPhone stocks app isn’t an investment app that lets you purchase stocks directly from the app.
You can’t set up multiple hypothetical scenarios to easily compare various investment portfolio combinations, as you can in some apps.