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Table Of Contents

    Key points

    The term “mobile trading” doesn’t mean the same thing today that it did a few years ago. As little as 5 years ago, the notion of trading on the go would have typically been thought of as something you would do with your laptop, palm trees swaying in the background.  Today, however, an entirely new […]

    The term “mobile trading” doesn’t mean the same thing today that it did a few years ago. As little as 5 years ago, the notion of trading on the go would have typically been thought of as something you would do with your laptop, palm trees swaying in the background.  Today, however, an entirely new reality around mobile trading has emerged.  Smartphones, superphones, phablets and tablets have, for the time being, come to define what it means to truly do anything mobile.

    Instead of the fabled island escape where an investor could sit on the beach to trade, today’s mobile investor wants to be able to be able to trade with one device amidst the realities of a busy life.  With sufficiently powerful devices and increasingly fast wireless internet, the ingredients for supporting the new kind of mobile trading are now here.  Whether discount brokerages have kept pace is another story.

    Keeping up with the technological Jones’

    For investors considering making mobile trading part of their money management lifestyle looking at the mobile trading platforms available from discount brokerages  provides an almost evolutionary snapshot of the attempts (or lack thereof) of discount brokerages to keep pace with technology and consumer trends.

    At last count, 10 Canadian discount brokerages offered some kind of mobile support ranging from the ‘mobile-friendly’ websites which were built to make trading accessible to early phone-based web browsers to the latest dedicated apps for the most popular devices and mobile operating systems.  Unlike 5 years ago, those brokerages that don’t support mobile trading in some dedicated fashion are now in the minority.

    To help self-directed investors make sense of the mobile trading experience, we’ve put together a series of reviews of the mobile trading platforms offered by several discount brokerages.  These reviews will walk through the app itself and provide viewers with an impression of the mobile platform’s user experience when researching stocks, ETFs or options, obtaining quotes, placing a trade, managing accounts and accessing news.

    To access the mobile trading reviews, click the links below:

    Mobile trading review – Disnat Classic

    Mobile trading review – National Bank Direct Brokerage

    Mobile trading review – Qtrade Financial