No matter how many iPhone applications I have downloaded over the last year or so, I have known there has always been a big gap - that of a dedicated eTrade application, set up to let me trade stocks, transfer funds and check balances while on the go. But eTrade, until now, has stuck with an exclusive contract with BlackBerry (which we discussed in March), leaving those of us with iPhones on the outside looking in. But in the quiet shadows of Apple's iPhone 3.0 operating system release, eTrade finally rolled out their app - and even though the markets were closed tonight, my testing of the application shows it delivers exactly what I would expect, in a clear and intuitive way.
eTrade's iPhone App Highlights the Market and My Accounts
For most traders, sites like eTrade offer an important combination of both company news and trading activity. The iPhone application is no different, featuring near real-time stock prices for the markets at large, and the top news for those stocks any time you query a specific ticker symbol.
eTrade's iPhone App Lets Me Highlight Stock Charts and Trades
eTrade's iPhone application gains me access to all of my account data, from my stock portfolio to my checking account, showing balances, gains and losses, and of course, making it very easy to make stock trades - off which eTrade makes good money.
Just like on the standard eTrade site, I was able to set up alerts that would notify me if individual stocks reached a certain milestone. I could check individual stock charts for durations of days, months and years, and I could place trades from any quote.
I Can Get Detailed Quote Data and Set Up Alerts
Placing a trade on the iPhone is very easy. Testing with Apple, Google and others, I could make a bid for a stock at a limit, and could enter the number of shares of stock, assuming I had available funs to see the trade execute. I could even set up my quote data to be streaming, which I assume will push the real time upticks and downticks straight to my iPhone.
eTrade's iPhone application is one that I've personally been calling for since the first day I got my iPhone. Now that it's here, I can be ordering stock trades from my phone as easily as sending an e-mail.