Investing From Your Phone: 5 Tips for the Casual Investor

For the casual investor, convenience and simplicity are integral to the experience. If there’s an easy and convenient way to invest, people will readily put some skin in the game. This makes smartphones an integral tool in this industry.

Five Tips for Smartphone Investing

Your smartphone can be a distraction with which you waste hours of the day scrolling steadily through social media feeds … or it can be a powerful resource for positive change. In terms of finances, your smartphone is just about the most convenient tool you have for investing and building wealth.

Here are five tips to help you utilize it more fully in this capacity:

1. Read the News Each Morning

You don’t need a degree in economics or a background in investment banking to benefit from trends in the stock market. Sometimes, casual investors who are constantly aware of what’s happening the world around them manage to achieve excellent results.

Stocks are nothing more than small-percentage ownership of public companies. When these companies do something good, or when the perception of these companies is elevated, their stock price goes up.

When these companies do something bad, or the mere perception of them turns negative, the stock price goes down. The best way to get ahead of these trends is to stay on top of what’s happening in the news.

Use your smartphone to read up on headlines and trends each morning, afternoon, and evening. You can either browse your favorite news websites, or use an app that curates relevant news for you.

Either strategy is fine; just make sure you’re staying “in the know” at all times.

2. Follow Experts on Social Media

Big news media outlets will help you stay aware of the larger trends, but they aren’t necessarily adequate for catching developments that lie a little beneath the surface. If you want to keep up with predictions and insights from an array of trusted sources, follow some of the key figures on social media.

Twitter is especially useful for this. Not only does news seem to break faster on Twitter, but that site also empowers you to set up notifications so you receive alerts whenever specific people post content.

3. Organize Your Financials

You no longer need a massive filing cabinet, cumbersome folders, or even a full desktop computer to stay on top of your finances. Everything can be readily organized using nothing more than the latest smartphone.

Start by downloading the proper app for all your bank accounts, investment accounts, insurance products, and so on. Once they’re installed, create a folder on your phone’s home screen where you can store each of the apps. This gives you a centralized location where you have ready access to all of your information.

4. Download the Right Investing Apps

You don’t need an expensive setup to enjoy investing. Whether you have a few spare dollars or thousands to invest each month, apps like the following will help you get some serious skin in the game:

  • Robinhood. Designed for people who have no experience with investing, Robinhood is perfect for the beginner who has a relatively small amount of money to invest. There are no fees, costs, or commissions. Just download the app, fund your account, and trade with peace of mind.
  • Acorns. Do you have trouble cultivating enough discipline to make regular investments? The Acorns app helps you round up your debit or credit card transactions to the next dollar and invest the spare change. The money can be automatically invested into one of five professionally managed ETF portfolios. Accounts up to $5,000 are charged just $1 per day. Accounts that surpass this threshold pay a 0.25 percent fee (which is fairly standard for the industry).
  • Stash. Very similar to Acorns, Stash streamlines the activity by helping users invest automatically. However, it also provides advice to assist users who want more guidance on where to put their money.

5.  Try Out Other Investments

The aforementioned quintet is useful for getting started, but experienced investors understand the worthiness of diversifying and trying varying investment methods and strategies. In addition to investing in stocks, you may use your smartphone to invest in term deposits, which allow you to grow money over short periods of time (such as 180 days) with relatively minimal risk or downside.

Expanding Your Investing Strategy

One of the great things about a smartphone is that it gives anyone the ability to invest from almost anywhere. However, smartphone investing is just a starting point. If you want to build wealth and become financially independent, eventually you’ll need to expand your strategy to tackle other investment mediums and strategies.

At some point, you should consult with a financial advisor and request a financial game plan that’s tailored to your circumstances, short-term goals, and long-term objectives. That should enable you to discover further ample opportunities to put your dollars to work.

Stop letting your smartphone be nothing more than a distraction and begin to use it as a tool for making smart financial decisions that have a positive impact on your future. It’s easier and more convenient than you’ve likely suspected.