Best Free iPhone apps for traders and investors - MarketWatch (blog)

• Commentary

• By Cody Willard

One of the most popular articles I've ever written on Marketwatch.com was called "Best iPhone and Android Apps for Investors" from back in 2010, when the word "apps" was still new lexicon for anybody who wasn't a computer nerd. And I remain an app addict, telling myself and my wife that I'm doing research when I'm on an app. And truly I am.

I  remain so bullish about the app world that I recently acquired Scutify.com that had my favorite iPhone app – Scutify iPhone app at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scutify/id673974489 (currently at #9 in the finance app category at the Apple App Store).

Back in 2010, there had been several hundred million smartphones out there that people wanted apps for. Fast forward to today, and there will be more than one billion smartphones sold this year alone, and units sold in the last quarter of this year will likely top the total number of smartphones in the market back in 2010.

I was adamant back in 2010 that this smartphone/app explosion was going to lead us into an "App Revolution Stock Bubble," and, boy, are we in one now. I don't know when the app bubble will pop or how big it will be by the time it's over, but the fact is that it certainly isn't over yet. Meanwhile, no matter what happens to the valuations and business models of the smartphone and app world in the next few years, there will still be billions of people downloading hundreds of billions of apps and opening those apps trillions upon trillions of times every year.

Full disclosure ahead of time, I would have put the Scutify iPhone App at #1 as well as the Marketwatch iPhone app in my top five.

Read on and download these apps to help you become more informed by (and more addicted to) your iPhone than you ever thought possible. And tell your spouse that you, too, are doing research for work when you're on one of them. It'll be true.

Scutify - Real-time tweet feeds for each symbol, quotes, newsfeeds, and my personal favorite part of the app — the "Latest Scuttles" which longer and better versions of market- and stock-related tweets.

And then -

Bloomberg — Bloomberg has built its brand on technology, and the Bloomberg app is reliable, though not as deep and easy to surf as I might like. Regardless, it's one of the main apps I open to read as I sip coffee in the morning.

TD Ameritrade Mobile – I use several different trading platforms, and this is my favorite broker app to trade on. It's quick, intuitive and unlike some of the other broker apps, doesn't try to be a Bloomberg Terminal in a box, when it never will be.

Yahoo! Finance — I stopped using this app as much after I downloaded the aforementioned Scutify app, but Yahoo! Finance remains a must-visit resource, and the app is pretty darn functional too. They need an update though.

StockTouch — Beautiful visuals of charts and stock quotes, but a bit lacking in depth of information under those visuals. I find I use the app mainly on extreme up or an extreme down day in the stock market to see if there are any major stocks out there going against the trend.

CNBC — I  sure feel like a sell-out citing the CNBC app, given that I was a mortal enemy of theirs while I was an anchor at Fox Business, but it's a good app and I take pride in trying to be objective, so what the heck.

Cody Willard writes Revolution Investing for MarketWatch and posts the trades from his personal account at TradingWithCody.com, which is not affiliated with MarketWatch. At time of publication, Cody was net long Apple and Google. Follow Cody on Twitter at twitter.com/codywillard.