If you’re interested in trading assets on the move – whether that’s stocks, commodities, forex, or cryptocurrencies, it’s well worth doing so with a broker that offers an app. This will ensure that you can place buy and sell orders at the click of a button no matter where you are.

Additionally, the best trading apps allow you to easily check your portfolio, deposit/withdraw funds, and contact customer support. With that said, most online brokers now offer an app on both iOS and Android devices, meaning you have hundreds of providers to choose from.

In this post, I help clear the mist by discussing my favorite trading apps available in the market right now. I’ll also discuss the many factors you need to consider in choosing a trading app for your personal financial goals.

Why Get a Trading App?

It goes without saying that this post is only going to be relevant if you have a keen interest in trading. But, if you do, I think it’s crucial that you have access to a fully-fledged trading app alongside your primary desktop platform.

However, depending on the type of trading you intend on doing, you might choose to invest purely via your mobile phone. For example, if you are simply looking to buy and sell stocks, this is perfectly feasible.

On the other hand, if you are a day trader that likes to perform advanced technical analysis – then you won’t be able to do this on a mobile phone. Instead, you’ll need to revert to the broker’s main online platform or desktop software.

Nevertheless, below I discuss the many reasons why you should consider a trading app if this is a sector you are already involved in or one you are interested in pursuing.

[Read more…]

This is a guest post from my friend Shlomo Freund, who is a financial coach. We recently had a wide-ranging discussion about personal finance, location independence, and raising kids.

As we both write about financial topics and we have been investing our own money for several years, we tend to receive many emails from people who are earlier in their journeys. We discussed the unfortunate fact that most people never learn anything about managing their finances during their primary and secondary education, and we see that there is a big lack of financial savviness in the adult population. This lack of knowledge is not limited to any particular country or region – it’s a worldwide thing.

Both Shlomo and I strongly believe that knowing how to manage your finances and invest wisely is an important part of living a happy life. And since Shlomo now dedicates a significant part of his time to educating people on making better financial choices, I asked him to write a piece on this blog to give a starting point to those who want to embark on this interesting journey.

What follows is his take. I hope you enjoy it, and please do leave comments if you have any follow up questions, both myself and Shlomo will be happy to help.

Over to Shlomo…

[Read more…]

I’ll be keeping note of my lessons learned as a private investor and also my previous experience as a tech entrepreneur.

• In the market, only 1 thing matters: Supply & Demand. Never fight the present strongest force that drives price & direction. In Equity Markets, from 2009-2019, it was QE/Fed Printing pushing up Stocks. In 2020, again, the Fed has pushed up Stocks. Opinions don’t matter.
• Risk and worry go hand in hand. If you’re not worried then you’re probably not risking enough. Always play for meaningful stakes but don’t bet amounts whose loss would bankrupt you. Nobody becomes rich without some kind of big risk taken.
• I agree with Gerald Loeb, one of Wall Street’s great traders, when he once said: “All investment is speculation. The only difference is that some people admit it and some don’t.”
• Focus 70% of your resources on near term payoff base-hits, 20% on longer term doubles and triples,  and 10% on transformational home runs.
• Always take your profit too soon: short modest winning streaks are the most common. Decide in advance what you want from a venture, and when you get it, get out. This is extremely important especially in highly volatile markets like crypto.
• Cut your losses; you are right at most 50% of the time. When the ship starts to sink, jump. Take small losses to protect yourself against big ones. Accept small losses cheerfully as a fact of life. Expect to experience several while awaiting a large gain.
• Be cautious about long-range plans. Planning is useful but you must adjust as you go. Periodically evaluate all that you have invested in.
• The majority is probably wrong: think things through on your own. Never follow a fad: the best time to buy something is often when nobody else wants it.
• Optimism is expecting the best, confidence is knowing how you will handle the worst. Never make a move if you are merely optimistic. Know how you will handle the worst.
• Your intuition can be trusted if it can be explained. First determine if you have a rich enough experience base to have formed a viable hunch. Don’t confuse a hunch with a hope: put more trust in hunches about negative outcomes.
• Beware of getting too comfortable. Do not become trapped in a souring venture because of loyalty or nostalgia. Keep your eyes open to better opportunities at all times.

As an investor for the long term, Buffett said the best move is the easiest: buy and hold. He quotes Rudyard Kipling’s “If”:

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting …
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim …
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you …
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.

For many years I struggled to understand the lingo used in movies and books that came from the US with regard to money and finance. Here are a few terms that you are most likely to encounter that have no real parallel here in Europe.

If you need me to explain anything else just leave a comment and I’ll do my best.

Credit Score

In the US, having a good credit score or credit rating is of utmost importance. The credit score was invented by a private company called FICO (Fair, Isaac and Company). It was founded by an engineer and a mathematician working at Stanford in the 1950s in order to counter the credit crisis of those times. The aim was to quantify how reliable a person asking for a loan really was. It is now used in the US, Canada and Mexico.

There is no such parallel system in Europe. When you ask for a loan from the bank in Europe, they will ask for the typical papers such as whether you own any property, your monthly payslips, etc. and then make a decision based on that documentation.

[Read more…]