Mobile Trading Platforms

Trading on the go in the 21st century

The mobile technology has advanced immensely in the last 10 years. In the 70s and the 80s people held strange and unfeasible concepts when they imagined the technology developments that would occur in 20-30 years. But technology is developed by businesses which pursue profit, so they tend to develop the technology that the public needs, that´s why it´s not a big surprise that most of that imaginary futuristic technology was never materialized. Instead, the technology moved towards practical and indispensable things like mobile trading. People are always on the move nowadays and spend a lot of time traveling so if they want to trade they need to do it while in motion. The technology developers perceived this need and developed the mobile trading platforms.

Most of the brokers now offer the option of mobile trading platforms to their customers. The mobile trading platforms can be downloaded and used in most of the mobile devices like smart phones, tablets, blackberries, androids etc. This is very suitable for traders and the statistics show an increasing interest in mobile trading. The number of people who trade on mobile devices has increased by 600% in the last 4-5 years and mobile trading now accounts for 27% of the total transactions. But mobile trading has some disadvantages as well. Below we´ll list the pros and cons of mobile trading.

Advantages

Entering trades – In Forex, there are always good trading opportunities throughout the day.
I used to miss a lot of these opportunities before the smartphones were invented, especially during the afternoon. But now that I use a mobile device for trading I can enter a trade immediately when I spot a good opportunity anytime of the day.

Exiting trades – The Forex market can be very volatile where the economic news and political events have an immense impact on the currencies. So, there are many occasions when you need to get out of a trade immediately because of a certain event which might send the pair you are trading in the opposite direction within minutes. Mobile trading is the perfect solution for that.

Easy to follow signals – It´s not that easy to follow signals. You have to keep the signals page or your email open at all times and stare at the screen so you can open a trade as soon as a signal goes live. With mobile trading you don´t have that problem; the technology now enables mobile devices to issue sounds and buzzes when you get a notification about a new signal. So you don´t have to stare at the screen or even be near a PC in order to follow signals and act quickly.

Practicing– If you are new to Forex you can practice trading with mobile devices. In order to be successful, you have to watch the price action and practice during different times of the day. This way you see how the price reacts to different events during different sessions and get to feel the market. With mobile devices, you can practice anytime, anywhere.

Part-time traders – Many people trade Forex part-time for an extra income along with their daily jobs, so they might not have access to a computer. The statistics show that the peak hours of mobile trading are between 7-9 am and 1-3 pm, which means people trade while they commute to work or in their lunchtime. Without mobile trading, they wouldn´t be able to trade at all.

Full-time traders- Even the full-time traders like me cannot stay in front of a computer all the time like zombies and it is not recommended either. We have our personal lives like everyone else, but with mobile devices, we can trade and take care of our family obligations at the same time. Our judgment becomes impaired if we stay in front of a PC for more than 4-5 hours non-stop looking at the charts, so I usually go out for a coffee at noon for about an hour and take my iPad with me. This way I can check the market and relax at the same time.

Disadvantages

Lack of indicators – Not all the indicators of the MT4, MT5 and other trading platforms for PCs can be found or applied on the trading platforms for mobiles. Most of these are minor indicators and I don´t use them so they don´t affect my trading, but there might be traders who rely on them.

The indicator window – The screen is smaller, therefore it´s harder to conduct proper technical analysis. This is made harder by the indicator window at the bottom of the screen. I like to use Stochastics, RSI, and MACD, so the indicator window gets a little messy when I apply the three of them.

No multiple charts – I like to have the charts of 4-5 different currency pairs on my screen at all times so I get updated continuously with their behavior and price action. With the mobile trading platforms you cannot open multiple charts; you have to close one in order to open another. So when you are analyzing a certain pair, you kind of lose touch with the other pairs.

Dropped connection – There are some places where the mobile connection might get lost, like in tunnels, elevators or underground parking and bars. If you have open trades during volatile times and you lose connection you might end up with severe losses.

Addiction – Last but not least, addiction. Having a trading platform with you all the time may lead to excessive trading. Some people with addictive personalities tend to develop an addiction to trading and overtrade as a result, which is one of the biggest mistakes a trader can do.

So like most of the new technology gadgets, mobile trading has its upsides and its downsides. In my opinion and as we described in this article, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. After all, everything in life has its upsides and downsides and if we manage to minimize the latter we can turn this new trading technology into a powerful tool which could really help us become better traders.

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