Trading in the stock market can be an exciting, yet daunting experience for beginner traders. You may ask yourself, where on earth do I start? How do I get my feet on the ground? Investing in the stock market can be complex but it doesn’t need to be.
The aim of this guide is to help educate all levels of traders on some handy tools that will make their journey into the world of stocks and shares a little easier.
NinjaTrader
NinjaTrader is designed mainly for futures and options trading, but they offer free use of advanced charting, back testing and trade simulation. But it’s also a brokerage firm that enables you to trade with as little as $400, and it looks like you need to open a brokerage account to gain access to the platform.
But if you do, it offers thousands of apps and add-ons, including trading software and trading indicators and – if you are a developer – you can build integrated indicators, drawing tools, automated strategies and much more. Advanced charting provides you with the ability to trade directly from your chart. You can also use order flow, volumetric bars and market-to-confirm movement in a specific direction.
NinjaTrader comes with real-time analysis of hundreds of markets, as well as advanced alerting capabilities that can trigger custom notifications, social media sharing and orders based on analysis. The platform also uses third-party trading indicators and apps built specifically for NinjaTrader, and once again, unlimited simulated trading so you can simulate automated trading strategies on historical data and analyze their past performance.
Stash: Stock Market Investment App
- Available via desktop, Apple iOS and Android App on Google Play
- Sign up here
Stash is a mobile-friendly personal finance app that comes paired with investing options and a checking account. Stash acts as a low-cost, all-in-one financial platform and gets included in this list as a result.
While the app primarily caters to hands-off investors looking to automate their investing, you can also actively select stocks to trade. You can do all of this as you spend money and make recurring deposits into your account.
Stash offers custodial accounts for real beginners (young investors), or those under the age of 18. Getting started early on your investing journey can build real long-term wealth over time as your returns compound.
Stash comes with a recurring monthly fee but justifies this with a full-service personal finance platform.
Of note, while it does charge a monthly account service fee for its full-suite of products, it does not charge trading commissions for your investment holdings nor does it have an account minimum.Stash | Investing Made Easy
- Stash is a personal finance app that simplifies investing, making it easy and affordable for everyday Americans to build wealth and achieve their financial goals.
- By signing up and making a $5 deposit, Stash will also provide a $5 sign up bonus.
Vanguard: Free Stock and ETF Trades Stock Market App
- Available via desktop, Apple iOS and Android App on Google Play.
- Sign up here
This list wouldn’t be complete without the aptly-named company at the vanguard of fighting for the retail investor: Vanguard. The company has long sought to lower investing costs for retail investors by offering market index investments for increasingly affordable rates.
In fact, John Bogle originated the idea of index fund investing and first offered them to retail investors as mutual funds and eventually exchange traded funds (ETFs).
These low-cost investments have saved retail investors billions of dollars over the years, allowing their brokerage account returns to compound further.
While apps like Robinhood have slashed trading commissions to $0, Vanguard has led index fund investors to virtually $0 fund expenses as well. When combined, you invest in the stock market for almost nothing.
Talk about a great accomplishment for the small investor looking to invest steadily over time.
Vanguard excels as a free stock trading platform when you wish to buy and sell Vanguard securities like index fund ETFs or mutual funds. You pay no commissions on their ETF products like VTI, or mutual funds like VTSAX and VFIAX.
Further, the company also recently announced it will no longer charge trading fees on competitors’ ETF trades as well. This marks a departure from the company’s long-standing position of charging commissions on other investment firm’s ETF trades.
My only complaint about the stock market app comes from its clunky nature. In particular, I don’t see the app as some paragon of investing app functionality. I use the app for managing my work’s 401k plan and my son’s 529 brokerage account.
I will admit firsthand to its bloat and lack of clarity for calculating my investment returns. I’d never pick stocks individually and invest in them through the Vanguard stock trading app.
While the app shows raw dollar returns, it fails to do so on a percentage basis, complicating my understanding of how well they perform on an apples-to-apples basis with my investment vehicles I hold elsewhere.
As a counterpoint to this, by offering stripped down reporting and functionality, the stock trading app may encourage you to visit it less.
By touching your diversified investments less often, you won’t run the risk of fiddling with what usually works: holding diversified investments for long periods of time and seeing compounding returns.
Robinhood: Commission-Free Stock Market App
- Available via desktop, Apple iOS and Google Android.
- Sign up here
Robinhood became the first commission-free stock trading app by slashing trading commissions to $0. Others in the industry had no choice but to follow if they wanted to remain relevant to retail investors.
Likewise, many new stock trading mobile app options like Robinhood have cropped up in recent years, many of which feature on this list.
The service offers commission-free stock trading, as well as the ability to make ETF trades, as well as options trading, penny stock investing and cryptocurrency trading, commission-free. Robinhood doesn’t support mutual funds on its mobile app or desktop trading platforms.
Robinhood’s stock trading app offers a simple and easy-to-use design. Many have found this useful for placing their trades by not overcomplicated it. Robinhood brokerage accounts have no account minimum requirements.
Robinhood carries Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) coverage on all brokerage accounts.Robinhood | Commission-Free Trades, No Minimums
- Robinhood is an investing app famous for its commission-free trades on ETFs, options and cryptocurrency.
- It has no account minimums and comes with a free stock upon signing up for the service.
Related Questions on Stock Investing Apps for Beginners
Below you will find several frequently asked questions related to the best investing apps for beginners.
Benzinga Pro
- Who it’s for: All levels
- Price: Starts at $99 per month – Learn More
Benzinga’s own Benzinga Pro is a full suite of easy-to-use, customizable stock research tools.
The core of the platform is the real-time newsfeed, but includes several other tools for stock research. Users can also set up a variety of real-time alerts, including desktop notifications, email, and voice alerts among the tools.
Tools inside Benzinga Pro include:
- Newsfeed
- Screener
- Movers (Find top gainers and losers)
- Audio Squawk
- Stock Details
- Why Is It Moving?
- Calendar Suite
- Watchlists
- Signal Alerts (including opening gaps, block trades and options alerts)
Whether you’re looking for a screener, top movers or want to chat with other traders, Benzinga Pro brings all the essential tools together in a single platform. Each of the tools are customizable so you can fit it to your trading strategy.
Get started for free – Join product demo today!
Ziggma
- Who it’s for: All levels
- Price: Free for the basic version, $9.90/month for Ziggma Premium
Beginners and experts alike benefit greatly from Ziggma’s institutional grade quantitative stock research offering. Ziggma’s powerful algorithm scores stocks on a scale of 0-100 within a given industry, thereby helping users identify the best stocks quickly.
The Ziggma Stock Scores are the product of over two years of extensive R&D work by a team of seasoned financial analysts and programmers. The underlying methodology captures 32 key performance indicators (KPIs) across the categories valuation, growth, profitability and financial situation. In addition to a stock’s overall score, Ziggma provides sub-scores for the categories growth, valuation, profitability and financial situation. This provides additional value for growth or value investors, for example.
Ziggma’s methodology is more than validated by excellent backtesting results. An investment portfolio consisting of Ziggma’s top-scoring stocks yields an outperformance of 8% per annum relative to the S&P 500 for the period 2011 – 2020.
Ziggma makes sophisticated stock research, which used to be the exclusive domain of hire-powered hedge funds and asset managers, available to individual investors.
Linking a bank account to check how Ziggma scores your stocks is free of charge.
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Seeking Alpha
- Who’s it for: Investors from beginners to professionals
- Price: Basic, free; Premium, $19.99/month; Pro, $199.99/month
Using Seeking Alpha to research stocks allows you to do several things, including:
- Tracking your portfolio
- Reading news
- Reading articles by expert authors
- Checking stock charts
- Receive stock alerts
- Subscribe to the newsletter
You can also set up stock scanners or review lists built by Seeking Alpha. This platform is rich with data, and you can add indicators to stock charts for every security on the market.
Aside from the obvious advantages of the platform, Seeking Alpha allows you to study strategies that help you succeed on the market. Follow your favorite author. Read their articles, interact as much as you can and track your portfolio so that you can remain as financially healthy as possible.
Conclusion
When it comes to stock market, there are numerous resources that will teach you how to trade. And while you’re learning all about trading stocks, you’ll also hear about trading options, leverage, short selling and many more. What people often fail to talk about is the fact that not everyone needs all these features.