Here are the Top Five Investing and Trading Platforms

But, as we have seen in the last few decades, interest rates have plunged low. So much so that interest from regular banks can barely even cover the Consumer Price Index (CPI) aka inflation figures, let alone improve your wealth over time. Therefore, it is always advisable to invest your savings into other assets that generally appreciate better over time. The stock market has always commanded a significant place in investment circles and so has the crypto sector over the last decade or so.

To be able to invest in these kinds of assets, in the past you had to go to a broker, and they could lock in all the trades for you. Now, you can do it on your own with the help of trading apps. Some apps are exclusively for one type of trading while others have a lot more options.

Here are the top five investment and trading apps:

Robinhood

Robin Hood is one of the most diverse applications to come out in a while. The app promised direct trading for stocks, cryptocurrencies and other Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) for people around the world.

It removed barriers around financial instruments and was one of the reasons behind the stock market performing so well during the first year and a half of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, Robinhood is far from the ideal trading platform and has known to take decisions that are controversial including halting trading of company stocks like AMC and GameStop and misleading the federal government and paying a hefty fine as a result of it. So, when it comes to Robinhood, you must take the good with the bad.

Fidelity

While Robinhood is a strictly trading app, Fidelity is a much more diverse service that allows investors to access a wide range of options. They include Retirement plans, ETFs, Options, 529 college savings, mutual funds, and trading on top of it. Fidelity is a legacy investment platform and while it is not as innovative as Robinhood, it is still quite popular overall.

The biggest downside to Fidelity is that it is only available for US-based clients. Other countries either don’t have any service at all or have limited ones.

Coinbase

Coinbase is the premier cryptocurrency exchange in many parts of the world, and it was one of the first such platforms to be publicly listed on the stock exchange as a company. It has a list of digital currencies with many trading pairs for each individual one. It is one of the oldest such exchanges and has commanded a following for a long time.

The downside of Coinbase is that it is not openly accessible around the world and has kept its clientele tight. Many countries face difficulties in opening Coinbase accounts while in others, services are severely limited overall.

Binance

Binance is the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Previously based in Hong Kong, it has since moved to the Cayman Islands and offers a wide range of services (much more than Coinbase’s) and has also offered a lot more trading pairs than Coinbase itself. Binance also has another benefit over Coinbase and that is it has less regulatory oversight and that means many more countries are allowed in Binance with only a handful of them barred from trading here.

The downside to Binance is that it tends to sometime go offline at the wrong time. It has done so multiple times during high volatility periods of bullish or bearish moves, leaving sellers or buyers trapped on the wrong side. There are also some allegations of market manipulation that haven’t been outrightly proved but they are there. Its fees are also slightly higher than others.

Octa FX

If you are interested in Forex trading and precious metals only, Octa FX could be your best bet. The exchange is known for its aggressive online advertisement campaigns and has a big presence in the forex community. It has relatively lower commissions and no amount is deducted on deposits and withdrawals. It is beginner-friendly and people who are interested in forex are likely to be at home here.

Its major downside is that it’s a forex-only platform and that is a limited segment. If you are only interested in forex, that is not an issue at all, but if you want a diverse portfolio, Octa FX is yet another app you will have to download and manage to carry out your goal.

Concluding…

Trading apps are popular these days as many investors look to make short-term and long-term gains to help improve their wealth. We have listed some of the most dominant trading apps here that cater to cryptocurrency trading, forex trading, futures and the sprawling stock market.