Best Stock Market Apps for Android

Whether you check your portfolio more than once a day or you just do quarterly adjustments, load one of these stock market apps on your Android phone or tablet and you'll always know how your investments are doing. Gone are the days of dull charts and line graphs; these apps are colorful and offer real-time market and economic news and information, as well as analysis tools.

There are many good stock market mobile apps out there, but when I tested them I found several had too many ads that either made the app difficult to use or slowed the app down.

My picks for the best Android stock market apps are:

• Jstock Android - Stock Market
• Stock Quote
• Portfolio Watcher

You can find these apps on the Google Play app store.

JStock's free version supports 27 world markets with individual stock history charts that go back 10 years with news for the stock. A chart of your stocks shows gains or losses and current bid prices, and there's a home widget to help you stay on top of your stocks. You can also set stock price alerts.

JStock's description in the Google Play app store says that the free version offers two technical analysis tools that show EMA and SMA, but I couldn't find them in the app. You will see some ads in the news feed in the free version. 

If you want to see a great looking summary chart, you'll have to either upgrade for $2.99 to get the chart only, or pay $7.99 to get these premium features:

• Ads removed.
• Cloud storage integration with JStock desktop software for Windows, Mac and Linux.
• Dividend chart, portfolio summary chart and zoomable history chart.
• Unlimited watchlists, portfolios and stocks news.
• Background stock alerts.
• Display foreign stock portfolio value in local currency based on exchange rate.

There is a seven-day free trial for the premium version.

Cost: Free / $2.99 / $7.99
Download from Google Play: JStock Android - Stock Market

Stock Quote gives you a good overall look at the Dow Industrial Average, NASDAQ and S&P 500, and you can add other U.S. and international indices to track. The app serves up financial news from a variety of sources and includes both economic and earnings calendars. Enter a stock symbol to get real time quotes both when the market is open and during pre-market and after-hours trading sessions. The app also tracks futures and currencies.

Track individual stocks by adding them to the portfolio, and turn on auto-refresh to watch near real-time fluctuations in price and volume. Stock charts have a lot of options, like comparisons to another stocks or indices, technical indicators like RSI or MACD and more.

You can set up a password to protect your portfolio information. You may also sync with a Dropbox account to backup your data.

Cost: Free
Download from Google Play: Stock Quote

Add the stocks you hold or that you want to watch into Portfolio Watcher to get quotes. Tap on a stock to see charts, news and full information, including the day's high and low, P/E, EPS estimates, bid size, short ratio, one-year price target and much more.

If you already have a portfolio set up on Google or Yahoo, it can be synced with Portfolio Watcher. Tap the News tab to get stock news from Reuters, CNBC, Business Insider and other sources.

Notifications can be set up for a stock so your phone alerts you to price changes, or when the RSI, ROC or Slow Stochastic technical indicators go above or below a set point.

There's much more to this app, and the developer takes feedback from users for future improvements to the app. There's simple support for Bitcoin and Google Drive backup. A huge range of settings makes Portfolio Watcher customizable. The app is free, but you can make donations via PayPal.

Cost: Free
Download from Google Play: Portfolio Watcher