MoneyControl iPad app: A must have for all market watchers

If you’re an avid market watcher, the new MoneyControl ipad app is a must have. With real-time market data front-and-centre on the home page, the app makes it easy to track your portfolio across the international financial markets. The app provides access to stock quotes, commodity prices, currency rates, as well as news, video and access to MoneyControl’s messageboards.

On the Home page, configurable charts for Sensex, Nifty, CNX Midcap and BSE Small Cap allow you to look at market movements at the level of detail you want, from the last day to the last five years. You can break the market down by industry and see a list of the top gainers and the bottom’s losers.

That’s a lot of data for just the top half of the Home page, but swipe to the left and you get even more: Indian indices, global indices and market movers on Sensex or Nifty. Within the indices, just tap on the edge of the screen to scroll through the list of markets. That might sound a bit cramped, but actually it means that you can switch between indices and markets very quickly.

Also on the Home page are top headlines from MoneyControl.com and a link to the live TV feed from CNBC TV18. Swipe that panel, and you get My Stocks, messages and Management talk to explore as well.

At the bottom of every page of the app is, of course, the ubiquitous ticker so you can keep an eye on market movements regardless of what else you are looking at.

The Markets page gives you the global and Indian indices, market movers on Sensex or Nifty, and BSE or NSE by various measures. What’s nice is that the app remembers your choice of market when swiping through the movers, so you can easily compare activity by volume, value, highs and lows. At the bottom of the Markets page you also get commodities, currencies, and mutual funds broken down into equity, debt, money market and hybrid.

News pretty much does what it says on the tin, pulling in top stories from the MoneyControl website. You can read user comments right there in your app, as well as reply, repost and share on Twitter, Facebook or by email.

The live TV feeds from CNBC TV18 and CNBC AWAAZ are good quality with sharp picture and audio. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the videos on demand available on the Videos page. The picture isn’t too bad, but the audio was very muffled and clipped.

But where existing MoneyControl users will really like the app is in its ability to sync with your MoneyControl portfolio. You can keep an eye on your stocks, your watchlist, and get an instant update of your net worth simply by being online.

And MoneyControl’s messageboards are tightly integrated too. For newbies such as myself, the messageboards are a bit confusing, but a little bit of exploration helps. If you’re already active on the website, the switch to the iPad should be seamless.

Overall, the MoneyControl app is compact, fitting a lot of data into a very small space, and very easy to use. It’s key to look for the little white dots at the bottom of every swipeable panel to see how many panes are left and which direction you can swipe in. Sometimes the swiping was a little slow as the app pulled in fresh data, but that’s the price for realtime.

Are you using the new MoneyControl iPad app? What do you think? Let us know in the comments!