Wall Street Scanner
by CI Staff
iPhone/iPad app for monitoring and tracking U.S.-traded stocks.
Any investor should view with healthy skepticism any service claiming to predict future stock direction. That is exactly what the Wall Street Scanner app purports to do. Using algorithms that scan nearly 16 million financial websites each day, the app gives you the probability of where the stock price is headed the next trading day.
Favorites
Within the app, you can specify your Favorite stocks, which are presented as a list from which you can access specific information on each individual stock. Currently, the app only tracks around 2,000 stocks, which tend to be larger-cap, more widely followed issues. Of the 29 stocks currently in AAII’s Model Shadow Stock Portfolio, only two are covered by the app. However, a recent enhancement allows you to request coverage of a stock not currently followed.
Price
For each stock in your Favorites list, you can view a line chart spanning a period from one day to two years. The chart is designed to merely allow you to compare the current price to historical levels and does not offer any type of drawing tools or technical indicators.
News
The News tab of Wall Street Scanner provides headlines from a variety of sources, including Mashable, Yahoo! Business, MSN Money, Fox Business, and Reuters. Tapping a headline will then open the entire news story.
Wall Street Scanner also tracks social media sites to gauge market sentiment for individual stocks. The Twitter tab provides a newsfeed of the mentions of a stock on Twitter.
Buzz
The Buzz tab is an accumulation of the mentions a stock has received over the last 24 hours in the news, in social media and by analysts. It is presented as a gauge comparing a stock’s current “buzz” with that of the previous day.
Mood
The Mood tab measures the change in positive or negative sentiment for a stock. Again, this is based on the app’s analysis of news and social media outlets. You can view the mood for a stock within the financial or social media individually or as a composite of the two.
Analysts
The Analysts tab provides a breakdown of analyst recommendations as well as the consensus analyst recommendation.
Ratios
On the Ratios tab you can view the short ratio of a stock—how many days short sellers would need to cover their entire positions—as well as the put/call ratio—the ratio of the trading volume of put options to call options.
Tomorrow’s Forecast
Lastly, the Tomorrow tab gives you the probability that the stock price will rise or fall the next trading day. According to the designers of the app, a probability greater than 60% in either direction is considered significant. They are also quick to point out that this information should not be considered investment advice. While this information is intriguing, we would not base investment decisions solely on these probabilities. We would also want to track the accuracy of the app over time to see what its track record is.
Overall
Wall Street Scanner is definitely one of the most unique apps we have reviewed in this space. While we cannot speak to the veracity of its forecasts, it is an app we would keep on our iPad in order to track its forecasts over time. Its unique “sentiment” indicators that measure the mood and buzz surrounding a given stock are also unique among financial apps.
Wall Street Scanner
Sentigo
Price: Free
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wall-street-scanner-real-time/id433368060?mt=8