I went onto gardening leave recently (first thing I did was to get a Monzo and Revolut card both!) and have some free time to search for some new investing apps. I use HL as my broker account which is what most of the family members use, so not really look for a new broker. HL does a decent job in their recommendation list and market news. However they are fairly light on stocks, and markets outside UK I have to say. I came across these three apps, first Vectorvest since HL has mentioned about it before in their emails. Then I bumped into these two other apps; one is Genuine Impact, the other is Simply Wall St. Here are my short overviews of each of them. If you have used them, or want to recommend others, please! 
Genuine Impact: https://www.genuineimpact.co.uk/
They call themselves a financial terminal, so I guess something like a Factset or Bloomberg for the institutions. The app is really recent, but feels quite simple and easy to navigate around various functions. They have a security ranking page with pretty comprehensive explanations of the methodologies they use. Feels like a nice way to analyze the companies and funds without committing too much time to find the underlying information. So quite handy one for those who are time-limited and just want to get to the end results. A couple of the HL recommended funds are not showing up well in their rankings, and after some research, I do agree with them, and less so with HL (some HL recommended funds are not having good returns recently but they are still on the list). What’s also quite handy is their insights function.
So overall useful information for those who like to research companies and funds, but time constraint. Insights are for daily consumption and they do a good job of distilling them to something people like me can understand. If you use any of the brokers or digital advisers, like to have more information to help you make decision (granted HL is sometimes light on that regard), this is a good app to give a shout. Shortfall is on swiping and some other small user experiences but doesn’t bother me too much yet. From their website:
Vectorvest: https://www.vectorvest.co.uk/
Have to say this is more of a feel to day traders with quite heavy emphasis on charts and technical analysis. So not really something for me. Downloaded it mainly because HL has mentioned it before in their emails. The brilliant function is the timing gauge where I can visiualize better their recommendations on certain stocks, despite them sometime being very technical driven. They integrate quite nicely with stock exchanges and can have some live prices which can be valuable, again to frequent traders. From their website: you can see the sharp differences of emphasis
Simply Wall Street: https://simplywall.st/
Recommended to me by my Australian friend and the app is based in Australia. Somewhat similar to Genuine Impact but only covers stocks. They present company information in nice graphics even though on my phone the graphs are sometimes slow to load. Their website has a really detailed explanation of how they present the information into graphics. I use this concurrently with Genuine Impact and so far I enjoy it. The app has been around for a couple of years and have a good website this is feeling better experience than the app itself. They have a premium plan which I am frankly not ready to pay, since the functions are all the same. The only additional element I get from paid plan seems to be the ability to search more companies and create more portfolios.
They also have a self-generated research report team so quite useful to learn their independent views on stocks, who are mostly US stocks. However the publishing is not that regular so far. They have a broker account integration function which I can’t use since they don’t have UK brokers there yet. But if they have that for UK one day, I’d definitely use it or at least give it a try. Similar to Genuine Impact, it tries to make the research process more efficient, and not really for frequent traders. Would be nice to have some funds information on there. News function are not very frequent.
From their website:
All three are handy apps, and something that I’d like to use more often. I am aware of a few other apps that are more about daily news and stock price following, so not including them here, since HL is doing that job fairly well for me.
What apps do you use to help you make investing decisions?
