Morningstar, the company that, via Bank of America, CarMax and Western Union stock recommendations, recently surpassed Jim Cramer as the single biggest source of my epic stock market losses, has a new iPhone app (iTunes link). The free app offers investing ideas, real-time quotes, analyst research, financial news, Morningstar ratings, company profiles and more.
Notwithstanding all my losses, I am a long-time and more or less satisfied Morningstar subscriber. Everyone has lost money in the stock market over the last year or two, and at least Morningstar isn’t brokering the stocks it recommends. I want some sort of stock market analysis, and I still think Morningstar is less bad than just about any other source.
Morningstar’s web site is full of data, analyst reports, portfolio tools and news. At the moment, I am pretending I never heard of the stock market, but when my head gets above sand level, Morningstar is my primary investing idea and analysis source.
The iPhone app, however, is no great shakes. The app does not allow access to all of Morningstar’s premium content or the stock portfolios and watch lists you have set up on Morningstar’s web site. In fact, the app is not even tied to your Morningstar account. As a result, there’s very little this app does that you can’t get in another, more mature financial app. There is a dearth of content- and there’s no reason for Morningstar to be so stingy, given the massive amount of resources on its web site.
On the plus side, you can get access to portions of the Morningstar analyst report for stocks and mutual funds, quotes and the Morningstar rating. If I wasn’t a Morningstar subscriber who is used to having all of the premium content accessible, I would probably feel a little better about this app.
A premium app with “enhanced functionality” is promised for “later this year.” That’s very close to perfectly vague. If Morningstar releases a premium app that syncs with your Morningstar paid account and allows access to a lot more Morningstar content in an iPhone-centric design and has the good sense not to charge paying members for it, they’ll have a winner.
Until then, I’d look elsewhere for my iPhone financial information.
Newsome.Org 