There's a famous saying that recessions are what make millionaires. While the macroeconomic state of the world is always changing, your financial decisions and overall economic well-being don't have to. Whether you want to go crazy on options or want to take it easy and build an emergency fund, you can use some of the best iOS 16 trading apps to help you achieve your goals. Each app has its own pros and cons, depending on your goals, preferences, and specific perks. If you're looking to become more financially active with investments, either in stocks or crypto, take a look at our curated list to find out how you can do that.
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TD Ameritrade is perhaps the most popular trading app in the US (perhaps behind Robinhood, but we don't recommend that app for the whole fiasco that transpired with Reddit users in the past couple of years). The service has a wide array of choices to invest in, from stocks, options, ETFs, futures, margin trading, and more. You can choose your investment style and stick to it, as the application is comprehensive and allows for all types of investors. The TD Ameritrade mobile app is extremely beginner-friendly, and you'll be able to find your way around the platform without much of a problem. You can deposit money, find the assets you want to trade, and continue on with your life. Before having full access to the app, you will need to complete a few quizzes to prove your financial literacy, however.
One big downside to what's a generally great application is that it's being merged with Charles Schwab. While we don't have conclusive reports on when this merger might happen, we can suspect it'll occur around mid to late 2023. Will the quality of the application decrease? Will it instate account fees? No one knows for sure, but there's not much reason to touch something that's already working so well. Another con to the app is that its more advanced trading platform, thinkorswim, can be very overwhelming for new investors, and yet many still flock to it and lose a lot of money. We advise caution with that platform and perhaps stick to the TD Ameritrade mobile app if you're new.
2. eToro
eToro is an extremely beginner-friendly trading application that focuses on user experience and ease of navigation. What sets eToro apart from the rest of the trading apps on this list is that it emphasizes the social aspect of trading. You can follow traders based on their success rate and discuss financial topics. This is a great way to digest financial news and formulate trading strategies with your peers. The platform does have a fee on all withdrawals, at $5 per withdrawal. It has a large variety of stocks and instruments to trade, so you won't miss out on any trends just because you're using this application over anything else.
We do think that eToro is one of the best iOS 16 trading apps due to its inclusivity and community. Of course, it's free to download, sign up, and use, like most of the options here, which means that it's easy for you to start taking control of your finances. You'll need to complete a little quiz so that the platform can categorize your trading knowledge. Apart from that, you're free to sign up (as long as you're over 18) whenever you want.
3. Fidelity InvestmentsFidelity Investments has extremely low-cost trade commissions, meaning you can make more profit on your trades than with some of the other trading apps on this list. The company has a spinoff app, Fidelity Spire, which uses automation tools to help you make trades and slowly build your account over time. Both of the Fidelity apps place a great deal of focus on user experience to make account management easy and simple. The app is only for US residents, like TD Ameritrade, so you'll have to find an alternate option if you're not in the US.
There are no recurring fees or common commissions. Those aspects, paired with the low-cost trade commissions, mean this is a great option for those looking to dabble in trading. We encourage beginners to try this app out because it does have somewhat limited advanced options. If you're a serious trader, you might want to try TD Ameritrade's thinkorswim platform or Charles Schwab instead (and they're conveniently merging anyway). If you're looking for futures trading, though, you're out of luck. Fidelity doesn't provide future trading on its platforms.
4. BinanceAfter the fall of FTX, Binance is now the defacto king of the crypto space. If you're looking for the best iOS 16 trading app for crypto, look no further. Binance has an extremely large selection of cryptos to choose from, and you can engage in staking, futures, and a whole lot more on the comprehensive app. There are always cool offers, crypto airdrops, and other incentives to begin trading crypto with Binance. The layout and UI can be a little overwhelming, as there's so much going on, but once you familiarize yourself with everything, you'll be a trading pro in no time. Depositing is easy, and Binance creates a crypto wallet for you so that you can conduct transactions between other wallets seamlessly.
Binance doesn't have much competition when it comes to cryptocurrency trading applications these days. Its closest competitor is perhaps Coinbase's trading platform, and not many people know about it compared to Binance. The Binance app gives you total freedom to perform technical analysis, trade lesser-known cryptos, and help a project out by staking it. We recommend you do some research on Binance and explore it a little before depositing any money into the platform, as it's easy to get lost and feel confused about how to actively trade crypto.
5. Trading 212Trading 212 is one of the best iOS 16 trading apps if you're living in the UK, as it focuses more on UK customers instead of US ones. The whole platform is commission-free, meaning you don't have to pay exorbitant amounts every time you make a trade on stocks and ETFs, which is fine for most entry-level to intermediate traders. On the other hand, forex traders might want to stay away from Trading 212, as trading foreign currencies have high fees on the platform. Another con of the platform is that it doesn't support USD as an account currency, so US investors might struggle.
It's extremely easy to open a Trading 212 account, and you can play around with a demo account before depositing real money if you want to explore the platform. Due to the platform's low fees, we think our European readers might enjoy using Trading 212's large selection of investment options. While the platform is technically available to Americans, we wouldn't recommend this platform when there are other services available for North American customers.
6. Bonus: Coinbase
Coinbase started out as a crypto wallet where you could store the big few cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. It was a great starting point for many to get into crypto. Before Coinbase became mainstream, all cryptocurrency trading platforms looked confusing, and many didn't understand wallet keys and how to use them. Coinbase made it so that you could download the app, deposit your currency, and hold a cryptocurrency. Coinbase made investing in this new and exciting financial asset easy and accessible. Now, the platform has become a mainstay, and millions use it as a wallet.
Not many know that Coinbase actually has a trading platform, too. You can trade cryptocurrencies in real-time and gather important financial data from each asset in the platform. The application name is called Coinbase Pro, and it behaves similarly to thinkorswim. It's much more complicated and made for advanced traders who understand how financial trading works. If you're just looking for a way to invest in a cryptocurrency without actively trading it, you might want to stick to the original Coinbase app.