As we move towards WWDC 2024, excitement is building over the flurry of announcements that Apple will make at its annual showcase. Much of the focus will be on the impending reveal of iOS 18, and, of course, there will be an eagerness to see what Apple can do to insert itself back into the AI race. Many believe that WWDC 2024 will be the company’s most important in a long time. Its stock has been rocky of late, much of which has been put down to its lagging behind its fellow Big Tech companies in the pursuit of bringing AI tools and services to the market. Thus, there is a sense that Apple needs to dazzle us in June. Hopefully, it will.
Yet, while the media’s attention will be on the headliners – iOS 18, AI features, new hardware – some of the ‘bread and butter’ items should not be overlooked. There is, for example, a growing rumor that WWDC 2024 will show major updates to Maps. The Maps app has come in for a lot of criticism over the years – some of it fair, some of it not – and it has been tipped for some major upgrades on iOS18. Yet, there is another home screen app that Apple might look at upgrading someday – Stocks.
Stocks Could Be More Reflective of Modern Traders
On paper, there is nothing wrong with Stocks. It is a perfectly usable, user-friendly, and useful app. As such, there is no need for Apple to reinvent the wheel. Yet, it is somewhat forgettable. It feels, in a sense, that it is aimed at a previous generation of financial traders, the type of people who picked stocks from the newspaper. In short, it overlooks how trading has evolved through the 2010s and 2020s. In the US, by the end of 2023, for example, FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) estimates that over 50 million Americans will be trading in financial markets. There is vast dynamism among that number.
Professional and retail traders will, of course, use third-party apps and tools. MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, for instance, are widely considered the gold standard in trading platforms. Interestingly, both these apps are now compatible with Apple Vision Pro. Traders will also use third-party financial services apps like Bloomberg and TradingView. Apple does not need to compete with these products, but it could make some simple changes to make Stocks somewhat more useful for everyday traders.
For example, having trawled through the reviews of Stocks on the App Store, one of the most common criticisms was the lack of customization for Stocks. Right now, you can make a Watchlist of stocks, cryptocurrencies, or currencies. This is a handy option that allows traders to glance at a bunch of investments they own rather than look for each individually. A simple upgrade, however, would be to allow traders to add their individual portfolios to the app, i.e., pertaining to the exact amount of assets they own. Many financial trading apps already do this, allowing users to see their personal net worth at a glance.
Apple has talked a lot about customization and personalization in recent years, especially in relation to the home screen and lock screen. It really feels like it is missing a trick with the personal net worth display on Stocks. When you look at stock charts, seeing that Tesla Inc. stock has risen by 2% can feel quite abstract. But when you see that your personal investments have increased from $10K to $11K, it lends itself to the kind of personalization that leads to more engagement. Have a look at the cryptocurrency app CoinGecko to see how personal portfolios drive simple engagement.
News Feeds Could Feature More Varied Sources
There is also a growing consensus among reviewers that Apple could broaden its horizons in terms of news feeds. If you click on an asset class, let’s say the S&P 500, Stocks will provide a newsfeed of related stories. What we like is that you do not leave the app to read them (some are available for free on Apple News, whereas others require an Apple News+ subscription). Yet, they are mostly concentrated in a handful of major news outlets: WSJ, Barrons, CNBC, Fortune, etc.
There’s nothing wrong with these venerated publications, and it must be acknowledged that Apple will have deals in place. However, as we mentioned previously, trading has evolved. A several-day-old Sydney Morning Herald report on Bitcoin, for example, is going to lag behind the fast-paced real-time rollout of Bitcoin news on Twitter/X. Having social media posts in a live news feed can be problematic, of course, but it is an area worth exploring. Often, when legacy media reports on a major financial story, it is too late for traders to act. The truly useful information is found on social media and trading forums first.
It’s worth noting that Apple has made notable improvements to Stocks. The choice of assets is immense – dwarfing what Microsoft offers in its financial “Start” pages, for example. Of particular note is the admission from Apple that cryptocurrency trading goes well beyond the mega caps, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Stocks also benefits from the fact that auxiliary financial data is provided by Yahoo Finance.
Stocks Should Reflect the User’s Trading Appetite
Overall, though, we would say that the most celebrated aspect of Stocks is that you don’t have to log in. Yes, you can create a watchlist, but you do not create an account. Users enjoy that as it highlights the ease-of-use and data-at-a-glance allure of Stocks. Yet, one might argue that it also highlights its greatest flaw – a lack of personalization. Apple does not need to challenge the proprietary data showcasing of Bloomberg or the customizable trading tools of MetaTrader. It could, however, reflect the realities of modern trading and investing with a few simple tweaks. Modern trading, regardless of whether it is retail or professional, is idiosyncratic to each trader. Stocks should reflect that.
