Online Broker Review

Updated Saturday, November 26, 2011

Android App Grade: D

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Overview:

The Vanguard iPad app is very similiar to the iPhone app except that it is missing several major sections, including my accounts, performance, my prices and history. The Vanguard Android app is not among the top mobile trading platforms.

Android Market Facts:

App Name: Vanguard
Version: 2
App Size: 1.1 MB
User Rating: 4.5 / 5 stars

Details:

The Vanguard Android app contains four discrete sections: Funds/ETFs, Markets, News and Buy/Sell. The first three sections can be accessed without logging in. Logging in requires entering a user name and password, neither of which can be saved. Sessions are not saved, even if the app is closed for only a second, and thus users have to log in again. This is less than convenient.

Descriptions of each section are as follows.

Funds/ETFs
This section contains a list of 181 Vanguard mutual funds and 46 Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and links to profiles for each fund. Here is a look at the profile page for the Vanguard REIT Index Fund. Please note that all screen shots shown on this page are from the Vanguard iPhone app (click on images for larger views):

Profiles are also available for all stocks by searching by symbol from within this same section.

Markets
The markets section simply shows index quotes and the daily price change for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, S&P 500 and 10 year treasury note. There is a lot of room for improvement here.

News
This section contains Vanguard company and fund news, podcasts and videos created by Vanguard advisors and general market news. The podcasts and videos are mildly useful but are only uploaded at a rate of 1-2 per month. The video quality is actually quite good, as shown below in widescreen mode:

If Vanguard published more frequent content then this could develop into a nice feature.

General market news is provided by Reuters with several articles being published per day. Most other broker apps feature more frequent articles published by several different news organizations.

Buy/Sell
New to version 2.0 is the ability to trade stocks and ETFs. As an example, we selected to buy 1 share of Groupon (GRPN) at a limit price of $16.00 and a duration of 60 days (GTC). Note that options trading is still not available for our individual brokerage account:

Vanguard Android App