Financial media respond to economic crisis with mobile platforms

With the financial industry in a well-documented state of turmoil, the need for a constant stream of real-time information has caused several financial information companies to take their offerings mobile. Financial media provider Stockhouse today announced Stockstream Mobile and Mobile Pro. The full-featured applications, in partnership with Reuters, stream news, quotes and data to investors and traders’ Blackberry devices.

The subscription application is designed to provide individual investors or traders with live data, symbol-specific and general news and alerts from Reuters. The service can be customized on a particular company’s graphs, streaming watch lists, historical charts and alerts, and new items can be copied and instantly sent via email to share or save.

“The product is designed for a financial trader making between one and 40 trades per month,” said Bruce Nun, vice president of marketing at Stockhouse. “We’ve really optimized the device and the navigation on the device; the interface and the charting is the absolutely the best. This application’s graphics for charting and the overlays available are the best in this category of software.”

Blending the idea of social networking with information access, the site also brings the investor community together to share blogs, create a network and identify investment opportunities. Nun said the major differentiator of the service is a rating and ranking tool, which lets users rate others’ public portfolio picks and stocks to gauge its quality, clarity and relevance. The aggregate rating becomes a reputation score to back up the credibility of the person posting.

The product today mirrors Stockhouse’s online presence, but the two are not yet tied together. Stockstream Mobile begins at $19.95 for the basic service and works on any Blackberry version 4.0 or higher. Nun said that Windows Mobile devices and the iPhone are also on the roadmap. Mobile Pro includes additional commodities, treasuries, foreign exchange data, as well as faster data delivery. The service is targeted at individual consumers, but can also be white labeled for financial institutions.