PortfolioLive, from Turing Studios, is an app that stock market players and would-be stock investors will find is an easy-to-use way to keep track of their gains and, more likely these days, their losses.

It’s probably obvious, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t point out that what PortfolioLive and similar apps do is enable you to buy and sell stock, based on real-world prices, in quantities that you determine. You can look up stocks by name or symbol, buy or short them (meaning you’re counting on them to go down, rather than up) and automatically calculate commissions.

PortfolioLive and other apps also make it possible for you to monitor the activity of your stock throughout the day at preset intervals and track the activity of your stock over a period of time (weeks to months). How these apps differ is mainly in their interfaces. What I particularly like about PortfolioLive is that its interface is streamlined and pleasing to look at. I’d like to see some nice-looking charts to go along with the market activity, however.

Under settings in PortfolioLive, you can set how often you want to fetch price updates. The more frequently you access data, the faster you’ll drain your battery. I didn’t test to see how much the battery drained when fetching continuously once every 60 seconds. Of course, PortfolioLive has no effect on battery life when it’s suspended or closed. Other settings include an entry for a passcode and a ticker on/off switch.

Launch PortfolioLive, tap the Portfolios button, which takes you to the Portfolio screen where you’ll see two folders, one for Markets and the other for My Stocks. Tap the Markets folder to see how well or poorly, depending on your perspective, the DOW J, NASDAQ and S&P 500 are doing. Go back and tap the My Stocks folder, which is where you can add and edit your holdings. My Stocks is pre-populated with three stocks: Apple, Google and Microsoft. Tap the tiny triangle near the lower right corner and you’ll pop up a window that will let you see how the day is going for your combined stocks.

Drill into any of the stock symbols and you’ll see data for the day’s activity and to buy or sell stock. In addition to quantity, you’ll also have to enter the stock price, commission and date. The date field is automatically filled it. You can add and edit entire portfolios or the content within them from the Portfolio screen.

The bottom line is that PortfolioLive is a great way to learn about the stock market and practice your stock-picking skills without putting any money into it. If you have a basic understanding of how the stock market works, you won’t need much, if any help, to use this app. However, if you want to get an idea whether PortfolioLive is right for you, check out this PortfolioLive walkthrough.

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category: Finance