Following instruments you already watch
Keeping up with the markets on a watchlist through the day, without needing the whole workspace open to do it.
Mobile trading is for acting on a decision you already made, not for making one.
The same account on a smaller screen — with the things a phone does well kept close, and the things it does badly stated plainly rather than designed around.
What mobile access is
A phone is the second screen, and it is more honest to treat it as one.
Away from a desk you can still see what a market is doing, check what you already have open, and act on something you decided earlier. That is a genuinely useful set of things, and it is most of what mobile access is for.
What a phone is not is a smaller version of the desk. It holds less on screen at once, the connection is less dependable, and it is in your pocket all day — which changes how often you look, and how often looking turns into trading.
In practice
Four things a phone is genuinely good at.
Each of these is a task the small screen does without compromise. Everything the page says afterwards is about the tasks that are not on this list.
Returning to a chart you know
Coming back to a market you have already studied is a different task from studying one for the first time. The first works on a phone. The second is better at a desk.
Managing an eligible position
Open, review and manage eligible positions wherever platform access is available.
Acting on a level you set earlier
A price alert set calmly, in advance, is the thing most worth acting on from a phone — because the decision was made under better conditions than the ones you are standing in.
Before you rely on it
Settle these at the desk, so the phone is only doing the easy part.
None of this is a setting. It is what makes a small screen a reasonable place to be holding a leveraged position.
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Set the levels while you still have the full screen
Stop loss and take profit levels, where available, are easier to think about with the whole workspace in front of you than with one hand on a moving train.
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Assume the connection will drop
Mobile data is not continuous, and network coverage is not something a trading platform can promise you. Size and structure a position so that losing access for an hour is inconvenient rather than expensive.
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Treat a notification as a prompt, not a record
Where notifications are supported, whether one arrives depends on the device, its settings and its connection. A notification that never arrived is not evidence that nothing happened.
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Confirm on the account, not on the button
A submitted order and an executed order are not the same thing. Whether an instruction was filled, and at what price, is a question for your account rather than for the screen you just tapped.
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Notice how often you are looking
The device is with you all day, which is the real difference between mobile and desktop. Frequent checking has a way of becoming frequent trading, and trading carries costs whether or not there was a reason for it.
The constraints
A small screen is a real constraint, not a problem somebody forgot to solve.
These are limits of the device and the network. Naming them is more use to you than working around them quietly.
Everything above assumes you know which part of the job the phone is doing. The parts it is not doing are the ones where mistakes are expensive: building a position from nothing, comparing several instruments at once, and reading a chart closely enough to change your mind about it.
None of that argues against mobile access. It argues for deciding, before you leave the desk, which of those things you are prepared to attempt from a pavement.
Less on screen at once
A chart, an order ticket and a list of open positions do not fit together on a phone. Something is always hidden, and what is hidden is what you stop checking.
Delivery is never guaranteed
Notifications, where they are supported, depend on the device and the network. Neither is under a trading platform's control, and neither should be the only thing standing between you and an open position.
Desktop and mobile are one account, not two different products.
A position opened at a desk is the same position on a phone, holding the same margin and running the same result. What changes is how much of it you can see at once, and how quickly you are able to act on what you cannot.
Trading involves risk of loss. The risk disclosure is not yet published; the standardised risk warning is shown at the foot of every page.