Let’s face it, from an economic perspective, we are living in some crazy times. In the last 18 months or so we have had the most volatile stock market in about 80 years or so. If you are like a lot of people and sold every position you had, well, you probably don’t have much use for Top Stocks by VIT Software. However, if you held strong, then you may find this app to be pretty darn handy.

The goal of this app is to help you keep track of your stock positions in an “on the go” format. To do this it shows you some nice graphs, charts, and info about the markets in general, or specific stocks that you choose. Now, it it is impossible to review this app without talking about another app that is very similar called MoreStocks (reviewed here). I really liked MoreStocks, so the real question is whether or not this one is better or worse. The answer is, as you might expect…it depends.

If you are someone who is in the market for an app like this, then you probably think to yourself several times a day…”I wonder how the markets are doing today”. Fire up Top Stocks and the first thing you see will answer that in a really nice format. They have a graph of all the major indexes right from the get go. If you want to know about foreign markets, that info is right there as well. Very nicely done.

If you are the sort who cares more about specific stocks than the markets in general, then you can get your fix with a watchlist. Basically the watchlist allows you to select stocks that you care about and see how they are doing in an easy to read format. Adding a new stock is simply a matter of entering in the ticker symbol. If you are a stock guru, then this isn’t a big deal; however, one thing I did miss from MoreStocks is the ability to enter the stock by company name or even selecting it from a list. Again, if you are pro, you won’t care about this, but it isn’t very noob friendly. On the plus side, I love the little graph that is next to each stock. A quick way to see how your favorite stock is doing. Nice touch.

When you click on a watched stock you go to the detail view. From a layout perspective, this is definitely a win compared to MoreStocks. They both basically show the same information (including after hours trading), but Top Stocks just seems a bit more organized and clean. Both applications have nice graphs and function the same way, although, again Top Stocks has it all laid out a better. I guess the real difference is simply that Top Stocks puts everything on a single screen, while MoreStock breaks it up. There are pluses to both approaches, but I preferred the single page view.

From the single stock view you can also create alerts to let you know if your pick has gone up or down to a specific point. This basically lets you log into your favorite trading application (E-Trade for example) and perform a buy or sell. This is one area where I think Top Stocks falls short. The alert is only a notification on the phone…no email or SMS options (like MoreStocks does). If I am really watching a stock, I don’t want to risk missing an alert. I want that thing to annoy me in every way possible. Sometimes a notification just isn’t enough.

The “big” difference between the two apps is how they handle portfolios. MoreStocks lets you insert them directly while Top Stock hooks into Google Finance. Which is better is a matter of preference, of course. If you are drinking the Google kool-aid, then this a great feature. If you prefer another tool, then this would be a deal breaker because there is no way to set positions in the app itself. The integration with Google is nice, but only one way. Would be really cool if it could communicate both ways. It is worth noting that if you need to add a new portfolio item, the app will let you get into Google Finance with a single click…so at least it has that.

The last section of goodies is news. If you are a stock watcher there really is no such thing as too much info. Top Stocks brings in news feeds of virtually every type of financial instrument (stocks, bonds, commodities) and news (earnings, IPOs). With each news story there is a little blurb to let you know if it is something that interests you. If it does, then you can click on it to visit the source of the article. Nice, clean implementation.

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