FXChartist Lite – Forex iPhone Charting App First Look

FXChartist Lite – Forex iPhone Charting App First Look 

I have been wanting to talk about this app for months, but it wasn’t live yet, so I couldn’t. Because of this blog, I was fortunate to be contacted by the developer Ollie Birch, early on in the development process.

He had an idea for an app that would streamline charting on mobile devices. This intrigued me because although I knew that Forex charting on mobile devices was broken, I wasn’t exactly sure how to fix it.

The first demo copy of the app was really rough, but I could see the possibilities immediately. He finally launched the app on the Apple App Store and this post will show you how it is different from other Forex charting apps, what I like about it and what still needs to be improved.

If you would like to see a demo video of how it works, you can skip to the end of this post.

How It Is Different

There is a lot of fat in existing Forex charting apps. But you don’t realize this until you really start thinking about how apps could be streamlined. To this end, FXChartist starts by removing the quote list.

Gasp, no quote list?

When you really think about it, the quote list is a waste of time. Do you really care about the spread. Not usually.

What most people care about are the charts. At least that is my primary concern.

When you first start the app, you see a chart list like the one to the right. The data currently comes from FXCM, but there may be options in the future to chose your data provider.

What I Like About This App

I love how Ollie as streamlined the Forex charting process to make it as simple and efficient as possible. The flow between screens is much more intuitive than with other apps likeMetatrader and TradeInterceptor.

He has also taken out a lot of the bloat that comes with other apps. Things like so-called education, a mailbox, broker signups and market commentary are thankfully missing.

Where FXChartist Can Be Improved

All that being said, this version is his first shot at it and he is a one-man shop, so not all of the features are there yet. It still needs: 

All currency pairs 

Indicators 

Ability to trade with a broker 

There are also other things that could be added in later. For example, Bitcoin quotes and a simple economic calendar.

I don’t know about you, but I have found all economic calendars on mobile apps pretty much unusable. They usually lack simple filtering, so you get news about every single currency.

I’m not so interested in the Iraqi Dinar or Mexican Peso. At least for Forex trading purposes. So if he could streamline the calendar, that would be awesome.