Boston-based Fidelity Investments surveyed users of mobile financial apps and found that of the nearly 2,000 respondents, 69 percent said they feel the app gives them an advantage over investors who do not use the technology.
The survey found that 68 percent of respondents were frequent mobile app users -- 21 percent used a financial app on their smartphone or tablet one or more times a day, and 47 percent accessed the app at least once a week.
For the frequent mobile app users, 41 percent reported a return on investment of more than 20 percent on their total investable assets in the past 12 months, according to the study. Only 22 percent of less frequent users reported similar returns.
“In the past year, investors increased mobile trades at Fidelity more than 40 percent, and our survey found that more than one third of mobile traders make trade decisions on the spur of the moment, capitalizing on investing opportunities from their screen, anywhere,” said Velia M. Carboni, senior vice president, mobile channel at Fidelity.
According to Fidelity, more than half of all respondents (56 percent) are performing sophisticated investing tasks on mobile financial apps, including conducting technical research/charting (43 percent), conducting fundamental research/reading analyst reports (44 percent), and trading (41 percent) at least once a month.
In addition, 53 percent of those polled said they placed their first mobile trade in the last 12 months.
Fidelity says this suggests that mobile trading may become increasingly popular in the years ahead as more investors take advantage of the technology.
The most common uses for financial apps on mobile devices are for everyday personal finance activities, such as checking account balances (71 percent) and paying bills online (53 percent), said Fidelity.
ORC International conducted the online study of 1,198 adults. All respondents were investment decision makers age 25 and over with investable assets of at least $50,000 and prefer to use a financial app on their smartphone or tablet and do so at least monthly. Frequent users are defined as those using a financial app more than once a week.