Thomson Reuters Enhances Investment Management App for BlackBerrys

Data provider Thomson Reuters is introducing today a new mobile application that lets buy-side investment managers do many of the same things from their BlackBerrys that they can do from a Thomson One desktop application. While out of the office or on the road, fund managers and analysts can receive quotes, create portfolios, set alerts, view charts or check out active stocks.

Thomson started working with Pyxis last year to develop a market data product that integrates with Thomson One desktop software; that product has been out for nine months. Then it began building a deeper application for investment managers. "The way our portfolios and watch lists tie to the desktop and the way our navigation is set up, it allows more content to be accessible on the device," says William Riordan, commercial manager, Thomson One Mobile. The mobile application integrates closely with the desktop application and its navigation is portfolio driven, he says.

For every stock on a watchlist, the program delivers Reuters, Thomson Financial and Dow Jones news, earnings call updates and transcripts, analyst reports, broker estimates, access to the Thomson analytics database (to perform more in-depth portfolio analysis) and other content that might affect the stock's price, as well as historical data. Events (such as upcoming earnings calls) can be syched with Outlook Calendar, so that users can automatically dial into current or past events. All research available in Thomson One is provided over the BlackBerry now (e.g. sell-side and independent first-call research), in the form of scrolling text or PDFs, which have traditionally been hard to read on cell phones. "PDFs are becoming more valuable as screen sizes increase," notes Brian Becker, director of mobile solutions.

The software works with all models of BlackBerry, including the Bold, which is due to become available in the United States in October.