And just when you thought you need an app for trading....

By Dian Vujovich

Well, golly gee. Lest you feel you’d like to be trade-savvy and thus require an app to make your trades with, forgetaboutit. Most investors prefer buying and selling the old-fashioned way…over the phone or via a Web site.

Numbers fresh from Forrester Research’s recent “The State of The Mobile Investor” report reveal that only 11 percent of the 4,600 investors surveyed use a mobile devise to either check their portfolios, trade securities or transfer funds.

It seems the older folks, like Baby Boomers, don’t think mobile whatever’s— like the iPhone, BlackBerry or Android— are as safe as picking up the phone and speaking with a real person or signing on to a Web site when it comes to making money transactions.

Gen Xers and Gen Yers don’t see it like that. As a result, they’re asking their investment firms to provide them with apps. Good chance that will happen, too. Especially since a December report from the same company showed Gen Yers, those born between 1977 and 1995, will become the wealthiest generation in U.S. history.

In a story published 2/16/11 at SecuritiesTechnologyMonitor.com, the Gen Yers and their “combined annual income of $500 billion will explode to more than $3.4 trillion by 2018….Especially of interest to the high-net-worth and ultra-net-worth shops, this generation stands to inherit more than $30 trillion…”

And I thought Boomers were the ones who were supposed to inherit bazillions.