After having characterized the lives of Italians in recent months, giving rise to endless televised debates, comedy sketches and even bar chatter, the spread (word-catchphrase, against our will, from 2011) had no choice but to land on the iPhone.
Means the iSpread and Spread-o-meter applications, from now on the now indispensable differential between Italian and German ten-year government bonds, which recently fell below 300 basis points for the first time since August, will be monitorable not only on the internet and in newspapers, but in real time by anyone on your iPhone.
iSpread and Spread-o-meter also offer the possibility to instantly share the data through the social networks Facebook and Twitter. As for the first application, developed by Kiwi Labs, in the "Today" section it is possible to follow (hour by hour) the trend of the spread starting from 8 in the morning, market opening time, and access the graphs relating to the data recorded up to that moment.
In the "Archive" section instead, the application, which is every financial trader's dream, gives the opportunity to view the spread at 18 pm of each day starting from 1 November 2011, when the datum touched the very dangerous quota of 600 basis points, causing the crisis of the Berlusconi government.
In this way, the user can also compare and associate the spread values of previous days with events, political decisions, economic maneuvers and any other noteworthy event that could or could influence the trend of the markets in any way. iSpread also offers a graph to be able to observe the trend throughout the year.
The application can be downloaded directly online from the Apple Store and costs 1,59 euros, while the one developed by the Italian Marco Muccinelli is free, offering a simpler but perhaps even more effective interface: the visualization is less elaborate but much more agile and intuitive, with the variant of the background that changes color according to the seriousness of the moment (green if it goes well, red if it goes badly). Updating is faster than iSpread (every minute) and, as Muccinelli ironically explains on the website, "for MPs who don't know what the spread is, pressing the "i" at the bottom right will bring up a brief explanation".
