Pocket Billions Support

Have a question, hit a bug, or just want to say hi? Reach us at:

support@thedigitalbubble.com

We aim to reply within a few business days. Bug reports are most useful with your device model, iOS version, and what you were doing when it happened.

This page also doubles as the Support URL for the App Store listing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is any of this real money?

No. Pocket Billions is a "ghost investing" simulator — every dollar in the app is fake. You start with $10,000 in virtual cash, and stock prices are real and live, but no real money, brokerage account, or financial transaction is ever involved. Nothing in the app is financial advice.

Why do I need to enter an API key?

Pocket Billions gets its live and historical stock prices from Tiingo, a third-party market-data provider, using a free API key. We can't bundle a shared key for everyone — Tiingo requires each person to sign up individually — but it takes about two minutes and doesn't ask for a credit card. Get one at tiingo.com, then paste it into Settings → Tiingo API Key. Until a key is saved, the Picks tab and live quotes stay empty.

Why does a stock's price only seem to update once a day?

To stay within Tiingo's free-tier request limits, Pocket Billions fetches each stock's price once per trading day and reuses it after that — you'll see a live countdown to the next refresh under Settings → Clear Cached Market Data, along with a manual button to force an early refresh. This applies to every price in the app except positions currently held by Automation Mode, which get a fabricated short-interval "wiggle" instead — see the next question.

What's the difference between Auto-Invest and Automation Mode?

Both are optional, off-by-default features in Settings that trade on your behalf using your top picks:

    • Auto-Invest only ever opens new positions — it never sells anything for you.
    • Automation Mode opens and closes positions automatically, selling each one the moment it hits a take-profit or stop-loss threshold you set, and recycling that cash into the next pick. Because it can act faster than real quotes actually change, Automation Mode fabricates a small, clearly-labeled simulated price "wiggle" for its own open positions every ~15 seconds (visible as a countdown ring on the Dashboard and Portfolio tab, and a live 30-minute chart on the Portfolio tab) — this fabricated movement only ever drives Automation Mode's own buy/sell decisions, never anything else in the app.

A position opened by one is never touched by the other, and you can run both, either, or neither at the same time.

The Portfolio Performance chart looks flat / the "30M" tab isn't moving. Is something broken?

Not necessarily. The 30-minute live view only shows real movement while Automation Mode is switched on — that's what's actually changing your portfolio's value between refreshes. With Automation Mode off, the chart still records a point every time you refresh (pulling to refresh, reopening the app), it just won't move on its own.

The Picks tab doesn't show every stock in the market — why?

Pocket Billions ranks a curated watchlist of roughly 65 historically volatile, high-attention tickers (meme stocks, EV names, crypto-adjacent plays, biotech, AI/semiconductor names, leveraged ETFs) by today's live movement — it isn't a scan of the entire market. That's deliberate: it's the kind of high-volatility names this app is built around. A huge mover outside that list won't show up here.

Can I change the currency my portfolio is shown in?

Yes — Settings → Display Currency supports 19 major currencies. All trades still execute in USD under the hood; the display currency is a conversion for readability only, using daily exchange rates.

How do I start over?

Settings → Reset Portfolio wipes all positions and trade history and resets your cash back to the default (or your custom starting balance, if you've changed it — that resets too). This can't be undone, so you'll be asked to confirm first.

Where is my data stored? Is it backed up?

Everything — your positions, trade history, and settings — is stored locally on your device only. There's no account and no server, so there's nothing for us to back up or lose on our end; it's also why reinstalling the app or switching devices starts you fresh. See our Privacy Policy for the full detail.

I'm seeing a rate-limit or "couldn't reach Tiingo" error.

This usually means Tiingo's free-tier request limit was hit (50/hour, 1,000/day) or there's a network hiccup. The app automatically falls back to the last price it successfully fetched, so things should keep working with slightly stale prices. Waiting a few minutes and refreshing again usually clears it; if it persists, double-check your API key is still valid in Settings.

Does Pocket Billions show ads or track me?

No. There's no advertising, no analytics, and no tracking of any kind — see the Privacy Policy for details.