Thursday, March 10, 2011

Benefits Of Online Broking:



Online trading is becoming popular with rapid rise in internet connectivity and computer literacy
Do you think online broking is only for trading of shares only? If your answer is ‘yes’, think again. Online broking is much more than being a convenient way for buying and selling of shares on the stock market. It is actually a ‘gateway’ for host of online financial services which investors can avail with the click of a desktop mouse. In fact, the rapid spread of computer literacy and internet connectivity across the length and breadth of the country has made online transactions popular among investors and more and more investors prefer to transact online.

The growing popularity of online transactions as well as competition among broking firms to grab a larger share of the online financial services business has compelled broking firms to innovate and offer value-added services to the investors. Let’s take a look at the kind of services offered by online broking portals and how best investors can use these portals to their advantage.

ONLINE SHARE BROKING
 
The first and the most popular is the share broking services offered by online broking portals. There are numerous brokers offering online trading of shares, including icici-direct.com, sharekhan.com, motilaloswal.com, religare.in, kotaksecurities.com, indiabulls.com, reliancemoney.com, karvy.com, angeltrade.com, and many more. All these portals offer various plans which the investors can choose from as per their trading requirement.

Online trading has become very popular as it is very convenient and can be done from home, office, cyber cafe or any other place where internet connection is available. All you have to do is have a trading account with a broker, demat account with a depository and a bank account. Some of the broking firms such as icicidirect.com, kotaksecurities.com, hdfcsecurities.com offer all these accounts interlinked as they have banks within their group, while other broking firms like reliancemoney.com have tie-ups with banks for online transfer of funds into the trading account.
 
“Our 3-in-1 trading platform is one of the key features of our trading platform. The three accounts include the bank account, demat account and a trading account and provide a seamless trading experience to our customers,” says Anup Bagchi, Executive Director, ICICI Securities.

“We offer 3-in-1 account where bank account, DP and trading account are integrated. We have e-payment gateway tie-ups with 13 banks, which give flexibility to the customers to have the bank accounts of their choice from public sector banks to new private sector banks to foreign banks.,” says Kalyanaraman, Sr Vice President, Sharekhan.

Let’s look at what online trading has to offer to various types of players in the market.

NEED-BASED PLATFORMS
 
There are broadly speaking three types of stock market players: investors, day traders and professionals. Investors are those who occasionally invest in stock market and requires basic internet connection to transact. For example, reliancemoney.com has Race-Basic, which works on low internet-bandwidth without any add-on to internet browser.

A day trader who trades heavily on the stock market can get brokerage rates varying from 5-10 paise per cent. Religare Securities’ Race-Lite is a JAVA applet based plat-form where rates are updated on real time basis and needs Sun Java plugin to browser. Normally, these platforms have streaming live quotes and therefore traders can act fast depending on the direction of the stock price movement. Religare’s Race-Pro platform for investment professionals has online technical charting, advance alerts, unlimited scrips hosting, facility for customized look and feel features, single click menu buttons, etc. Kotak Securities’ KEAT Pro is a high speed trading tool that allows user to trade in the market real time. “KEAT Pro offers a single integrated plat-form for investments in equities, derivatives, gold ETFs, and currency derivatives. Users also have the option of viewing intra-day and EOD charts along with more than 50+ indicators,” informs B. Gopakumar, Executive Vice President, Kotak Securities. Motilal Oswal too offers three types of platforms: “Static product largely meant for professionals and beginners, live streaming quotes web-based product for retail customers who are active in the market and desktop terminal which is meant for self-directed heavy traders as the key for them is execution speed and multiple tools to take informed decision,” says Amit Golia, Sr. Vice President, Motilal Oswal Securities. “We offer trading application called Angel Diet, browser with streaming quotes called Angel Trade and also browser with rate refresh for quotes called Angel Investor,” informs Vinay Agrawal, Executive Director – Equities Broking, Angel Broking.

“We also offer Kotak Trader, which aims to provide the opportunity for the investor to truly diversify their portfolio across geographies, sectors, exchanges and products. It gives access to invest in 24 stock exchanges across the world,” says Gopkumar. ICICI Direct provides overseas trading facility on NYSE and NASDAQ too.

Apart from transacting during trading hours, some of the trading portals also offer facility for placing orders after market hours. These orders are sent to the exchange whenever the exchange opens next for trading.

MARGIN TRADING
 
Most of the trading sites offer margin trading facility to the investors. Margin trading means that the investor does not have to pay full amount to buy the shares but can pay a specified margin amount to trade in specified shares. Margin money can range from 4 per cent to 60 per cent, depending on the volatility of the scrip. The volatility is measured in terms of value at risk (VaR) and the margin applied is VaR plus a risk specified mark up.

Now, let’s see how this works. If a stock trader wishes to buy 30 L&T shares worth Rs 48,000 and the margin amount requirement is 15 per cent, the investor needs to pay just Rs 7,200 to buy 300 L&T shares. If the price of 30 L&T shares goes up to say Rs 49,000 during the day, the trader can square off the deal and book the profit of Rs 1,000, thereby making a net profit of Rs 1,000 on an investment of Rs 7200, a return of over 13.88 per cent! However if the price declines by Rs 1,000, he would incur a loss of Rs 1,000 on his investment of Rs 7200, in which case he would be called upon to make up for the reduced margin or square off the deal and book the loss. Some of the broking firms such as Motilal Oswal and Religare Securities also offer margin funding option where instead of booking the loss, the trader can pay interest on the reduced margin and hold the stock for a longer period of time. Margin money can also be in the form of shares as collaterals.
 
“We offer margin trading to our clients in intra-day segment. We can also arrange margin funding facility through an NBFC in primary market (IPO funding) as well as secondary market (loan against shares). The margin money varies in accordance to scrip / product / time horizon of investments and is accepted in form of cash / stocks as collaterals,” says Gagan Randev, CEO Religare Securities, adding “Our customers earn interest on their unutilized cash margin while they are waiting to make their next trade or online investment.” Then, there are some brokers who also offer additional margin on stocks in the demat account. “We are one of the few online brokers who automatically give additional margin against the stocks that a client is holding. Because of this traders get additional margin at no additional margin at no extra cost,” says Gopkumar.

SECURITY

Security is the most important factor while transacting online and all online broking portals put in place adequate security measures to ensure security of online transactions. Apart from 128-bit data encryption, firewalls and pass-word-enabled login, some of the portals have additional security features too. “We have ‘virtual key board’ design as an enhanced security feature which combines high security in the most convenient manner. The ‘Virtual Keyboard’ is designed to protect customer’s password from malicious ‘spyware’, ‘Trojan Programs’ also protect from keylogger.

Entering password using ‘Virtual Keyboard’ reduces the risk of password theft, making login more safer,” says Bagchi.

Kotak Securities and reliancemoney.com have security key as an additional security feature.

“The Security Key solution uses the concept of a dual password system. The security key generates a dynamic and unique six-digit password every time it is switched on. The customer has to login with his ID, password and this dynamic code to be able to transact online. It is a user-friendly product enabling risk-based authentication that allows Kotak Securities to apply a high level of security and reduces the chances of fraudulent practices,” says Gopkumar. Of course, investors too need to take due care and precautions while transacting online

OTHER SERVICES
 
The online broking portals have no longer remained only share trading portals but also offer host of services to the customers, including application to IPOs, derivatives trading, mutual fund broking, equity research, fixed deposits, insurance, e-tax filing, etc. “The online trading portal is a one stop financial solution where we offer products & services to suit a wide range of financial needs of our customers. These include equity investments, futures, options, mutual funds, IPOs, life insurance, general insurance, corporate fixed deposits and overseas trading,” says Bagchi.

We  are the francise of reliancemoney  gives 3 dimensional tading platform, means a customer may tarde on line, off line(calling us) or at customer service phone line at a time. For more just call to us or SAMPARK at our office
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Source : DSIJ

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