https://Sharekhan.com is a portal that offers online (stock) trading facility.
For anyone who wishes to start investing in (Indian) stock markets this is *one of the best* places I can suggest. Maybe you want to switch over from the normal human broker interface; making calls and writing slips, to an almost automated system which is accessible from anywhere in the world.Of course you will have to have a PC, an internet connection, the trading account and ofcourse some money and lots of guts to risk your financial status. Well, I’m not anyway related to SS kantilal Ishwarlal Securities Pvt. Ltd - infact I just called one of their sales guy to get the application forms. Thats it. Then never have I met any of them; nor felt any need to do so.
The classic account comes with an annual fee(AMC) of Rs.300 which is not high in a sense(even for the not frequent investors like me) considering the decent services they offer.
The brokerage(0.5%) is a value in between whats offered by different competitors. The intra day brokerage is 0.1%. Apart from that for every transaction( sell or buy) one will have to pay the securities transaction tax, stamp duty etc., all of which add up to some0.165% (this goes to the govt.) Ok. now lets talk a little about the quality of service. The accounting system is what I like the most in sharekhan. Our hard earned(!) money is accessible easily from the account. They have not cheated me in anyway till now as far as I know.If there is some withdrawable cash balance then you are always allowed to transfer the balance to the bank account thats linked; IDBI, HDFC, CITI bank, OBC and a couple of other banks have a tie up. It is best to have the Depository account with sharekhan so that transfers to and fro are easy. The settlements and deliveries are clean and prompt;dividends get credited through ECS to our account. No issues.
July-Aug’06; Recently the Minimum delivery charges has been minimised.This is a great boon for the small investor. Previously I had to purchase or sell for a minimum of 4000Rs. per day per stock, if the value is less say 3000, then the balance deficit in brokerage (Rs. 20 -Rs15 = Rs. 5) will be laid as min. Delivery charges. This has been changed now.
For Buy there is no minimum delivery charges. Which means you can buy good shares even one each a day and pay only that much brokerage.
During Sell this minimum delivery rule will be applied , but instead of 4000 it is 3200 now.
So whenever I want to average out I just buy 1 BHEL or 1 TCS without locking up my capital too much. Is such a feature available with anyother service provider..?
Coming to the deficiencies:
Poor news updates - I always get the latest business news from other sources.
Regarding the stock suggestions; some appear to be manipulated; so cannot always rely on their stock ideas. Do your own home work
Brokerage charged for penny stocks is high - due to the minimum of 10ps/stock for delivery.
No price history chart displays to assist us.
Price rigging: The online nature inherently makes customers to fallprey to their price manipulations.. I had a nasty experience when the share price of reliance industries was stuck at a value when the actual price had plummeted down... so I ended up paying more for the stock than the market price. When complained the issue was pointed out as an isolated issue; that too as soon as I complained the price got updated;Its a real-time display and we will have to take what they display.....such events can neither be caught nor proved.
There are numerous small players who have still poorer facilities running... Comparitively icicidirect also has a poor system in place. So Sharekhan is better among the worst ones. I’ll be glad to know of any good feedback regarding other online trading providers.
Hope this brief helped you atleast a bit.Start investing smartly & Wish u a Happy trading!!