Now a days Online Trading has gained huge momentum and most of the traders prefers online trading as compared to Dealer assisted trading. The main reason behind this, apart from convenience, ease and secrecy, is the push they receive from their Relationship Manager to increase trading. While most of the people investing or trading in capital markets are switching to online platform, a big choice coming to them is about choosing their broker.
In online broking space, 3 brokers have their prominent presence but with a wide variance in their pricing structure. Where ICICI Direct charges in a extremely high range of 0.2% to 0.75% and Sharekhan between 0.1% to 0.5%, the brokers like Zerodha charges just Rs. 20 per trade. It is very confusing for an investor to take a right decision, when three brokers offering same exchanges vary their offering in such a manner.
ICICI Direct
ICICI Direct is a entity promoted by ICICI Bank and offer brokerage services for Indian exchanges. With a vast coverage across the length and breadth across India, they offer their services from several branches apart from online platform. ICICI Direct offers almost all type of investment products on their platform including Stocks, derivatives, Currency derivatives, Mutual funds, IPOs, Small saving schemes, etc. Thus, their main focus if to provide a 360 degree personal finance solution to an individual. The integration with bank account and Demat account makes it seamless to enter and exit any of your investment.
Sharekhan
Sharekhan is a broking entity with a robust stock trading platform. The well designed software along with dedicated advisor is an ideal solution for traders and investor intending to trade big in financial markets. They offer Demat account services and integrate with several banks like ICICI, HDFC, Axis and many more for online transfer of funds and securities. They also offer services like Online IPO for investors to participate seamlessly.
Zerodha
Zerodha is a discount brokers which has started its operations in the year 2010. Their main focus area is to provide platform for trading to high value traders at the least cost. The cost advantage is such a big attraction for the frequent traders that several of them shifted immediately. In a very short period Zerodha has seen a big success wth their daily volumes above 4500 crores. Zerodha charges a flat Rs, 20 per trade which brings down brokerage rates to less than ~0.002% for a high volume traders and thus lowers his breakeven costs.
What is the Right Choice
If you need to choose between the three, you are required to first analyse your requirement in terms of your trading or Investing style and trading volume. Also, how well verse you are with stock markets. The people who are entering the markets for the first time and intends to invest small should not mind paying more for the seek of services. With diversification requirements in their investing portfolio, the investing corpus needs to be invested in various instruments like small saving schemes, IPOs, bonds, corporate FDs. Such Small investor will find ICICI Direct to be a convenient option.
However, if you are planning to invest frequently or start trading, then you should care about the brokerage that your are paying. The lack of knowledge about markets warrants the need of assistance of Dealer or Advisor, which means that your should be look for a good deal from Sharekhan.
The Smart and experienced traders are very concious about the brokerage rates and they should be. The lesser the brokerage, the more will be the profits. Not only this, the chance to make profit also increases with smaller threshold for profit in a trade. Such people always opt for Discount brokers like Zerodha. They get an online platform and seamless demat services along with what not, the deep discounted rates. They offers trading in equities, derivatives, commodities and currency derivatives to complete the suit for traders and frequent investors. Now even investors are finding them cheap and switch to such discount brokers like Upstox, 5paisa.com. In a remarkable offering Upstox offers 5 free trades every month for life time. In another plan, meant for high volume traders, they are offering unlimited trading for a fixed monthly fees.
So if you are planning to get into trading in financial markets, define your need and choose accordingly.
