A Trading Platform is a software via which shareholders and traders can open, close and manage market situations with the help of a financial intermediate. Online trading platforms are commonly brought out by the brokers either for free or at a discount rate in trade for upholding a funded account along with making an identified number of transaction per month. The trading platform lets investors and day-traders to place stock orders and monitor their accounts via the financial intermediates. Generally these platform provide some other features as well like real-time quotations, charting apparatuses, news feeds, and even first-class study on the holdings.
These trading platform are easily accessible in the form of phone applications, which makes them even handier while using. The mobile app makes it easy to place orders through mobile phones. In the Equity Delivery segment, few application offers absolutely free trading account and free trading. Though, trading in Equity F&O, Equity Indra-day, Commodities and Currency Derivatives is available via taking their pro services and the pro services are usually the paid services. One can choose from a lot of trading platforms available in the market like:
- StockNote by Samco
- ARQ Score
- Upstox
- Trade Smart Online
- Kite Mobile Trading
- ICICI Direct
- HDFC Securities
Let us do a comparison to see how well these trading platforms are doing in terms of few basic parameters that an investor always looks for:
- StockNote by Samco:
StockNote by Samco is one of the simplest and quickest apps to trade in the stock and commodity market in India. It provides the user with a seamless and hassle free trading experience. It is a content streaming and trading platform that aggregates and delivers news and information on stocks and sectors across. Samco is offering 100% brokerage cash back for all trades done through the StockNote by Samco platform for the first month, for full details refer FAQs on the StockNote by Samco Brokerage Cashback scheme on the Samco website. For all trades through the StockNote by Samco platform, the first month brokerage shall be absolutely free and subsequently the brokerage shall be Rs 20/- per executed order or 0.02% or 0.2% whichever is lower.
- ARQ Score:
ARQ Score helps you invest in the good stocks by identifying and avoiding the probable bad stocks. You don’t need to research the fundamentals of a company manually but simply check its ARQ Score. ARQ Score makes your stock selection more accurate, faster and simpler. ARQ claims to be hyper intelligent investment engine that uses latest cognitive technology, machine learning and deep industry insights to offer investment recommendations. Their brokerage charges vary from 0-1% to 1.0% on every purchase made. Overall the app is seemingly user friendly, and their customer service is also top-notch.
- Upstox:
Upstox trading platform offers trading, analysis, charting and many more rich trading features. Upstox offers absolutely free trading account and free trading in Equity Delivery segment. Trading in Equity F&O, Equity Indra-day, Commodities and Currency Derivatives is available through Upstox Pro. UpStox Pro is the paid service of UpStox for traders. The brokerage charges of Upstox seem to be very appealing as in they charge only Rs. 20 for every transaction made by the investor irrespective of the amount of investment done. This become a matter of appeal for almost every individual.
- Trade Smart Online:
TSO offers brokerage service in the sectors that includes Equity, Futures and Options, Currency Derivatives, Commodities and investments via stock exchanges including NSE, BSE, MCX and NCDEX. Trade Smart Online (TSO) offers indefinite trading plans to its Indian investors. TSO offers indefinite trading in Equity Cash and F&O Segment for fixed Rs 3999 per month, currency segment for Rs 1999 per month and indefinite commodity trading for Rs 3999 per month. TSO offers static brokerage (flat rate) of Rs 15 per performed order irrespective of trade size through all sectors comprising Cash, F&O, Currency, and Commodity Futures. Trade at 0.7 Paise (or 0.007%) is another very famous strategy offered by Trade Smart Online. Through this plan customers can trade at 0.007% brokerage in equity, currency and commodity sectors (apart from equity delivery which is charged at 0.07% and options are charged at flat Rs 7 per lot). They never charge any hidden fee, no prepaid brokerage and no guarantee.
- Kite Mobile Trading:
Kite is a simple, in-built, responsive, basic, yet dominant web and mobile trading application presented by Zerodha. It consumes even lesser than 0.5 Kbps for a full investment/trade market watch, wide-ranging projections of charts and analysis with around 100 pointers and 6 chart styles, innovative order types, quick order settlements, and many more features are known. This application doesn’t charge any brokerage for equity & mutual funds’ investments; in fact it charges flat Rs. 20 per transaction for intraday, F&O, coins, and commodity investment across NSE, BSE and MCX.
- ICICI Direct:
ICICI Direct is a trade and investment package provided from ICICI Securities, they are considered to be the biggest retail stock broker establishment in India proposing a comprehensive array of investment opportunities to the retail and institutional clients. ICICI Securities is a division of the ICICI Group, one of India’s topmost financial service provider proposing banking and other significant financial services. The brokerage charges range from 0.2% to 1.0% on every transaction made depending upon what kind of investment is being made.
- HDFC Securities:
HDFC Securities (HDFCsec) is Equity Trading Company of HDFC Bank. HDFC Securities provide both online trading and trading on phone. The HDFC Securities trading account has a unique 3-in-1 feature that integrates your HDFC Securities trading account with an existing HDFC bank savings account and an existing Demat account. Funds / shares are seamlessly moved from the linked Demat/Bank account to execute the transactions. The brokerage charges at HDFC Securities vary from 0.2% to 1.0% for different kind of investments made.
After studying all the above Trading platforms available in the market, StockNote by Samco was found to be the best of the lot. Mainly because of following few reasons:
- Simple & quick on-boarding: StockNote by Samco has easy to understand tutorials, which make the on-boarding an ever relaxed process.
- One Touch Trading: The app has a direct to make investment option, which makes one trade just as reading a piece of information.
- Trends & Top News: An investor needs to have a hawk-eye on the market top & trending news and the StockNote app allows the same in live time.
- Alerts including Trigger alerts: Alerts provided in the Stock Note app is a quite irreplaceable feature that is not given by any other app in India. You cannot just put alerts when the stock attains a specific price but also use the same to trade on those price.
- A completely personalised experience: You get the alerts for your specified companies at your desired timeframe or stock up-surge/down-tick.
- Intuitive & conversational order placement: The app receives orders for trade intuitively after you making a decision on the basis of a new reading provided by the alert:
- Easy information sharing: This app provides a single click news and article sharing that too on the home screen widget.
- Easy Portfolio Monitoring: By viewing the interactive charts, one can better manage their portfolios at one glance. StockNote has made tracking stocks and trading an easy pie in few click only.
- Best in class customer support via one click ticket reporting over the app: I needs just a one click reporting via generation of a report ticket to get a customer support representative call you back and resolve your problems.
