Applications ready, but yet to go live for want of final guidelines by bourses.
Investors could start trading in the stock market through mobile phones in a matter of days. Most brokerages are ready with their versions of the mobile platform and are only awaiting the detailed guidelines. The market regulator gave its go-ahead for mobile trading on August 27.
Brokerages say while the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has approved mobile trading, the detailed guidelines will be issued by the stock exchanges, based on which various applications will be approved. Once this comes, the facility can go live within days, they say.
“Once the exchanges come out with the guidelines, we can go live within a few days,” said Vinay Agrawal, executive director, Angel Broking. “Our application is ready and we are awaiting the guidelines. We already offer live prices and portfolio details in the application that we provide free of cost to our clients,” he said.
Most large brokerages have mobile platforms through which their clients access live quotes and portfolio details. This would require some tweaking to include the trading option, said brokers. More important, these applications will have to be approved by the stock exchanges. It is believed that most brokerages would not charge any fee for the facility.
A section of market players, however, said while clients dealing in large volumes could get this facility free of cost, the smaller customers could be charged a nominal fee to recover maintenance and data feed costs. Globally, Bank of America and Ameritrade, the biggest players in the mobile trading space, offer these applications free of cost.
“There are many pricing models for mobile apps. Internationally, there are instances of clients that deal in large volumes getting the service free,” said Sankarson Banerjee, chief information officer, India Infoline, adding that his brokerage could “go live with the application in a matter of days once the submission procedure is defined by Sebi”.
The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has already started a pilot by launching the mobile version of NOW, its in-house trading software provided to its member brokers. It is widely believed that there will be a lot of demand for this facility, especially from the retail segment.
“Mobile trading has huge potential. I believe a large number of clients who trade moderate volumes will find it very useful,” said Banerjee. Incidentally, over a quarter of volumes on the Korean stock exchange, the world’s largest in terms of volumes, come through handheld devices.
“A large number of investors who currently trade online could switch to the mobile application. The big-ticket clients, however, will still prefer speaking to brokers for inputs,” said a director of a domestic brokerage.
