Stock Trading Accounts
give me the names for top 10 online stocks trading accounts with their ratings?
I think Sherin has given a comprehensive answer below for your to follow. I have personal experience with ICICIDirect, HDFC Securities and Motilal Oswal. I don’t trade on a daily basis and am a long term investor. So for me brokerage rates don’t matter much.
For me what matters are the following:
1. Reliability of the platform -I can transact when I want
2. Correctness in transaction records, account debits, demat credits, shortfall management
3. User-friendliness of interface – you can find what you want quickly
4. Promptness of customer helpdesk in replying to emails
5. Ability to do everything from one single place – like demat account, trading account, and bank account are all managed by the same entity, so there is single place of accountability
Given all these in my experience ICICIDirect still scores the best. It has the highest no of subscribers. It used to have some transaction problems earlier, but over the past year, I cannot recollect instances where I couldn’t execute a buy/sell when I wanted it. (HDFC Securities & Motilal OSwal both have miles to go on this front, systems cant keep up with the load on exceptionally high traffic days -jan 22/23). Their User interface is the best, you can locate what to do and where very fast, almost intuitively. Their transaction records are impeccable, you have peace of mind. Couldn’t say the same for Motilal Oswal (I had to track and remind them to make good the shortfall when I bought and paid for 20 shares of Wyeth Pharma but demat was only for 16 after a week). And single place of accountability makes sure i deal with the same party and can get things resolved faster.
No matter what arguments you hear against, perhaps the biggest argument in favour of ICICIDirect is that they have been operating these services from 1999. That’s close to a decade of experience in handling extremes of load, variety of software and technical issues, customer complaints , and have matured over the years.
The others may give you cheaper brokerage rates (and that matters if you are a day trader) but have much more to cover before they can reach similar levels of maturity as a service provider.
My 2 cents. Hope they were useful & happy investing!
Stockbrokers & Stock Trading : Partnership Prop Stock Trading Account