Online Trading India

Online Trading In India Online trading in India  actually began way back in the late 1990s with the likes of ICICI Direct and Sharekhan among the early pioneers in the online trading business. The online trading business has traversed a long way and it gradually becoming the default mode of trading in the Indian markets. More and more retail and HNI investors are now shifting to the online trading mode due to the benefits and convenience that it offers. Here are some of the key benefits of of an online trading offer! It is much quicker than offline trading. You don’t worry about the presence of a dealer, getting the dealer on the phone or getting the dealer’s time slot etc. Traveling to the dealer office can be too cumbersome if you have a busy schedule. It is more efficient. Online trading makes the entire process seamless. You place the order and the confirmation is also available online. In addition, all the back-office tasks, ledger checking, and contract note verific...

Online Trading In India  While currency markets have been active in India for a long time in the form of a spot market and the forward market, the  currency trading  in exchange were only permitted in 2008. Post the Lehman crisis, the need was felt to allow Indian traders to hedge their risk with currency exposure, especially when a weak rupee was driving down equity returns. Today,  online trading  in currency futures and options on rupee pairs and also on cross currency pairs are actively traded on the BSE and the NSE. We now move to the subject of taxation of such currency derivatives. Should it be treated as speculative or as an investment and whether one is liable to pay capital gains tax or show it as business income? It must be noted that there is a significant difference in the tax treatment of security derivatives and commodity derivatives (since commodity derivatives permit square off and delivery transactions). Let us now look at it from a cur...

How Mutual Funds Are Better Than ULIPS? ULIPs have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. They were often sold (or rather mis-sold) as assured return products when they were not. There were occasions when they were sold as mutual funds when they also had an insurance component to them. All these factors forced the IRDA to clamp down heavily on ULIP sales. Things did change partially when the Union Budget 2018 imposed 10% tax on long term capital gains (LTCG). This was payable at a flat rate of 10% of the gains (without indexation) if the gains were more than Rs.1 lakh during the fiscal year. Since ULIPs were exempted from this tax and equity MFs (including ELSS) were made subject to this tax, the issue is whether it made ULIPs more attractive? Mutual funds  remain the preferred choice for a variety of reasons There is a saying in financial planning that never let taxes drive your investment choices. That applies to your choice of ULIPs too. Here are some key reason...