Demat Accounts Comparison

To start trading online we need a demat account and a online trading account. There are many companies offering these facilities. Although this list is not comprehensive we have tried to look at some of the big players in the field. We will also look at their charges. The charges shown may change with time, so I would suggest you to get the latest charges from the vendors themselves.

Things you should look for while going in for a demat account:

1. Annual Fee: Nearly all the demat account provider charge some fixed yearly fees.

2. Commission: Commission on buy as well as sell. Each transaction either buy or sell attract commission from your broker. This is generally some %age of the transaction value.

3. Any other charges
4. Online trading account: Check if the company provides an online trading facility. Most sites work well with Internet Explorer that is shipped with any version of Microsoft Windows. Most of them doesn't work with other browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Apple's Safari.
5. Research content: Almost all the big player give daily recommendations of buy or sell to its members.

Name: Kotak Securities
Site: http://www.kotaksecurities.com/

Probably one of the oldest player in the field. Their main strength lies in the research content that they provide to their users. Account opening charges are about Rs. 750 you also get a zero balance kotak mahindra bank account with it. Brokerage for a low volume trader at 0.59 % is quite high as compared to most of its peers. There is also a deliver charge of Rs 23 for every delivery based selling. Brokerage for intraday transaction is 0.06%. The trading interface is quite powerful but is geekish. You need to know a lot of terms of trading to effectively do online trading. Exact brokerage can be found at http://www.kotaksecurities.com/accountsection/kotakgateway_id4.html#id4

Name: ICICI Direct

Site: http://www.icicidirect.com/

Amongst the top trading sites, ICICIDirect probably is the only one that lets you trade in US market too. The annual maintainance charge is Rs 500. Brokerage at 0.75% is highest amongst its peers. There is demat charge of Rs 25 for every buy. Trading interface is quite intuitive it is easy to square-off a transaction intraday.

Name: Reliance Money

Site: http://www.reliancemoney.com/

At the level of 0.1% brokerage is probably lowest. The interface is also good. But this account comes with prepaid plans. They do charge Rs 12 for every request places through telephone. Annual maintenance charges are very less only Rs 50. I think they will impact this industry the same way they did the mobile service industry. They also allowing trading in forex and commodities. But it has some basic functionality, like portfolio viewing, missing.

Name: IDBI Paisa builder
site: http://www.idbipaisabuilder.in/

Account opening charges are Rs, 700. Can work with only three banks, IDBI, AXIS or HDFC. Commission is comparable to others.


Name: HDFC Securities
site: http://www.hdfcsec.com/

Account opening charges are Rs 2250. Commission is 0.75% for both buying and selling with a minimum of Rs 100. More information about the account opening process can be found at http://www.hdfcsec.com/Common/NRICustomerAccount.aspx#Charges


Name: Geojit
site: http://www.geojit.com/

Rs 500 is account opening charges. Brokerages are about 0.3% for delivery based trade and 0.03% for margin trading. But their main site did not seem to work properly in Firefox.


If you think that some facts are reported wrongly or some information is missing, please feel free to comment of the post. We will try to incorporate the changes so that this post becomes useful for other.

Have Faith, Invest In Stocks

Almost every technical analyst in the world is betting on India. And the analysis is not just like that. There are some facts which prove that investing in equity, here in India, is truly beneficial.

15% is what the sensex, an index maintained by Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), has grown at since its inception in 1980 when it started with 100 points which is also a reflection of corporate earnings growth. And now that India had crossed the development threshold, it is certain that we can earn at least 20% in the next 15 years by carefully selecting the stocks or scripts. Though the risk is always there but current trends are showing signs of prosperity.

You should definitely take experts' advice if you don't have time due to job constraints. But as I said just take advices and make your own cautious decision. The best way to do that is to invest through equity based mutual funds, insurance plans, pension plans etc. Checking for top performing funds over the past three years is a good idea to get started with.

Following table shows projected accumulation of money assuming a monthly investment of Rs. 1000.

Period of Investment (in Years)	Money Invested	Accumulated Money (Assuming 10% Growth)	Accumulated Money (Assuming 15% Growth)	Accumulated Money (Assuming 20% Growth)	Accumulated Money (Assuming 25% Growth)
10	120000	206552.02	278657.27	382363.55	532804.66
15	180000	417924.27	676863.09	1134294.9	1955784.78
20	240000	765696.91	1515954.97	3161479.37	6859095.24
25	300000	1337890.35	3284073.74	8626708.15	23754941.59
30	360000	2279325.32	7009820.61	23360801.76	81974714.95

The table clearly shows that if we start investing early there are good chances that we will have a bright retirement ahead. Take for example, if you are 30 years of age and invest systematically till you are 60 i.e. for 30 years then the accumulated sum is around 70 lakh assuming growth of 15% and more than 2 crore assuming growth of 20%. If you wait for five years and then start investing and planning to retire at 60 then you will have less than 1 crore even if the average growth is 20%. So start early is the mantra.

To start planning, suppose your monthly expenses excluding any type of loan is around 20K. And if inflation is flat 5% all through 30 years then you would need around 90K every month that time. Which means around 11 lakhs every year. And suppose if you want to buy annuity for pension at that time which gives 5% pension then we would need a corpus of around 2.2 crore. By looking the table above if 1000 rupees is invested every month for 30 years and assuming growth of 20% then we can easily accumulate this amount. If the growth is 15% then we need to invest around 3500 rupees every month to accumulate approximately 2.2 crore.

You can adjust figures according to your age and the time you want to retire. Age of retirement can be decided by you but mininum age is different for different investment companies. For some it is 40 (LIC of India) and for some it is 50 (HDFC). And also not all companies have equity linked pension plans and mutual funds.

I hope that the post will be useful to many of you in planning your retirement.