How To Trade in Share Markets Through Mobile Phones

The Indian Stock markets entered a new Arena of technology by entering into mobile trading. now go for wireless and a hassle free trading on your finger tips. With the Indian Stock Exchanges launching mobile trading platform, the stock market is all set to get a tech boost.

A month ago, the Securities and Exchange Board of India gave permission to the stock exchanges and brokerage houses to offer mobile trading services to their clients. But many investors have a question:

How will this platform work?

The steps

Stock trading on mobile can take place in two steps:

First, through an application downloaded onto the user's mobile, or mobile phone browser. Brokers have the options of developing the mobile trading application in-house, buying it from a vendor or going in for those offered by the stock exchanges.

In the second step, BSE will facilitate trading through its mobile application software called FASTRADE (which has been upgraded to disseminate data through mobile phones. It has been modified to provide trading on mobile handsets), while NSE will do it through its software NOW.

The app

At present, BSE investors can get real-time updates on the market, and also the stock prices by downloading the 'Sensex Streamer' from the BSE website onto their mobile handsets.

They can view information of the last traded price, percentage change in price, buying and selling prices and the latest quantities of 30 BSE stocks bought and sold.

A sneak preview of NSE's mobile application can be downloaded from its web site (www.nseindia.com) for GPRS-enabled handsets.

But, at this point, this allows one to access only market data. The actual trading will happen through a broker's software application that needs to be downloaded.

To trade, one needs to have an Internet trading account with the broker.

Demo at NSE

The best time to test the NSE application is during market hours. Clicking on the downloaded application will take you to two options: Trade and Market Data.

Currently, the trade option cannot be clicked on, but it will be made available once trading is permitted.

The market data one will work, and will gives several options. But some -- like view orders, place order, charts and positions -- are not yet available. The only options available are 'get quote' and 'market watch'.

Get quote: This option allows one to choose between equities, derivatives and currencies. After clicking on equities, I feed in a scrip name in a search bar. Inputs like bid and ask (size), the stock's opening price, its previous close and its highest and lowest price during the day can be viewed.

Market watch: This option allows one to view the performance of such broad indices as the Nifty or Nifty Junior and the stocks constituting these indices.

The browser

Some brokers feel making online trading available on web browsers is a simpler alternative to applications described above. Similar to Internet trading, the web page designed for mobile phones can give users a better experience, they say.

IIFL's mobile web site allows you to buy and sell shares, and also view your order book and trade book. You can log in using your Internet trading account's username.

"Internet tends to be very data intensive. For instance, on the Internet, one may see 50 scrips with 10 columns giving different data points on the same web page. But given the constraints of a mobile phone, one may see fewer scrips and data points on the same page."

For instance, on clicking the 'buy' option, the screen immediately throws up various fields. One has to choose the exchange (BSE or NSE) and order type (cash, futures and options), quantity and price.

After you fill in the information and place a dummy order, it takes you to another web page asking for a confirmation of the order.

On confirming, the order will reflect in the trade book or the order book, depending on its status.

Even the browser is an elegant solution. Whatever option you choose for trading through your mobile phone, it will only be a trading platform.

The settlement mechanism will be the same as that for Internet trading.

"The process for trading remains the same, only the device has changed."

BSE launches mobile-based trading

The Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd, India's oldest stock exchange launched mobile-based trading through its 33 leading brokers.

Leading BSE stock brokers namely, Angel Broking, Motilal Oswal Securities, Marwadi Shares & Finance, BCB Brokerage, Asika Stock Broking, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services, SMC Global Securities, ICICI Securities, India Infoline, Kotak Securities, Standard Chartered STCI Capital Markets are among those who started providing mobile based trading facility to its clients.

The mobile trading service will be extended to all the investors through its 900 active brokers soon. Mobile trading is essentially an extension of internet based trading.

the security on mobile trading will be same as on internet trading. Brokers will have full control of the risk parameters since orders submitted by client on his mobile will be sent via the broker's servers to the exchange.

With mobile based trading, BSE plans to expand its reach to rural areas of the country.

mobile trading will be successful as the country has 65 crore mobile users as against only one crore internet users.

On August 27, the Securities and Exchange Board of India gave its go-ahead for the launch of mobile trading.

The regulator had specified that brokers who provided an internet-based trading facility would be eligible to provide mobile trading facility as well.