How to Begin Online Stock Trading

Making trades via the Internet. Online Stock Trading is an Internet based facility that allows you to buy and sell shares through an online broker just by operating the internet from your home or office. Forget those  days when you needed to telephone a stock broker and place a buy or a sell order to trade in the stock market. Today you have a number of online options to trade in the stock market. Trading online is discreet, safe and oftern costs much lesser.

Following are the steps to begin stock trading online..

• You will need a demat account and a trading account. You can open a demat account through a number of leading banks and Financial institutions in India.
• You will then have to open a trading account with any online stock trading portal and link your demat account with the trading account. Ideally, you would choose an institution that provides both the trading and demat accounts. A number of banks provide service are your doorstep. The entire process takes about 15 days before you can start online trading.
• You will need your PAN Card, 2 photographs, address proof, identify proof and age proof. ICICI Direct will open a bank account along with a demat and a trading account while ShareKhan will not give you a bank account instead they allow you to transfer money from most Indian banks to your trading account.
• Most of the large online trading houses provide you trainings on how to get started and use their respective trading websites.

Online trading is a boon for those who want to avoid the hassle of personally dealing with a broker. A few years back there were only a couple of online trading websites. Today we have a large number of them and more options are getting added each year.

ICICI Direct remains the largest online stock trading portal with over 1 million users. The other prominent ones are

Sharekhan
5 Paise
Geojit Securities
India Bulls
Investsmart Online
Kotak Street
Motilal Oswal
HDFC Securities