13.7 Online share trading : Step by step procedures

Hanumant Dhokle

As mentioned earlier, for stock trading we need to have a trading account and demat account. To provide this facility, brokerage firms charge a brokerage to individuals. Generally for day trading it varies from 0.01 to 0.1 per cent and for delivery it varies from 0.2 to 0.5 per cent. It might vary further depending upon the facility they provide and the investments you have. Most of the brokerage firms provide a unique login ID as well as password to trade online or offline. Nowadays most of the brokerage firms have an online version of share trading. Offline trading is screen-based trading in the broker’s office or premises where the orders are executed by an operator whereas online trading is internet- based trading where the trader himself or herself can execute the orders through a computer without the help of an operator at any time and place, provided access to the internet is available in his or her computer. It is always  important to have hands-on experience before doing actual trading. Most of the brokerage firms provide software for online share trading wherein you can enjoy trading by yourself, and in case you don’t find it comfortable to install separate software for trading, they provide a login facility even on their main website but it would generally be with limited features as compared to the actual software. Another way of share trading is that you call your customer relationship manager and place an order. This is offline trading. A customer relationship manager has access to your account at any point of time and can place an order without even having your login ID and password. The customer ID is sufficient. He/she takes care of your account and provides required information to you time to time either by email or through phone.

Step 1: Install the Software And Log In

Install the software given by the brokerage firm. As mentioned earlier, if you don’t wish to install the software then you can directly go to the brokerage firm’s website and start trading from there. However, it is important to know the basic functionality of the software through which you intend to trade. The user friendliness of software varies from company to company but the procedures are almost the same in most of the software programmes. Type the login ID and the password that are provided by the brokerage firm. You have the option of changing the password so as to make your account secure.

Step 2: Start Tracking the Stocks

Once you are logged in, you will find at the top of the screen main menus like login, market watch and reports etc. In the market watch section you can add and define the scrips which you are particularly interested in tracking. In addition to a pre-defined set of stocks, you can choose the code of the shares and add to the scrips’ list. Scrips are nothing but the short form reference of any company.

Here you can select options like pre-defined NSE and BSE scrips or world stock indices etc or select a share that you want to add in your list of scrips.

Step 3: Track the Price and Market Depth

You can also search for scrips if you know the scrip code. In most of the software programs, you click on scrip and it provides you the market depth as well as the Price Volume chart.

Most of the trading software display screens will be as above with minor changes.

Some of the important tracker heads are:

Category

Scrips are divided into categories such as A, B and Z etc depending upon their potential and the margins (as ex-plained in Module 1). Broking firms may give different margin exposure for different categories. It is assumed that the flow of potential of category is from A to Z.

Symbols

Symbols are nothing but the scrip code of any company so that instead of writing the company’s full name a small scrip code can be used for convenience of share trading. The codes for BSE and NSE are different.

% Change

This shows the percentage change of any scrip on a particular day. It helps in analyzing how a share has performed on a day.

Last Rate

This actually is the price of any share at any moment, also called the current market price (CMP).

Open

This is nothing but the opening price of any scrip on a particular day.

Previous Close

This is the previous day’s closing price of any scrip.

High

This is the highest price for any scrip on a particular day.

Low

This is the lowest price for any scrip on a particular day.

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