Mobile trading picks up speed

Ashish Rukhaiyar
Mumbai, 17 November 2011

Mobile trading, approved by the capital market regulator late last year, has seen a nearly fourfold jump in turnover in the past few months.

Market players say an increasing number of retail investors are embracing the new platform to deal in equities. The availability of trading applications across mobile platforms has acted as a catalyst, they say.

Mobile trading, in simple terms, refers to investors placing buy/sell orders using their mobile phones. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) gave its go-ahead to mobile trading in August last year. The regulator allowed brokerages to introduce applications for mobile phones, which clients could download and trade through. Stock exchanges provide their own versions of trading applications.

According to the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the total monthly turnover of mobile trading has risen to Rs 2,606 crore in October from Rs 715 crore in April — a 264 per cent rise in just six months. Initially, when mobile trading was launched, the monthly turnover was in the range of Rs 10-12 crore on NSE. In fact, the monthly turnover has registered a steady rise since April as more investors have started to adopt the new platform. Meanwhile, in the current year, the Bombay Stock Exchange has seen its monthly mobile trading volume more than double from Rs 6 crore to Rs 14 crore.

An NSE spokesperson said the exchange had launched applications for all smartphones and tablets along with “reasonable phones with GPRS connections”. “Volumes from mobile trading have been growing and we are confident the trend will pick up further,” said the spokesperson.

Market players, meanwhile, say the availability of trading applications across platforms — Android, BlackBerry, Windows, etc — has led to investors warming up to mobile trading. “Mobile trading is much simpler than internet trading as a simple handheld device does the trick. So, clients who are on the move use it extensively. While the percentage of investors opting for mobile trading is still minuscule, the trend is encouraging,” says Vinay Agrawal, executive director, Angel Broking.

Prior to the regulatory approval, most of the large brokerages were already providing mobile platforms through which their clients could access live quotes and portfolio details. These applications were tweaked to meet regulatory norms and buy/sell functionalities were added.