Best online trading account for mutual funds investment (SIP)...?

Question

I am interested in mutual funds investment through SIP. I have hdfc trading account. But I am not satisfied with their service because they dont have SBI, UTI mutual funds. Also they have SIP in Hdfc and DSP ML mutual funds only.

So I am looking for Sharekhan or Jeojit, anyone doing investment through these account please help me.

I am confused about selecting good online trading account.

Answer 1

Sharekhan is good

Answer 2

I have personal experience with ICICIDirect, HDFC Securities and Motilal Oswal. Apart from direct stock investment I also do a fair bit of mutual fund SIP investments. I don't trade/invest on a daily basis and am a long term investor. So for me brokerage rates don't matter much.

For me what matters are the following:

1. Reliability of the platform -I can transact when I want

2. Correctness in transaction records, account debits, demat credits, shortfall management

3. User-friendliness of interface - you can find what you want quickly

4. Promptness of customer helpdesk in replying to emails

5. Ability to do everything from one single place - like demat account, MF account, trading account, and bank account are all managed by the same entity, so there is single place of accountability

Given all these in my experience ICICIDirect still scores the best. It has the highest no of subscribers. It used to have some transaction problems earlier, but over the past year, I cannot recollect instances where I couldn't execute a buy/sell when I wanted it. (HDFC Securities & Motilal OSwal both have miles to go on this front, systems cant keep up with the load on exceptionally high traffic days -e.g. jan 22/23 2008). Their User interface is the best, you can locate what to do and where very fast, almost intuitively. Their transaction records are impeccable, you have peace of mind. Couldn't say the same for Motilal Oswal (I had to track and remind them to make good the shortfall when I bought and paid for 20 shares of Wyeth Pharma but demat was only for 16 after a week). And single place of accountability makes sure i deal with the same party and can get things resolved faster.

No matter what arguments you hear against, perhaps the biggest argument in favour of ICICIDirect is that they have been operating these services from 1999. That's close to a decade of experience in handling extremes of load, variety of software and technical issues, customer complaints , and have matured over the years.

The others may give you cheaper brokerage rates (and that matters if you are a day trader) but have much more to cover before they can reach similar levels of maturity as a service provider.

If you are looking at only online Mutual Fund investing, even Citibank Investment account is great. I have used for over 3 years and been very very satisfied with their MF investing platform. They dont provide stock investing facilities.

My 2 cents. Hope they were useful & happy investing!

Answer 3

You can consider investment through ICICI

Answer 4

Vikas,

You have option to apply mutual fund directly by entering to the website of concerned company. while applying, they will ask you the place where your MF delivered. Here, you can point your HDFC account details...

You can try with UTI Securities. this is very simple to open, cheap in rates as well as all the mutual funds listed. Have a look.

does this make sense