Share trading via mobiles hits a record high

Retail investors are buying and selling shares through their mobile phones like never before. Average daily turnover through mobile trading in shares on the NSE jumped to a record 10.15% of the total turnover or nearly 3,700 crore a day in March 2019 from 3.6% two years ago and 1.1% five years ago.

The ease of punching trades through a brokerage's mobile application, affordable smartphones and cheap data plans have prompted several investors to switch to mobile phone transactions. "Our overall mobile app revenue has grown considerably in the past two years," said Jaideep Arora, CEO, BNP Paribas' Indian retail broking arm Sharekhan. "Mobile retail broking has a great future. Among our new customers, more than 65% of orders today are being routed through mobile phones and this is incrementally changing."

For instance, 33% of broking firm Motilal Oswal Financial Services' retail clients trade on mobile phones in the cash market. Business has grown 81% in the past two years. IIFL-backed discount brokerage, 5Paisa.com sees some 80% of all trading happening through its mobile app with over 2 million users. For Zerodha, 60-70% of the total turnover is through mobile trading.

"Mobile is one of the fastest-growing medium for us," said Arun Chaudhry, head - online business and product development, Motilal Oswal Financial Services. "As an organisation it helps us engage with the customer in a time-bound manner, delivering insights to them while they are on the move. This ensures that our customers are able to capitalise on all trading and investment opportunities."

Such trades account for anywhere between 30% and 50% of total orders at top broking firms. The trades pick-up through smartphones in the past two years can also be attributed to the stock market bull run during September 2013-January 2018.

Nitin Kamath, founder, Zerodha, said average daily turnover through mobile trading on the NSE could be nearly 30% if proprietary trading volumes are included. The bigger growth in trading through phones has been in equity futures and options. The NSE does not publish official data on derivatives mobile trading but broking officials said its way higher than volumes in shares.

Brokerages said most retail traders using mobile phones are young, a majority from smaller towns. "About 70% of our customers are first-time investors while 90% are under 40 years," said Arindam Chanda, chief executive, IIFL Securities.