In view of the recent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms on the liberalised remittance scheme, ICICIdirect.com, the online broking arm of ICICI Securities, has become the first portal to launch an overseas trading service that will allow retail investors to trade in stocks and options across all US stocks exchanges including NYSE and NASDAQ.
S Mukherji, managing director and CEO, ICICI Securities, told reporters that ICICIdirect.com has tied-up with Pension Financial Services Inc as its overseas partner. Pension is the fourth largest clearing and broker-dealer firm in the US handling about 10,000 settlements daily and has over $6.8 billion in assets including customer’s assets. Mukherji said, ?US market happens to be the largest market in world with a good liquidity and depth. And, 40% of the NYSE listed companies being non-US companies, the retail investors will have a good opportunity to access global companies listed in US market?. Morover, the bio-tech and Internet companies under-represent in the domestic market. So, the investors can have access to these companies in the US market, he said. The overseas trading services are being offered following RBI liberalising remittance scheme that allows domestic investors to remit up to $2 lakh per financial year for the investments in current and capital account transactions including equities. With this limit, an Indian investor can buy at least 100 shares each of the 30 stocks, which are the constituents of 30-shares Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), the most popular US index. If one invests on the basis of last closing prices of all these 30 stocks on Friday last, the cost of acquiring 100 shares of all 30 constituents comes to $1,73,030 and one is still left with cash of $26,970.
