HDFCsec - quite obsolete and painful. Review on HDFC Securities

I have been a regular with HDFCsec for quite some time now. Perhaps for more than 3 years. All the reviews here have been ones that praise the online broking firm. I beg to differ.

My views are based on my perusal of kotakstreet, icicidirect and hdfcsec. Of these three I have been the user of hdfcsec only, but have interacted closed with users of the other two too.

For one I find the site pathetic!!! Its minimal design and lack of features compared with the others have been a source of continuous frustration to me. I have waited patiently for some time now for certain features which I felt was extremely important but I guess it was a futile wait.

The mundane-ness and obsolescence / redundancy of the site can be explained as follows:

-> No BSE. Imagine. And I have been hearing that it is coming anytime soon!!!!!! A good number of investment opportunities have been lost by me due to this. Even ofline trading in BSE would have been acceptable

-> NO purchase of mutual funds or IPOapplication. Both ICICIDirect and Kotakstreet offer this. I cannot emphasize the sheer convenience of applying online to you guys. Friends with these two broking houses are quite a smug lot whereas I go around filling apps! The convenience electronic trading has to offer is completely lost here.

-> Lack of a good portfolio tracking or maintenance system. I cannot emphasize the importance of a proper portfolio tracker connected to your trading account. I have to use sharekhan for that and it’s a pain having to update it every time. (ICICIDirect offers this convenience)

-> No Margin trading, options and derivative trading etc. Lack of these options are another source of frustration. Margin trading is one thing I sorely miss.

-> Lack of charting or other statistical analysis tool built in the system. One has to go to the main screen / site to do the same.

Given the above list, which incidentally are only the most imp ones that are needed by every serious investor, I believe one is better off looking elsewhere.

It has to be said though that the contract notes are arrive regularly. I also get investment advise generally. But I guess having a useless investment advice is as good as getting none! For example The latest script to be recommended is essar shipping ...which is listed onlyon the BSE, and therefore I am unable to buy it. So is HDFCsec assuming that its clients do not use its online webtrading account. Is the webtrading there just because they were supposed to have it since all others were having it? I have never been able to find anybody in HDFC who could answere this questions!

I have now decided to switch and as soon as I am able to decide between icicidirect and kotakstreet I GO! only caveat is that brokerage at ICICIDirect is a bit costlier than hdfc or kotakstreet. Whreas kotakstreet is cheaper than icicdirect. But ICICIDirect offers more features. And so on and so on. Just unable to decide between these two. It’s a features v/s price trade off.

Any ideas? Any users?