MUMBAI, Aug 28: ICICI Securities (I-Sec), a retail-led equity house, on Friday announced the launch of commodity derivatives trading on the icicidirect.com platform.
With this, I-Sec’s 5 million client base will now be able to trade in commodities futures on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), India’s largest commodity exchange with a market share of more than 94 pc Commodity Derivatives is on similar lines to existing equity derivatives segment but the underlying will be commodity instead of Stocks.
Many of icicidirect.com’s popular features like the Good Till Canceled (GTC) will be available for commodities trade too, making it more convenient for investors.
”With this launch, we are happy to have fulfilled a key need gap of our customers, who were demanding a familiar interface for their commodity trading too.
We have moved a step closer to becoming our customer’s one-stop digital shop for meeting all their financial lifecycle requirement, be it investment, protection, or borrowing.
We will be building further capabilities in this space to offer best in class features and trading experience for our customers. We have expertise and experienced commodities research team who will bring well researched periodic as well as thematic macro reports on all the major commodities” said Mr. Vijay Chandok, MD & CEO, ICICI Securities.
Commodity trading is gaining popularity as it allows for greater portfolio diversification, is a hedge against price fluctuation, and has longer trading hours MCX is open from 0900 hrs to 2330 hrs / 2355 hrs allowing investors to be in the market longer and capturing international benchmark prices.
Trading is available in Bullion (Gold and Silver), Energy (Crude Oil and Natural Gas), Metals (Aluminum, Copper, Lead, Nickel and Zinc) and Agri (Cotton and CPO). All these commodities traded on MCX have international linkage for greater trade participation.
Existing icicidirect.com 3-in-1 account holders can begin trading post a simple online commodities registration process with competitive brokerage of Rs 20 per order and only Rs 2 per lot. (UNI)