How to open a Demat account?

You have to approach a DP to open a Demat account.
Most banks are DP participants so you may approach them or else you can contact us.
To have latest list of registered DP please visit websites www.nsdl.co.in and www.cdslindia.com.
A broker and a DP are two different people. A broker is a member of the stock exchange, who buys and sells shares on his behalf and also on behalf of his customers.

Following are the documents required to open Demat account.
When you approach any DP, you will be guided through the formalities of opening an account.
The DP will ask to provide some documents as proof of your identity and address.
Below is a list but you may not require all of them.
PAN card, Voter's ID, Passport, Ration card, Driver's license, Photo credit card Employee ID card, IT returns, Electricity/ Landline phone bill etc.

Do you need any shares to open a Demat account?
No. You need not need any shares to open a demat account. A demat account can be opened with no balance of shares. And there is no minimum balance to be maintained either. You can have a zero balance in your account.

How much it cost to open a Demat account?
The charges for account opening, annual account maintenance fees and transaction charges vary between various DP’s. To have latest charges please visit websites of www.nsdl.co.in and www.cdslindia.com

What is Demat account and why it is required?

¨ Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is a board (corporate body) appointed by the Government of India in
1992 with its head office at Mumbai. Its one of the function is helping the business in stock exchanges and any other
securities markets.
¨ Demat (short form of Dematerialization) is the process by which an investor can get shares (also called as physical
certificates) converted into electronic form maintained in an account with the Depository Participant (DP).
¨ DP could be organizations involved in the business of providing financial services like banks, brokers, financial
institutions etc. DP’s are like agents of Depository.
¨ Depository is an organization responsible to maintain investor's securities (securities can be shares or any other
form of investments) in the electronic form. In India there are two such organizations called NSDL
(National Securities Depository Ltd.) and CDSL (Central Depository Services India Ltd.)
¨ Investor’s wishing to open Demat account has to go DP and open the account.
¨ Opening the Demat account is as simple as opening the bank account with any bank. As you need bank account to
save your money, make cheque payments etc, likewise you need to open a demat account if you want to buy or sell
stocks.
¨ All shares what you possess will show in your demat account, so you don't have to possess any physical
certificates. They are all held electronically in your demat account. As you buy and sell the shares, accordingly your
shares will get adjusted in your account.

Oil Steadies above $95 after One-Month High

Oil steadied above $95 a barrel on Friday, taking a breather after surging to a one-month high the previous session, as worries about supply from Venezuela and Mexico eased.U.S. light, sweet crude for March was flat, following a gain of $2.19 in New York on Thursday.London Brent crude for the new front-month April contract was down slightly.

U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Thursday he did not expect Exxon Mobil to have trouble replacing oil supplies from Venezuela, but added that the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve would be available if needed.The South American country, one of the largest crude exporters to the United States, cut shipments to the U.S. company earlier this week in retaliation over a legal dispute.

"Venezuela will not affect the crude supply fundamentally. There will be some risk premium but there will not be any natural shortfall in crude," said Gerard Burg of National Australia Bank in Sydney.

Major oil producers in the Middle East have already assured the United States they could compensate for a supply disruption if Venezuela slows exports.Supply worries also eased as Mexico re-opened all three of its main oil exporting ports on Thursday, a day after they were closed because of bad weather in the Gulf of Mexico.

The market continued to fret over slowing U.S. oil demand as economic woes lingered.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday painted a gloomy picture of a U.S. economy facing risks of both slow growth and inflation, and held open the option of more interest rate cuts.

Separately, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. economy was "clearly on the edge" of a recession, and was being burdened by high oil prices.

Market Insider/Friday Look Ahead

Friday's markets will likely continue to be vulnerable to credit worries. There are a few economic data points including import prices and the Empire State survey, both at 8:30 a.m. TIC data from the Treasury is released at 9 a.m. and industrial production comes out at 8:15 a.m. Consumer sentiment is due at 10 a.m.

Fed Governor Frederic Mishkin speaks at Dartmouth College at 1:15 p.m. He speaks on what tools the Fed has for responding to financial disruptions and there is a question and answer period.

Markets Climb a Wall of Worry

The Sensex has returned about 18.62 % compounded annual return over the past 27 years in spite of:

• 1 War (With Pakistan – Kargil 1999).
  
  
• Increasing Terrorism and threats to Internal Security (Punjab, J&K, Assam , Naxalite problem in Bihar & other parts of India).
  
  
• 2 Major financial scandals and a number of minor ones (Harshad Mehta, Ketan Pareikh, C.R. Bhansali,Sanjay Agarwal etc).
  
  
• 2 assassinations of Prime ministers (Indira Gandhi & Rajiv Gandhi).
  
  
• Number of communal riots (Ayodhya, Godhra - They keep happening with immaculate consistency).
  
  
• More then 11 different Governments perusing different manifestos and putting all of them under a common banner titled Common Minimum Program..
  
  
• Poor Monsoons on more then 3 to 4 occasions.Each year the market speculates as to how the Monsoons have hit the coast of Kerala but over alonger period of time they do not matter. More so with increasing irrigation systems and development our dependence on monsons will come down further.
  
  
• Mortgage of Gold to tide over the foreign exchange crisis (In 1991 the Indian Govt. mortgaged Gold to the Bank of England).
  
  
• Coalition governments have governed major portion of the last 25 years.
  
  
• Numerous number of natural calamities and disasters (Tsunami 2004, Gujarat Earthquake 2001, Surat Plague 1995).

Do You Need A Financial Advisor?

If you do your own investing, have you ever wondered whether you should turn things over to a professional advisor? This article attempts to shed some light on this topic and to provide you with some things to think about so that the best decision can be made.

When the Time Comes
Professional advisors say there is no magic asset number that pushes an investor to seek advice. Rather, it is more likely an event that spooks a person and sends him scurrying through an advisor's door. The event could be something that requires the individual to manage an asset himself.

According to Charles Hughes, a certified financial planner in Bayshore, New York, the event typically involves either the receipt of or access to a large sum of money that the individual didn't have before.

"When you reach a point in which you're constantly afraid that you're going to make a mistake with your investments, then you need professional advice," according to Raymond Mignone, a certified financial planner in Little Neck, New York.

Often, someone who has never spent or managed more than a few thousand dollars is looking at managing a six-figure or group of accounts.

If this happens to someone just about to retire, the decisions that need to made are more critical, as the retiree will want to make this money last. As such, people often seek professional advice just before they retire, because they feel that they need professional advice to make such long-term decisions. (For more insight, see our Retirement Planning Tutorial and A Pre-Retirement Checkup.)

When it comes to portfolio management, it is important to determine your plan of attack. Take the 401(k) plan, for example. When you're contributing to the plan, you may feel like it's not your money. You can't do with it what you want because you'll be penalized. But when retirement is coming and you can access that money, the question often arises about what you are going to do with it. For many, this can be when they decide whether they can manage their own affairs or whether they should seek professional advice.

Judging Yourself
The need for critical self evaluation is vital when determining whether or not to hire a financial planner. Advisors say the decision depends on the investor.

The following questions should help you sort out if you need an advisor:

* Do you have a fair knowledge of investments?
* Do you enjoy reading about investments and doing research?
* If you have expertise in investments? Do you have the time to monitor and evaluate them and make periodic changes to your portfolio?

If you answered "yes" to the above questions, you may not need an advisor or financial planner.

Not So Fast
However, Loren Dunton, one of the founders of the financial planning movement, says that many people who believe that they don't need a financial planner could benefit from one anyway.

"Most people need a planner. The ones who don't need one are usually smart enough to use one," wrote Dunton in "Financial Planning Can Make You Rich" (1987).

So let's assume someone decides that, for any of the reasons stated above, he or she does need an advisor. There's another difficult task: Finding the right advisor.

During volatile times, many investors get spooked and begin to question their investment strategies. This is especially true for novice investors, who can often be tempted to pull out of the market altogether and wait on the sidelines until it seems safe to dive back in. The thing to realize is that market volatility is inevitable. It's the nature of the markets to move up and down over the short term. Trying to time the market over the short term is extremely difficult. One solution is to maintain a long-term horizon and ignore the short-term fluctuations. For many investors this is a solid strategy, but even long-term investors should know about volatile markets and the steps that can help them weather this volatility - in this article we'll show you how to do just that.

What is Volatility?

Volatility is a statistical measure of the tendency of a market or security to rise or fall sharply within a short period of time. Volatility is typically measured by the standard deviation of the return of an investment. Standard deviation is a statistical concept that denotes the amount of variation or deviation that might be expected. For example, the S&P 500 has a standard deviation of about 15%, while a guaranteed investment, such as a bank account, has a standard deviation of zero because the return never varies.

Staying Invested

One way to deal with volatility is to avoid it altogether. This means staying invested and not paying attention to the short-term fluctuations. Sometimes this can be harder than it sounds - watching your portfolio take a 50% hit in a bear market is more than many can take.

One common misconception about a buy-and-hold strategy is that holding a stock for 20 years is what will make you money. Long-term investing still requires homework because markets are driven by corporate fundamentals. If you find a company with a strong balance sheet and consistent earnings, the short-term fluctuations won't affect the long-term value of the company. In fact, periods of volatility could be a great time to buy if you believe a company is good for the long-term. (To learn more, see Intro To Fundamental Analysis, Reading The Balance Sheet and Advanced Financial Statement Analysis.)

The main argument behind the buy-and-hold strategy is that missing the best few days of the year will cut your return significantly. It varies depending on where you get your data, but the stat will usually sound something like this: "missing the 20 best days could cut your return by more than half." For the most part this is true but, on the other hand, missing the worst 20 days will also increase your portfolio considerably and in some cases, you may want to make trades during volatile market conditions.

What You Need to Know

Investors, especially those that use an online broker, should know that during times of volatility, many firms implement procedures that are designed to decrease the exposure of the firm to extraordinary market risk. For example, in the past, some market-maker firms have temporarily discontinued normal automatic order executions and handled orders manually.

How securities are executed during times of volatile prices and high volume is also different in other ways. Here are some things you should be aware of:

* Delays - Volatile markets are associated with high volumes of trading, which may cause delays in execution. These high volumes may also cause executions to occur at prices that are significantly different from the market price quoted at the time the order was entered. Investors should ask firms to explain how market makers handle order executions when the market is volatile. With the advent of online trading, we have come to expect quick executions at prices at or near the quotes displayed on our computer screens. Take into account that this isn't always the case. (See Understanding Order Execution.)
* Website Mayhem - You may have difficulty executing your trades because of the limitations of a system's capacity. In addition, if you are trading online, you may have difficulty accessing your account due to high internet traffic. For these reasons, most online trading firms offer alternatives like telephone trades, talking to a broker over the phone and faxing your order.
* Incorrect Quotes -There can be significant price discrepancies between the quote you receive and the price at which your trade is executed. Remember, in a volatile market environment, even real-time quotes may be far behind what is currently happening in the market. In addition, the number of shares available at a certain price (known as the size of a quote) may change rapidly, affecting the likelihood of a quoted price being available to you.

Other Things to Keep in Mind

The type of order you choose is very important when the markets aren't moving in their normal fashion. A market order will always be executed, but in fast markets you might be surprised at what price you get, which can be substantially different from the price that was quoted.

In a volatile market, the limit order - an order placed with a brokerage to buy or sell at a predetermined amount of shares, and at or better than a specified price - is your friend. Limit orders typically cost slightly more than market orders but are always a good idea to use because the price at which you will purchase or sell securities is set. On the downside, a limit order does not guarantee you an execution. (For further reading, check out The Basics Of Order Entry and Do stop or limit orders protect against gaps in a stock's price?)

Conclusion

Investors need to be aware of the potential risks during times of volatility. Choosing to stay invested can be a great option if you're confident in your strategy. If, however, you do decide to trade during volatility, be aware of how the market conditions will affect your trade.